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"Finally som use of thedrawing tool"

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oudrun (27 posts)
Dec-07-01, 07:01 AM (EST) "Finally som use of thedrawing tool" LAST EDITED ON Dec-07-01 AT 07:54 AM (EST)LAST EDITED ON Dec-07-01 AT 07:02 AM (EST)LAST EDITED ON Dec-07-01 AT 07:02 AM (EST)Last night I finally figured out how to use the drawing tools at least to something useful.This way I got my long wanted waterfalls into the route.The picture I've included is just a "quick and dirty" I did it in about 30 mins. Still some improvements to be done in the graphic and in the terrain, but the point is I used the drawing tool as and aid to help me lay-out the waterfall across several texture tiles. RuO Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
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Subject Author Message Date ID RE: Finally som use of thedrawing t... DKlemm Dec-07-01 1 RE: Finally som use of thedrawing t... oudrun Dec-07-01 2 RE: Finally som use of thedrawing t... sniper297 Dec-07-01 3 RE: Finally som use of thedrawing t... kxs156 Dec-07-01 4 RE: Finally som use of thedrawing t... oudrun Dec-07-01 5

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DKlemm (788 posts)
Dec-07-01, 08:42 AM (EST) 1. "RE: Finally som use of thedrawing tool" Are you going to tell us the secret! I for one have wondered what that tool was used for. Could never seem to do anything with it.David Klemm
Illinois Central Route
Illinois and St Louis Divisions
Ver 0.6 uploaded
Working on Decatur IL
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oudrun (27 posts)
Dec-07-01, 09:02 AM (EST) 2. "RE: Finally som use of thedrawing tool" First of all, I'm not trying to say that I've revealed all its secrets, but at least I figured out something that helped me out.I've been looking for a way to make up a texture so it fits into my route like the example with the waterfall. The problem has been that it is quite hard to get these texture with proper alignment when the tiles are oriented in all sort of directions.What I did was this:I made a bmp of the "in-box" texture (in fact I've got all of them into bmp format the hard way using the texture window and PSP capture) then i converted the texture i wanted to use (in this case OEforest.bmp) into an OEforest.ace and left it uncompressed. If you leave the ace file uncommpressed you are actually able to draw on the tile with the pencil. So I then went to my terrain and draw a line where I wanted the waterfalls,following the terrain. Copied the modified ace into PSP, and made up the waterfall on the new bmp. Saved it, converted it and added it in the route editor. And continued to do the same with the other tiles until all of the waterfalls was nicly placed in the terrain.It is a feature of saving the modified ace, but that's of no use for me as long as I don't have a "decompiler" for the ace file. Maybe someone else know something of that??
RuO Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
sniper297 (1005 posts)
Dec-07-01, 10:13 AM (EST) 3. "RE: Finally som use of thedrawing tool" Try TGAtool2, available at http://fly.to/mwgfx . Converts ace to bmp or tga, send main image or alpha channel to image editor of your choice, reload after editing, export to ace, compressed or uncompressed. I also discovered that the pencil tool would draw a thin black pencil line on an uncompressed terrain texture, but since it was only a black pencil line I couldn't for the life of me see what it was useful for . Now I know. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
kxs156 (12 posts)
Dec-07-01, 10:37 AM (EST) 4. "RE: Finally som use of thedrawing tool" LAST EDITED ON Dec-07-01 AT 10:41 AM (EST)Excellent discovery oudrun! I have been wonderering how to model the many waterfalls and such on the Flåm Railway, like in the picture below here where the tracks cross the famous Kjosfossen (and the trains actually stop for photos!)
The only downside is ofcourse you end up with many custom texture files (bigger route file... ). Wonder how resource hungry that would be.... if it's not too bad you could actually overlay some sort of satellite data on your terrain for the ultimate realism
Flåm Railway Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
oudrun (27 posts)
Dec-07-01, 05:10 PM (EST) 5. "RE: Finally som use of thedrawing tool" Great, tnks for your tip, that will save me a lot of time....RuO Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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