WVRR1964 wrote:That blog post is another example of confusing the basic newbie...I was told not to use greyscale alphas, but what's used in that tutorial? A greyscale alpha.
Several of the examples in Derek's blog are for items that are few and spread out a bit, such as a lamp post, which would have one or two alpha-related parts, but are of little consequence to scene overhead as there are likely to be relatively few on a single tile. Utility pole insulators, such as you have shown on your model, however, have 20 or so alpha parts (if modeled individually), and just a dozen or so poles will drive performance into the ground (you have to take into account the hundreds of other objects in the scene). That's why you would use full alpha with a "Trans" flag applied. This "Trans" flag is an option (switch) for forcing a punch-through alpha on an object, provided the texture has an alpha channel greater than RGB 128, 128, 128 of any depth (16, 24, etc.).
The mentioning of error bias and a Trans flag is not unique to TS2014 and is present in other games - both in procedure and nomenclature. Error bias controls the mip values of a texture against a model. A value of '0' is default, and uses the default game engine to control the texture's mip values (when the texture begin to divide by 2 and blur). Knocking it down to -1 places more control in the modeler's hands, allowing mip degradation to be delayed and in most cases improve the looks of the object (anything beyond -1 tends to make pixels sparkle).
I agree that what's needed is better documentation, tutorials and real-world examples. With the number of different modeling packages available though, one technique in one package might not dot directly translate to another. A modeler might need to be fully experienced in their chosen package, lest things get bogged down in the details. Questions regarding one technique invariably lead to a dozen more that sometimes have nothing to do with the original question, and usually the person trying to lend assistance may not know what experience the OP might have. It would be great if we had the level of documentation that Auran provided for users of Trainz, but we don't and will have to muddle through the best we can. However, Derek's blog is better interpreted to be a conceptual guide and to expand creativity, rather than a de facto means of getting objects into TS2014.
Your chosen package, Blender, is better suited to modeling in TS2014, IMHO, as its interface and procedures follow industry standards and nomenclature. Canvas does not, which I believe is the main reason why some have so much trouble getting things into the game, and forget about SketchUp. Some folks have a good deal of experience with Canvas though, and in the early days of Rail Simulator/Railworks there was marginal support. However, it's now up to the community to work their way through Canvas and TS2014, as RSC model exclusively in 3DS Max and aren't likely to step back and support another language. While 3DC was fine in its day and filled a need, games in general and modeling packages such as Max and Blender continue to evolve, while Canvas, on the other hand, does not.)
Stick with it. With your experience you're miles ahead of many, but you'll need to have patience in getting through these early steps.
