Railworks America

I have a bit of a delema regaurding trees.

Please review this Google map of Niles Canyon, and take note of the broccoli like trees that cover the hills:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= ... 2&t=h&z=16

These trees do not lose their leaves in autumn and winter, and can grow very large.

I researched this a bit and found that Nile Canyon contains: Coast Live Oak, Valley Oak, Big-leaf Maple, California Bay, Blue Elderberry, and Alders. Of these I need the Coast Live Oak for a couple reasons. The first is authenticity, the Freemont Cottonwood (misspelled in the object list) is nice and works in a pinch but is too small, and even though they are deciduous in game they act as if evergreen. The second is asset count. It is taking 3 to 4 Cottonwoods to fill the space of one Oak. In some tiles I am already over 1000 objects and its still not enough to do justice to this area. I simply need a larger tree, or a larger asset that will work well with hills.

The second tree I am looking for is a Eucalyptus. Specificly (hold on to your hats now, as we derail into botany) Eucalyptus globulus or Blue Gum. They were imported from Australia (some interesting history behind that), so I tried looking for Australian RW sites, of which there are few, but none had downloads. I have seen many a post in their forums about the lack of native assets so I may be out of luck here.

Does anyone know where I can find a Coast Live Oak and Blue Gum? Or perhaps if you are so inclined, make a set of assets? I am willing to trade with repaints (or if need be, cash).

Thanks

i think the best thing to do would be to make a copy of the cottonwood and scale it up in some sort of editor and call it a coast live oak untill a proper one can be made.

I am not sure how to do that.

Another option would be to fix the Live Oak that is available. Currently it loses it leaves, and it should not. I am also unsure how to do this (is there a LUA for foliage?)

Objects that display seasonal characteristics, such as the Live Oak losing its leaves in the winter, all have multiple texture files. Besides the default CajonPass_Liveoak01.TgPcDx, there are versions of this file with "seasoned names": CajonPass_Liveoak01_Au.TgPcDx and CajonPass_Liveoak01_Wi.TgPcDx (note the "_Au" and "_Wi" additions to the default name. The game automatically looks for these files; if they exist it uses them, if they don't it uses the default object for all seasons. Look in Kuju/RailSimulatorUS/Scenery/Vegetation/Textures and you can simply delete those "seasoned" files and your Live Oaks will keep their leaves all year round.

Tori

Here I am going to try out your suggestion when I come across Interior 'Live Oak' and 'Interior Live Oak Line Near' and they have leaves!

The color is off a bit, but they are the right size. In the future I may consider making my own trees.... but first I think I need to learn how to make ground textures.


Update: (just so you all know)
The objects that have no leaves is 'Tree Live Oak Line' and 'Tree Live Oak Mid'. I will still need to see where I got those from.

Update 2:
I removed the seasonal files and now I have missing texture trees.

Sorry... I guess these don't work that way. I don't know where there is any "pointer" to seasonal texture sheets, so I don't know why it doesn't work.

Tori

No worries. I did the next logical thing. I copied and renamed the default with _Au _Sp and _Wi.

Hopeful someone from RSC is reading this and will quickly remedy the problem for good (it is a bug after all).

Was playing with this some more last night.

One problem with my original solution with renaming the seasonal files is that it would get overwritten when you verify the files. The second problem is that if I (and I plan to) release this route then others will need to make the same modifications to their files, and then everyone would share the pain.

So why not clone the object, just like when I repaint wagons? Almost worked. There is another bug (or perhaps it was intentional) in the GEO files. The paths within them are coded back to Kuju for the textures. If I change them to be relative to the current folder, as with many other models, everything works fine. This poses a problem. By the 'gentleman's agreement of repainting', I can't redistribute GEO files. Yes, I know that G-TraX did this with Portland Terminal and suspect Ricksan had RSC's blessing since the route was payware. Perhaps the way around this is to omit the texture files, so there is still a dependably on having the original files on the system.

Any advice? Do you think if I approach RSC with the idea of making this package freely available (since the files are part of the code anyway) they would object?

Why can't you distribute the geo files... you guys do it everyday with your rolling stock repaints??? Some are even modified. I've modified default assets and redistributed. I don't think RSC is worried about it.

They really hard-coded those tree shape files?? Well, I think I did run into that once with something (I forget), but it certainly isn't the norm. Most of the .geo files point to the subfolder "Textures"... where-ever you put the geo, it points to the local Textures subfolder. Neat design. Sounds like one of the staff deviated from spec on the trees, lol.

Tori

Hiya, if you can take a clear picture of these trees, and make an alpha channel around the tree so all you would see is the tree on a texture, then I can put it as it's own asset for you (because it needs to be attached to a model).

@Tori
The only case where you could include the GEO is when the model is freeware. I know that MadMike and I (and others) do not put the GEO files in the package and include instructions on how to copy the files needed from the base model (which insures you bought the model).

I would still like to get a nod from RSC before I start playing in their sandbox. Its only polite, and who knows what other ideas may come from a conversation with them. Now I just need the proper channel... Could I simply PM RSDerek from here?

@Trainguy
I will take you up on that offer. Just so I can have a variety of Live Oaks in the list. I am not sure how soon I can run out to the canyon with my camera (sad since its 10 mins away), just too many things happening this month. Could you make me some Eucalyptus trees? I can take pictures of these as well (hard not to see them everywhere).

Hiya, you will need to process the images to look similar to this. http://album.atomic-systems.com/showPic ... hot353.jpg [Geoff Potter's Image] (Except a bit cleaner) and then I will put the image on a tree and send it back.

PapaXpress wrote:@Tori
The only case where you could include the GEO is when the model is freeware. I know that MadMike and I (and others) do not put the GEO files in the package and include instructions on how to copy the files needed from the base model (which insures you bought the model).

I would still like to get a nod from RSC before I start playing in their sandbox. Its only polite, and who knows what other ideas may come from a conversation with them. Now I just need the proper channel... Could I simply PM RSDerek from here?

@Trainguy
I will take you up on that offer. Just so I can have a variety of Live Oaks in the list. I am not sure how soon I can run out to the canyon with my camera (sad since its 10 mins away), just too many things happening this month. Could you make me some Eucalyptus trees? I can take pictures of these as well (hard not to see them everywhere).

I thought we were talking about default Kuju game content. SD40-2 repaints include the geo file, just like my repainted bridges do.

Tori

I am talking about default Kuju trees.

Maybe I am blowing this out of proportion, and just trying not to step on RSC's toes.

I don't see any difference between repainting a Kuju tree texture sheet and repainting a Kuju SD40-2 texture sheet. Or a boxcar or hopper or SanBar track or trash dumpster or.........

I've repainted several default assets; I don't think permission is required. Anyone can repaint a default loco and distribute it as long as they don't try to sell it, right?

Tori