Railworks America

Hi, I try to repaint the default F7 from Kuju and I get some strange unwanted textures coming from no one knows where!! You can see what I mean on these two pictures. Anyone knows what to do to eradicate that and to get a uniform texture? I use Paint shop pro, Gimp, RSBin Tool, RW-Tools and DXTBmp. I'm working on that since three days without success. Thanks for help!!

Disco train?

What are you doing to use all these programs?

It depends of the mods I have to do on one model but say that for the current example I used only Gimp for coloring, DXTBmp for adding alpha chanels and RW-Tools for the conversions from DDS to TGPCDX. The result is very good with Gimp but after the conversion I get this disco texture.

jtousign wrote:It depends of the mods I have to do on one model but say that for the current example I used only Gimp for coloring, DXTBmp for adding alpha chanels and RW-Tools for the conversions from DDS to TGPCDX. The result is very good with Gimp but after the conversion I get this disco texture.

I've had a similar thing happen before but particularly with older addons. I'm not completely sure myself either.

The only time I can recall running into this I changed the format to 2048x2048 DXT5 and that fixed it. You might try that with one file and see if that fixes it. Have you done that before or I guess I should ask do you know how to do it?

This might be a texture compression artefact. You could try exporting to less or uncompressed formats in all intermediate steps (Gimp and DXT2BMP), maybe this helps. Also, did you edit the normal map by any chance? Check this one too if you made any edits on it.

Cheers
Michael

Thanks to all for your replies. Hi Buzz, I Have tried to change the format to 2048 x 2048 but when I convert the DDS to TGPCDX It returns to the previous format 1024 x 1024 of course to fit with the rest I guess and the result is a 2048 x2048 texture on a 1024 x 1024 one, not beautiful to see So my answer is: no I don't know how to do that. Hi Michael, I tried to decrease the conversion to DXT3 and It is almost the perfection so far. I tried also with DXT1 but It's worst. I don't have the DXT2 feature in Bing, I wonder why. I think seriously to change the basic model for another one.

jtousign wrote:... I tried to decrease the conversion to DXT3 and It is almost the perfection so far. I tried also with DXT1 but It's worst. I don't have the DXT2 feature in Bing, I wonder why. I think seriously to change the basic model for another one.

Hi, maybe you could try exporting the file as .tga (via DXTBmp's Save As menu), then edit the .tga in Gimp as usual and again save this one as uncompressed .tga, then re-convert it back to .dds with DXTBmp.

Alternatively, if all else fails, there is another but a bit more complicated way to convert the texture by using the Blueprint editor. For this, you'd have to convert the .tga to Ace (RWAceTool), then drop the resulting file in your Railworks\Source directory, use the Blueprint editor to export it (right-click on the file in the BPE), and then move the resulting TgPcDx file to its destination directory in the repaint.

Cheers
Michael

Thanks Michael, I'll try your tip to convert in .tga which I find interesting. I'll let you know the result

In case you want to try the format change here is how you go about it. Find any 2048x2048 TgPcDx file. All of the Searchlight cars are that size. They are also DXT5. Copy and paste it into your Kuju F7 texture folder. Rename it like for instance F7A_main_1 after taking the original and after the TgPcDx put a .orig so you still have the first one. Now go to your editor and resize it to 2048x2048. Save it as .bmp like normal. Open it in RWTools or DXTBmp what ever you use add the alpha and save it as a .DDS in DXT5 compression. Now import it to your F7A_main_1 and it should be happy since that is now the new format. Save and away you go. I use DXTBmp and RSBinTool but RWTools should work just as well. Somehow DXTBmp knows how to resize the alpha so even if your alpha has detail it should work OK. I have done this a bunch of times so if I explained this properly I know it works.

Well It's a lot better like that Michael. Then converting to Targa and finally in DDS DXT3 instead of DXT5 do the job thanks to you Michael!

Thanks a lot Buzz, of course I will try it since 2048x2048 is a lot more valuable than 1024x1024

Well I understand now why there was artefacts on the textures, the DDS files from the basic loco are compressed in DXT3!!!

And I just found my powder blue leisure suit with the white piping and platform shoes. So where is John Travolta now? Stayin' alive.
Glad you have it sorted. Buzz and the crew have seen almost everything.