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"Water, textures, animation"

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highball5 (81 posts)
Feb-12-02, 02:25 AM (EST) "Water, textures, animation" I've seen a few posts about changing the water textures and colors, but couldn't find any about the animation aspect of the water. I didn't even know it was animated until I tried a highly scientific experiment. I cruised down to the Platte river and took a couple photos of the water. Did the jpg/tga/ace voodoo to make the watertop.ace texture file. Looked lousy at first, but with a little modification it got better...sort of. To make the texture look semi-realistic I added a little oil paint texture and instead of using a big chunk of the photo I pasted in smaller sections to make the watertop.ace. Fired up the sim, hopped in the cab and throttled up headed for the river bridge. As I approached things started getting jerky..checked out the frame rate...down to 6, then down to 4. Looked at the river and low and behold you could see it flowing. An optical illusion sort of..look at it one way it was flowing east to west, look again and it was flowing west to east. In any event, since it wasn't using a solid color, it had a page flipping effect with the texture being used. I kind of like the color/texture, but the animation sort of make you want to slide the window open and toss lunch out on the tracks. I fiddled a bit with the various .env files, changing some of the water parameters, but regardless of season or time, the animation effect keeps happening. Anybody know if there's a way to stop the animation effect on the water? Thanks!
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Subject Author Message Date ID RE: Water, textures, animation roycru Feb-12-02 1 RE: Water, textures, animation highball5 Feb-12-02 2

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roycru (37 posts)
Feb-12-02, 08:15 AM (EST) 1. "RE: Water, textures, animation" Pure speculation but consider:
I know from Route Building Guide that water is in layers. I also understand that objects in MSTS can be animated. If I'm not mistaken BMPs can be animated. I've seen these pictures in Chinese restraurants of animated water. They too are layers. The upper layers are transparent, like TGA layeres in a texture. The lower layer (opaque like a BMP) rotates as I recall and that give the effect of the water moving. It could be the lowest, BMP, layer is animated. Just a few frames would be needed to give the effect. Also consider that the change of perspective viewing a layered object from a moving object might have the same effect. If you stop the train does the water keep moving? About a week ago someone wanted to make a waterfall. Using layered textures with an animated layer might work. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
highball5 (81 posts)
Feb-12-02, 01:54 PM (EST) 2. "RE: Water, textures, animation" I've tried changing the 3 water level ace files, but I don't see a great change when changing mid and bottom. Mostly just a change in shading. Below are 3 screen shots from within the route editor. I took the default watertop.ace and added some red numbers to it, dug a trench, and turned on the water. Looks like that watertop texture is shifted 3 times.


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