The Art of RailWorks

RW Ace tool

2010-06-17T09:24:00.007+01:00

New Version now for download on our website under art plugins:

http://www.railsimulator.com/support.php

Fixed mipping problems on terrain textures. (thank you Ben!)

cheers

Derek

WANG: PART 7

2010-06-16T23:20:00.005+01:00

The cool thing about the terrain system is you can specify a different texture per season.
Also you don't have to make seasonal variations of each texture, you can just reference what you hvae in your list.

So, in my little test route using the same methods in earlier posts I made a Snow, Mud and meadow texture sets. I then referenced them on the season slots for mix map 1.
So, where every the grass is sprayed, in spring there will be a meadow, Autumn there will be mud and in winter there will be snow.

A good example of this in RWs is where we have a ploughed field in Spring, Cornfield in Summer, mud in Autumn with snow in winter. This really does help give your routes a different feel when driving in the different seasons. (Of course if you have a procedural grass texture you must take into account the changes and make season variations of the grass. (look out for further posts))

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

Regards

Derek

WANG: PART 6

2010-06-15T21:58:00.013+01:00

Ok, we are nearly there so hang on in there.

Load up RailWorks and Start the game.
Click on Routes, then New Routes.
Choose a template, for now just pick Default, (but the choice is yours) Click Create and give your Route a name, I called mine Bishop. Click ok and an empty route will load up with the default textures.

Close RailWorks.

Navigate to your Route folder. (something like: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\railworks\Content\Routes )

Organise the folder by date, your new route will be at the top, I rename my route folders so I know which one is which. I added BISH in the second set of digits.

Inside that folder is a RouteProperties.xml

We are going to edit this file using Notepadd++ and reference our new terrain xml.

PLease note the correct way to do this is to set up your own Route template that is discussed on the WIKI

Ok, now that I am breaking all my own rules, please Note... Take care editing any xml in Notepadd++

1. Open the RouteProperties.xml in a text editor such as Notepad++
2. Browse to the following. I have highlighted the important bits in RED:

(Click on image below for higher res image)

3. Change the parts highlighted in red to match the location (including product and provider) of the exported texturing file you have created.
4. Save the RouteProperties.xml then run RailWorks and load the route. Your new terrain textures should now be available.
5. If your new texturing file is in a provider/product which is not preloaded, you should tick it in the object set filters for that route so that it is preloaded next time.

So this is where the fun started.

With Ben's RW Ace tool it worked great but I had an issue with the last mip. I have emailed Ben to see if he can improve the situation. Will keep users posted.

So I reverted back to the trusty ToAce by Paul Guasden, only to find out the problems of using the 64 bit system. I'm sure there is a work-a-round for this but at midnight and no tech help I just left it alone.

Time to boot up the trusty xp machine to convert the tga files.

And here is the result. Not the smooth ending I wanted but got there thanks to Ben and Paul's tools.

Note that no spraying/painting was used on the below image, all of that was because of the values we put in the xml.

By going through this process I certainly have felt users pain if they do not have photoshop.

All noted for sure.

So thats the end of Wang, next up procedural grass.

regards

Derek

WANG: PART 5

2010-06-15T20:57:00.007+01:00

Before we start the next chapter it is wise to make a further 3 sets of textures.

1 - Grass. This will be your mid ground cover and the texture you see when you first load up the route. (assuming you are just above sea level, these values can be changed and will be explained)
2 - Sand. This I am using for the ground below sea level.
3 - Dry grass. This I am using for my upper ground.
4 - Small stones. (made in part 2) This we are using as our Rock gradient.

Adam explained it when we made Phorum a few months back, for reference Here is his post.

So, lets make our new terrain xml.

In your source folder, located somewhere like this (depending on where you have the game saved)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\railworks\Source
Make a Provider/Product folder set up so it looks like this:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\railworks\Source\RSderek\Bishop\Environment\Terrain

RSderek the provider and Bishop is the poduct.
Within that Bishop Folder make an Environment folder then a Terrain Folder.

Within that Terrain folder you can make other folders to seperate out your various textures so that they are easy to find, Grass, Rock, sand, urban, etc etc.

To begin with I made a folder called Core. Here I copied the 4 main textures needed to set up the route. (You don't need to set up 4, you can ref the same texture for all sections but a bit pointless as you would not see anything... :) )

Now the fun begins. Load up RWs and start the Blueprint editor.

Navigate to your Terrain folder and right click the folder, then select new Blueprint.

Scroll down the list to Terrain Texture blueprint, select it then click ok.
Rename the xml, I named mine Terrainset.

Below is an example of my basic parameters, set your something like it, looking back to Adams post for more refference.

For now leave the Procedural flora texture ID blank. (We (you) have not made that yet, this will be covered in a 'Wang epilog' post)

Click Save

Ok, Now to add your Textures to the xml.
Click on the little plus symbol at the top next to the work Mix tex.
This expands the texture area. Right click the texture in the core folder and select copy file name.

In the base texture name slot press Cntrl V to paste the string.
IMPORTANT: remember to remove the _A (it is not needed here)
Fill in the rest of the details like the image below.

Click Save.

Click on the little > icon, this will open up another texture slot, it will need to be filled in as the first. (Make sure you match the correct texture to the ID number given in the low/mid/high texture index.)

Note also that this is the order that the textures will appear in your texture list in game.

When all done click save, then export.

Next in Part 6 Referencing your terrain xml to in your new route.

WANG: PART 4

2010-06-14T23:04:00.006+01:00

Just a mini update this morning,

To make an Ace file without photoshop or ACDsee you will need Ben Laws excellent RWAce Tool located on our Website: http://www.railsimulator.com/en/support. under the Railworks art plugins heading.

Once downloaded, follow the install instructions and run the RWAceTool.exe

Click on the single image conversion first, browse for your textures and pick the first _A and click open. Then click view.
Here you can look at RGB texture or the alpha. Close the image down and click back.

Click on the Multiple image conversion.
Click the Add button on the right, then select your 8 textures, then open.
Click the Next button, then the Start button. The process will take a second. Once done click the finish button.
And there you have it your set of Ace files.

Next in Part 5, How to set up your new terrain xml.
Then, in the final Part (6) we will cover how to refference your new terrain xml in your route.

d

WANG: PART 3

2010-06-13T17:20:00.016+01:00

Open up Stone_Source01.tga that you saved from PART 2.
We now need to select 8 different areas of this image and make 8 different textures. You can pick any areas you think are suitable, Below is how I picked.

In the toolbox on the left click on the retangle selection tool and draw a box on your image.
We need that image to be 256/256 exactly so type in 256 in the selection box in the lower part of the toolbox. This will need to be done 8 times from the source image.
For each one click Edit/Copy from the top tool bar, then click on File/new on top tool bar.
Type in 256 in the Width and height boxes and click ok.
This opens up a new image. (with it's own top tool bar) Click on the new top tool bar and click Edit/Paste.

Click on File/Save as and type in Sm_Stones01_A Click on the flatten layers and click save.
Do this for all 8 textures, name each one as described in Part 1.

Sm_Stones01_A
Sm_Stones01_B
Sm_Stones01_C
Sm_Stones01_D
Sm_Stones01_E
Sm_Stones01_F
Sm_Stones01_G
Sm_Stones01_H

Once all of that is done close all the images down and open up the REd, Green, Blue and Yellow textures.
Also open up Sm_Stones01_A.

As seen in this image, we need red at the top, green at the bottom, blue on the left and yellow on the right.

Select the free select tool (1) and on the red.tga file left click and draw a triangle around the top section (2)

Click Edit/Copy from the top tool bar, then on the Sm_Stone01_A texture click Edit Paste as/New Layer. Align your new layer to the top edge. (3)

Make sure Snap is on so that your layer is snapped to the edge correctly. (View/Snap to Canvas Edges.)

Now click on the Red Eraser tool, select a circle fuzzy brush about size 15 and dab around edges of new selection so that you blend it in with the image below. You can toggle the layer on and off by clicking on the eye icon in the layers window (see image below)

Follow the above steps for the yellow/Green and blue layers, each time make sure you are happy with the result, you can always delete a layer and redo if not happy.

Once complete you now need to merge layers (you can save as a layered image but I tend not to bother on images that only take a few minutes ot make)

To merge the layers, click on Layer/Merge down on the top tool bar, do this for all layers.

Ok, almost there.

Now we need to make a alpha channel for the texture, (I am still unhappy about this process in Gimp and sure there is a better way)

On Sm_Stone_A top tool bar click on Edit/Copy, then Edit paste as/New layer, then click on Layer/Mask/Add Layer Mask on top tool bar. In the new pop up window click on Grayscale copy of layer, then click Add.

Over in the Layers window click off the background image
and leave just your new layer with a grayscale version which will get saved as your alpha channel.

Click on File/Save as keep the same name, confirm you will be replacing it and that you are saving a layered iamge as a TGA, Click on Merge layers and then click ok (lots to confirm! :) )

Repeat that process for each of your 8 textures, making sure you match the edges to the image seen here you will have a set of textures ready to be converted into Ace files, Well done!

First time round the process takes awhile, however after a few atempts it should take about 15 minutes per texture set.

Next in Part 4: Coverting to Ace using Ben Laws Ace tool and setting up Terrain XML.

regards
derek

WANG: PART 2

2010-06-12T10:51:00.012+01:00

Now that we have the basics we need a suitable image to make the textures from.
When I go out and gather my reference pictures I usually take a number of photos of the same area so that I can get variation, however one high res image will usually do.

I have gathered a number of suitable textures already and they are freely available from my flickr site:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46897232@N04/

I will be using the small stone floor texture. (see link below)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46897232@N04/4571961761/sizes/o/

Save this image in a folder on your local drive.
I often make a workspace folder for each terrain texture so that the source files and finished ACE files are kept together till I am finished and they are ready to go in game.

For this I will not be using photoshop but will be using Gimp which is free to download, a quick internet search will find it.

Load up Gimp and open the photo you just saved. Our textures need to be 256/256 pixels in size and at the current resolution the image is not right.

Scale photo

In the tool bar click on Image and then scale image, in the new window reduce image size to 1000 pixels in width and 667 pixels in height, then click the scale button.

Your iamge will shrink on screen too, however you can use the magnifying glass to zoom in which is in the tools window on the left. As you can seen the image is not as crisp as it once was.

Sharpen Image

In the top tool bar click on Filter/Enhance/Sharpen

Move the slider till it is between 30 or 40 and click ok.

Safe image as a TGA file

On the top tool bar click File/Save as and type in Stone_Source01.tga

Another small window pops up about BLE compression, just click the save button without changing any settings.

creating your red,blue,green and yellow source textures

In the toolbox on the left click on the retangle selection tool and draw a box on your image.

We need that image to be 256/256 exactly so type in 256 in the selection box in the lower part of the toolbox.

Now move your selection box around the texture till you have an area that is suitable.

Please note that the aim is to have a texture that is detailed but lacks any large features that would show up once tiled.

Once you have found a suitable area click on Edit/Copy from the top tool bar, then click on File/new on top tool bar.
Type in 256 in the Width and height boxes and click ok.
This opens up a new image. (with it's own top tool bar) Click on the new top tool bar and click Edit/Paste.

Click on File/Save as and type in Red.tga Click on the flatten layers and click save.

Making the texture Tile

We now have an image that needs to tile to work.
Click on Layer/Transform/Offset from the top tool bar, type in 128 in the x and y boxes then click offset.

Now you have a texture that has the edges crossing in the middle of the texure. The good news is your texure will now tile along it's edges. We just need to remove the straight edges from the middle.

Clone brush

The clone brush is a wonderful tool that allows you to select an area of an image and paint it other another area.

Click on the clone tool (see image), select a fuzzy brush and make sure your brush is not to big or small, (15 pixels is about right)

Hold Ctrl down and select an area on your texture. This layers a marker where you will start your clone. Then paint over an area where you can see the square edge.

After you have painted a few details out, hold Ctrl down again and select another area of your texure and paint another straigh edge out. This keeps the area looking natural and random.
Do this till you can not see any straight lines, Click Save.

You now have one of your 4 textures, do the same for Green/yellow and blue textures.
For each one pick a new 256/256 area from your source texture.

While it may feel a little long winded, once you have got upto speed each image should only take a minute or so to make.

Next in PART 3: creating the final 8 textures.

WANG: PART 1

2010-06-11T13:10:00.013+01:00

Creating your own terrain texture set is the best way to make your route stand out from the crowd. It also allows you to order and control how you group your textures.

What is Wang?

Wang tiles are sets of textures that fit together to non-periodically tile across the terrain,
creating expanses of non repeating texture and avoiding the 'carpet' effect.

More info can be obtained by a very quick internet search. I have also seen applications that make the wang textures, however I have to say that I never seemed to get the results I wanted.
Making them by hand can be time consuming but like all things the more you make the easier it gets.
So, lets look at the basics before we get into the details.

Railworks uses 8 wang tiles to create a terrain texture and like everything in RWs they need to be named correctly.
For Example:

Grass01_A
Grass01_B
Grass01_C
Grass01_D
Grass01_E
Grass01_F
Grass01_G
Grass01_H

These textures need to be 32 bit which means they need an alpha channel. The Alpha channel is used for the blending between different texture sets.

How do we get the textures to tile in a set?

The 8 textures in a set get tiled in a certain way. This can be best explained by using a colour diagram.

(see image below)

So, using this method I would make 4 key tileable 256/256 textures.

I name them; Red, Blue, Yellow and Green. This helps me keep track of what I am doing.

From these 4 textures (which each need to be tileable with itself) you can make the 8 you need.

So, to make texture A you would copy the top from red texture and place it at the top, right side from the yellow, blue from the left and green from the bottom. (see image below)

Texture_A

Texture_B

Texture_C

Next up in Part 2, picking the right image to get your textures from and getting the scale correct for ingame. (you don't want pebbles the size of footballs).

Shaders and kuju materials - TrainBumpSpec.fx

2010-03-01T21:30:00.003Z

TrainBumpSpec.fx is the material we use when we want something to have a brushed metal appearance. A good example would be the material used on the areas of a wheel that is in contact with the rails.

Consider this simple wheel.

We use two different materials for the wheel. One material will be dull (something like a basic TexDiff material) and used over most of the wheel. The second material is our "TrainBumpSpec.fx" and will be used on the contact areas. This will be the shiny metal material.

See the two selections below.

TrainBumpSpec.fx is a two-slot shader. Slot 1 references the main RGB texture "wheel1", and slot 2 references the normal map "generic_nm". The important thing to remember is to set the 'phong' size (size of the specular highlight) and the specular power. The 'phong' size is set by specifying "32" in the first UV argument in slot 1

Slot 1:

Slot 2:

The specular power is set at 4.0. See below.

Using these values, the wheel should look something like this.

Example wheel texture

Shaders and kuju materials - AddATex

2010-01-29T10:19:00.000Z

AddATex is the material we use for additive glows. Example uses include glows around bulbs, glows around headlights and glows on surfaces (from streetlights).

As this effect is additive, these effects are visible both day or night, but are more effective and more visible at night. For our example, we'll consider a streetlight.

Here you can see the streetlight asset with a night time node. This node will simply switch on (become visible) at night time.

If you examine the 3DSMax wireframe view, you can see that there are two glows contained in this asset, one upper glow centred around the bulb and one lower glow on the floor itself. Both of these glows use the AddATex material but with slightly differing properties.

The bulb glow needs to always face the camera, so that it gives the effect of a simple lens flare. This will need to have the 'VIEW FACING' flag ticked in the material.

The floor glow needs to be static and remain in position, and therefore should use the default 'NOT VIEWER FACING' flag.

Our two AddATex materials are detailed below. The material on the left is for the bulb glow and the material on the right is for the floor glow. Notice the viewer facing flags in the materials.

Also note that as these materials use alpha, the Z-Buffer mode is set to 'TEST ONLY' in both. This ensures the materials render correctly.

Example textures :

Shaders and kuju materials - SubtractATexDiff

2010-01-28T07:09:00.000Z

SubtrackATexDiff is the material we use for soft shadows under rolling stock.

This object should be exported in the same 3DSmax file as the asset you want it under. (However you could also set it up as child object also)

First of all I made a box roughly the size of the wagon or asset you want the shadow to sit under.

I deleted all the polygons except the top one and then reset x form/and position and transform on pivot. I then placed this at 0/0/0 in the world. Remember that 0 height in Max is the top of the rails in RailWorks for rolling stock.

So with that in mind I dropped the shadow object down a few centimetres so that the shadow would be above the sleepers but below the rail height.

I have my object a name 1_0300_softshade, so after 300M the shadow would not be drawn.

I selected the Kuju Material SubtractATexDiff, set the alpha to Test Only (1) then selected my texture.

Below is an example of a 24Bit shadow texture. (no alpha channel is needed)

The darker the grey the less it shadows, black is invisible and white is solid black shadow (I know it seems wrong)

Export your 3DSMax scene and view the effects in the Asset Editor.

Shaders and kuju materials - Train_Light_map _with_Diffuse. Fx

2010-01-16T19:04:00.000Z

This kuju material is the most common one used in RailWorks.
However, it is a little more complicated than most as it needs the user to create a second mapping channel and a light map texture.
To help discuss this material I will be using a simple wooden shed object to help illustrate the methods used.

Above is an image of a texdiff material, the object looks flat and unlit.

Above is a Train Light Map With Diffuse, you can see the shadows make a huge difference.

Before I start, I just want to point out that there is no right or wrong way to go about getting the best results, this is just the way I do it.
Before I make a 3D model I tend to make most of the texture first. The reason I do this is that I constrain myself to what is important. Laying the ground rules before you start helps focus to what’s important.
While making the texture you also want to give some consideration to winter textures, if a material is used on a roof and you want to do a winter version with snow on then you best not use that section of the texture for a wall surface.

Save this texture in the correct folder structure something like this:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\railworks\Source\RSderek\WearValleyRailway\Scenery\Misc\Textures The Max/IGS and XML files will all be saved in the Misc folder, and all textures saved in the texture folder.

Ok, once you have made your object, select Polygon option in the modify panel and then select all the faces in the object and assign ID1 (1)
Also make sure all the faces in your object have a smoothing group. This can be done by pressing auto smooth in the same panel (2)

Save max.

Open up the Material Editor, this can be done by pressing ‘M’ or selecting the icon from the top tools bar.
In the Editor, click the Standard button, the select Kuju Material.
In the Shader Configuration section click the black triangle next to the TexDiff option. This will open out the list of Kuju Materials. Move the slider down and select ‘TrainLightMapWithDiffuse.fx’

In Slot 1 click ‘None’ , then select bitmap at the top of the list in the new window, click ok and then find your texture in the explorer window, once selected the windows will be closed and you will be back in the material editor.

Now click on show standard map in viewport button (the little isometric blue and white chequered square)

You have your model, material and texture, now you need to map the texture to the object.

There are many ways to unwrap, and I use different options for different , For this simple object I am going to flatten unwrap then move the mapping coordinates around till I have each face mapped as I want it. (Indepth mapping of objects will be covered in a different post, however there are many tutorials for doing this on the net)
Select the polygon selection button in the modifier list, select all the polygons in your object then click the little black triangle next to the words Modifier list, this shows all the modifiers you can then apply to your object. Scroll down and select Unwrap UVW, then click 'edit' in this new panel.

This brings up a new mapping window.

It will be a mass of green and white lines depending on how you have modelled your object.

But be cool, we will make order from this chaos.
In the bottom tool bar select Face-Sub object mode',

Draw a selection box around all your messy lines in the window.( you may have to zoom out in the window to select them all)
In the top tool bar in the mapping window click the ‘Mapping’ button then select the flatten mapping. Another smaller window opens up. Leave the Face angle threshold at 45, however change the spacing to 0.002. (this packs the coordinates closer together) Then click OK.

You now have all your polygons mapped out in a square.
This is great but now you want to reuse sections of your texture a number of times, I moved my coordinates around to layer up the mapping on certain sections of my model. (Indepth mapping of objects will be covered in a different post, however there are many tutorials for doing this on the net)
This is how my final mapping coordinates look against my texture:

Close the mapping window and then right click on the Unwrap UVW (It should be highlighted in yellow) and select ‘collapse all’ You can leave the UVW in the stack if you wish but it serves no real purpose in this tutorial, remember to collapse the stack before export.
Save max.
OK, Diffuse side done now for the Light map.
Once again select the polygon selection button in the modifier list, click the little black triangle next to the words Modifier list and scroll down to select Unwrap UVW.
(Depending on your version of max the process is slightly different. I am using Max2009)

Change the map channel to 2. (1) then click Edit (2) This brings up a new mapping window as before.
In the bottom tool bar select Face-Sub object mode, draw a selection box around all your messy lines in the window.( you may have to zoom out in the window to select them all)

In the top tool bar in the mapping window click the ‘Mapping’ button then select the flatten mapping. Another smaller window opens up. Leave the Face angle threshold at 45, however change the spacing to 0.002. (This packs the coordinates closer together) Then click OK. You will now have all your faces tightly mapped into a square. You can fine tune these mapping coordinates if you wish but I seldom do, but I will if I do not feel I am getting the best out of my space. Before doing this I suggest lots of mapping practise.

Close the mapping window and then right click on the Unwrap UVW (It should be highlighted in yellow) and select ‘collapse all’

OK, we now have an object with 2 mapping channels awaiting the second texture.

Save max.

We now need a light map, this is how we make it.

As you have just saved the max file we now need to make the lighting setup, Save the same current scene under a different name, something like ‘Shed_light.max’

Select your object, in this case I select my shed and I assign a default material (1)
Select your object then assign the material (2)
Untick the yellow lock from diffuse and ambient (3)
Darken the Ambient colour (4)
All other values leave alone.
(These values are not hard rules and I suggest experimenting with different values to see the effects.)

In the top view create a box 100Mx100Mx-20M make sure this box is centred under your object. This we will use as our ground plan so that the light will not shine up through the floor. Assign the same default texture to this box. (also make sure the box is flush to the base of your object)

In the modifier panel click on the light icon (1), select Standard (2) and select sky light (3)
Then click on the screen, this will create a light. In the right hand view port make sure the light is above the floor plane and your object. (It is not important to be exact about placing your light except to make sure it is not inside an object)

Select the light and in the modifier panel make sure the skylight is white (click the colour swatch and slide the value to white)
Press F10 to open up the Render Setup window. In the advanced Lighting set up select Light Tracer.
These values can all be changed and experimented with. To begin with use the setting from the image below.

At this point you can set up a camera and render as usual to have a peek at what the object looks like, if you are not happy with the results change the values in the Advanced set up.
Select your object to render.
Once happy, Press 0 (Zero) this will bring up the Render to texture window.

Click the select path where you want to save the texture (1)
Scroll down and set 3 in your padding (2) this bleeds around the coordinates to reduce mip issues
Mapping Channel set to 2 (3)
Scroll down and click the ‘Add’ button Select Complete map (4)
Scroll down to select your map size, for this small shed I will choose 256/256, however 128/128 would be fine, (for larger objects choose a larger map size). (5)
Scroll down and click Render and then OK. (6)
It may take a little while depending on the number of polys in your object.

Once done, find your texture on your desk top and save and convert it into a .ace in the same folder as your diffuse texture. (Choose a suitable name, I normally save the file as the same as the diffuse but with and _SM at the end, it helps me keep track)
Save this max file then reopen your original max file.

Open up the Material Editor and in the kuju material select slot 2, click ‘None’ , then select bitmap at the top of the list in the new window, click ok and then find your shadow map texture in the explorer window, once selected the windows will be closed and you will be back in the material editor.
Close the Material Editor, make sure your object is named correctly and export as an IGS as usual.

This is a fairly long tutorial and I may have missed a step or two, please leave comments or requests for me to change.

Thanks

Shaders and kuju materials - WaterCubemap.fx

2009-11-03T10:24:00.001Z

In Railworks there are a number of ways of creating water assets in your route.

(1) Rivers - Here a river loft is recommended. This asset would use the WaterCubeMap.fx

(2) Lakes and Seas - The in-game (editor mode) water decal is recommended as it is the most efficient way to create a large expanse of water.

(3) Scenery - Sometimes a very small localised water effect is required on a scenery asset that is irregular in shape. In this case, the WaterScenery.fx shader can be used.

Using the WaterScenery.fx shader, the author can create a scenery asset and assign the WaterScenery.fx to any polygon. Therefore the shape of the water surface is under the control of the author. This asset can be exported as usual via a the IGS format and be referenced in a 'Scenery Blueprint'.

Example Use
Water troughs, swimming pools, circular ponds, open water towers etc.
Points of Interest
This is a vertex shader (meaning the positions of the vertices of the surface are physically moved) is therefore expensive to render. It is therefore recommended to keep its use down to a minimum.

Notice that the surface of the water shown below is no longer flat as seen in the other water shaders.

As can be seen below, the shader is a triple pass shader with 3 texture slots. All texture slots MUST contain a reference to a texture. In slot 1, we specify the normal map texture, along with the five UV arguments and specular value. In both slots 2 and 3 we specify the texture for the water surface.

The following UV arguments should be setup for slot 1 of the shader.

UV argument 1 : Specular component (values between 0 and 64)
UV argument 2 : 'Wobble' factor (values between 0 and 1)
UV argument 3 : Movement speed (0.02 is a good value)
UV argument 4 : Oscillation height (0.02 is a good value)
UV argument 5 : Oscillation scale (6 is a good value)

Below are example textures showing the alpha channels where applicable.

Shaders and kuju materials - TrainGlass.fx

2009-11-03T08:27:00.001Z

The TrainGlass.fx shader in RailWorks should be used whenever a translucent glass material is required. e.g. Windows on rolling stock.

Using the glass shader the author can control the following properties:
(a)Texture - Whats on the glass, colour, scratches etc
(b)Translucency - How see-through the glass is
(c)Specular - The size of the 'shiny' highlight phong
(d)Environment Map - The intensity of the environment map (the faked reflection) in both day and night lighting conditions.

Example Use:
Windows on Rolling Stock
Point of Interest:
Only a single texture needs to be created by the author, even though there are two texture slots in this material. Both texture slots MUST contain a texture reference. The same texture can be referenced (or pointed to) in both texture slots. This second texture slot simply exists to allow the game code to carry out a second environment pass (fake reflection map) in the game.

Here we have the TrainGlass.fx shader applied to 3 assets (A,B and C), all using different parameters.

TrainGlass.fx shader viewed in the daytime.

TrainGlass.fx shader viewed in the nighttime.

Here we have the 3 materials used for the assets A, B and C. All use the same shader (TrainGlass.fx) but use different parameters. The parameters are highlighted below.

The important parameters are the UV arguments (for Slot 1 only), and the Specular Power.

UV argument 1 : This specifies the 'tightness' of the phong highlight. Keep this value somewhere between 0-64 with 64 being the 'tightest'.

UV argument 2 : This specifies the intensity of the reflection (day-time)

UV argument 3 : This specifies the intensity of the reflection (night-time).

Specular Power : This specifies how brightness (or intensity) of the phong highlight. Keep this between 0-8 with 8 being brightest.

Example texture (used for the examples above) showing RGB and intensity of alpha channel.

Shaders and kuju materials - Part 2 - Texdiff

2009-10-24T12:54:00.000+01:00

Good old tex diff, the default shader you should use the first time you try to display anything in game.

Why? Because it needs no extra work in setting up, it's the quickest shader to use to find out if something is wrong with your model or texture.

Description:
This shader is lit by diffuse lighting.
Example use:
Small clutter objects.

Point of Interest:

This is a 2 sided material. however the polygons only get lit correctly from one side in game.

Also, be careful when putting 2 surfaces close together when using this material, as the material is 2 sided and even though poly normals are facing away from each other you will get z fighting which will cause the surfaces to flicker as they fight to be displayed.

There are many legacy buttons and values in all of the Kuju shaders many of them do not function in RWs, even the team have not explored all of the options!

1 - Mip LOD Bias.

This is used to push the mipping further out or bring it in.

Normally we leave this at 0.

However if you want to push the mipping out on textures (For dials in cabs,logos/text on the side of trains etc) a minus value needs to be used. Thi means the texture stays sharper for longer the further you pull away. -2 is what the team use for mnost dials in cabs.

2 - Transparency.

NONE or TRANS, speaks for itself. If your texture is 24 bit then leave this on NONE as default.

Below is an example texture and it's alpha channel.

Texture - Diffuse texture

Texture - Alpha channel

Texdiff - without transparency

Texdiff - with transparency

If you have an alpha channel in your texture and it is saved as 32 bit and you want the alpha to be used then Change this to TRANS.

(Black is transparent and white is solid in the alpha channel)

3 - Lighting Material

These settings don't get used much by the team but you can change the Diffuse Colour, Ambient Colour and Emissive Colour.

This is useful if you make a greyscale texture and colourise it by one of these methods.

For Example, create 1 car texture and create many coloured versions by this method. A great way to keep texture count down.

Specular and Specular power are not used in this material.

Shaders and kuju materials - Part 1

2009-10-20T16:48:00.000+01:00

To get assets into RailWorks they must have a kuju material assigned, without them you will never get anything to appear in RailWorks.

To get the materials to show up in 3DS max you need the kuju plugins, these are available from the RailSimulator website:

http://www.railsimulator.com/en/support

(I don't use Canvas, but anyone willing to do a canvas version of posts please contact me)

Follow the read me inside the downloadable zip to install the plugins for 3dsMax and Photoshop.

Once the plugins are installed start Max.

Enter the material editor and click on the Standard button (1)

In the list click on the Kuju Material (2) This then put the kuju list of materials in place of the standard materials.

Click on the arrow next to the default RWs material TexDiff (3)

The full list of kuju materials show.

RailWorks/Simulator only uses a few of these materials.

End of Part 1

Get organised

2009-09-20T21:07:00.000+01:00

Before we talk about art and creating we need to talk about structure.
Being creative is great, but being organised is key to managing your work.

Folder structure

For Provider and product information please see the RWs wiki;
RWs_Wiki
Setup a folder structure in source that makes sense to you and others who may need to activate it in the set object filter.
My provider name is always RSderek, within the RSderek folder I have different folders, these are my products.
One of my products is; WearValleyRailway, I have others called Giveaway, Class02 and SW1500.
There are others but they are top secret!

Naming

Use sensible names.
I have come across many downloads from UKTS and TS.com that use the word Addon as the product.
How is anyone supposed to know what that is when they are ticking it?
Also, keep projects seperate, no need to bloat yours or users routes with unwanted addons/assets.

Lastly, keep all files in each folder separate, don’t share any files between products.

These are the basics, but I still see users not setting them up correctly.
Get organised!

Derek

Where art thou?

2009-09-16T22:22:00.000+01:00

In this blog I'll be talking about how RS.com go about creating art assets for RailWorks.

There will be a Q and A, tutorials, hints and tips along with posts from guest creators.

If you are a budding content creator for RailWorks then this is the place for you.

Before we get going there is already a wealth of information on the RWs Wiki;

http://www.railsimdownloads.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Section+4+Art+Guidelines

http://www.railsimdownloads.com/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Section+9+Tutorials

regards
Derek