What is "texture scrolling" on road nodes?

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Making textured median endcaps for my road is an ongoing nightmare. I know that some kind of "texture scrolling" is happening but I don't know exactly what that means and I sure don't know how to deal with it. There is an interesting thread on the official forums about this issue:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-texture-nodes.1054154/

I'm hoping that we can continue this conversation here and that some of you master modders can chime in.

 

My current problem is that I can't get the texture map to "stick" on the model. The texture shifts depending on the type of road that intersects with my road. I can get it to look ok when my road intersects with itself:

 

But when my road intersects with a Small Road, the texture shifts on to the road beneath the median mesh (which looks terrible):

 

This even happens when my road transitions to its own Elevated segment in a straight line, and this is actually the one that bugs me the most:

 

Here is a pic of my node mesh and my diffuse map:

You may notice right away that the median endcap and its texture are on opposite ends. This seems to be the way that all such roads are built. It looks weird as hell in blender but the game scrolls the texture and it lines up, kinda. I tried this concept of painting the vertices to magenta (255, 0, 255) but I'm really lost when it comes to that stuff. Which vertices should I paint? What should happen? Can anybody explain this scrolling business?

Thx in advance for any help

 

[Bad Peanut 826]

11 hours ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

Making textured median endcaps for my road is an ongoing nightmare. I know that some kind of "texture scrolling" is happening but I don't know exactly what that means and I sure don't know how to deal with it. There is an interesting thread on the official forums about this issue:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-texture-nodes.1054154/

I'm hoping that we can continue this conversation here and that some of you master modders can chime in.

 

My current problem is that I can't get the texture map to "stick" on the model. The texture shifts depending on the type of road that intersects with my road. I can get it to look ok when my road intersects with itself:

 

But when my road intersects with a Small Road, the texture shifts on to the road beneath the median mesh (which looks terrible):

 

This even happens when my road transitions to its own Elevated segment in a straight line, and this is actually the one that bugs me the most:

 

Here is a pic of my node mesh and my diffuse map:

You may notice right away that the median endcap and its texture are on opposite ends. This seems to be the way that all such roads are built. It looks weird as hell in blender but the game scrolls the texture and it lines up, kinda. I tried this concept of painting the vertices to magenta (255, 0, 255) but I'm really lost when it comes to that stuff. Which vertices should I paint? What should happen? Can anybody explain this scrolling business?

Thx in advance for any help

 

I would definitely use vertex paint.  But in the instances of getting fixed, untiled _d maps you paint the faces not the vertices. 

Not sure how blender applies then but in max you select the face and then apply the vertex color while it's selected.  The face is now 100% the vertex color. 

If you're worried about the tiling in general it only tiles from top to bottom/north to south. 

So if you set aside a full "column" of diffuse map and place your cap in line, no matter the tiling the cap will still show the concrete diffuse. 

This will result in less detail, so i should still recommend vertex colors to allow you to show curbs etc as well. 

  Edited September 5, 2018 by Bad Peanut  

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

In blender vertex paint mode, you get a brush. I tried painting the entire endcap. I think painting all of the vertices of a face is the same as painting a face? (not sure about that). 

 

Not much seemed to change in-game. Right now I'm focusing on the transition between the basic segment and the elevated segment. Why does it even need nodes there? Then there's this... in the Asset Editor the transition looks like this (you can see the mis-mapped median endcaps):

...then In-Game it looks like this:

What the heck? It looks completely different! Is one of my mods doing this?  Regardless, both look wrong 

[Bad Peanut 826]

On 05/09/2018 at 10:09 PM, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

In blender vertex paint mode, you get a brush. I tried painting the entire endcap. I think painting all of the vertices of a face is the same as painting a face? (not sure about that). 

 

Not much seemed to change in-game. Right now I'm focusing on the transition between the basic segment and the elevated segment. Why does it even need nodes there? Then there's this... in the Asset Editor the transition looks like this (you can see the mis-mapped median endcaps):

...then In-Game it looks like this:

What the heck? It looks completely different! Is one of my mods doing this?  Regardless, both look wrong 

in regards to the difference between ingame and editor, it does just sometimes happen. 
There are nodes between elevated and ground because of the possibility of an intersection being created at that point, the fact it is forced as an intersection may be because the game can't not do it as it sees them as two separate roads (even though they are technically in the same road tool, they are two separate networks)

 

as for the painting vertex on faces and not vertices: i get different results with both, and the vertice painted means it effects in a radius around that vertex (or so i've observed)

the face means it's strictly limited to that face.

for info on how to do only faces without using the brush painting techinique there is a reddit post i found here:

 

hopefully the comments make sense to you and you can apply them to your work flow.

is there a way to apply the texture map to the object inside blender so you can  visually see the mapping coordinates? that way you can make sure you're painting the correct fixed parts. (make sure your axis are the correct way around for the map too)

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

I was exporting .obj ... doh! 

 

Now I'm in business, finally. Thx for all the help and tips

[Bad Peanut 826]

7 hours ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

I was exporting .obj ... doh! 

 

Now I'm in business, finally. Thx for all the help and tips

For your nodes, I would recommend you make the _r mask for the road effect maybe around 75% white, not 100% like in the above, otherwise it's a little light compared to the segments. some of the vanilla roads even continue the worn effect of each lane a little into the intersection just so it's not so uniformly grey.
however if you do that i wouldn't extend it beyond a 1/4 of the way of the diffuse texture as it will start getting clipped but the other nodes of other roads that intersect. make sure you test how your road intersects with others so you avoid anything like that.

Super awesome job though! Love that you added the planters for the trees and I'm really looking forward to your release!

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Here is the _r. There is a bit of road wear that extends into the node, but as you mentioned, I found that any more than that makes big seams when it intersects with other roads. I don't mind the intersection being a lighter color as it's easy to decorate.

MrMaison's new Linden tree and Armesto's planters make this road quite nice. I also need a version without the trees and planters so I'm making a "less props" road as well (this segment will go directly in front of the Soviet Memorial). Think I should package them together or release them separately? 

[Bad Peanut 826]

5 hours ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

Here is the _r. There is a bit of road wear that extends into the node, but as you mentioned, I found that any more than that makes big seams when it intersects with other roads. I don't mind the intersection being a lighter color as it's easy to decorate.

MrMaison's new Linden tree and Armesto's planters make this road quite nice. I also need a version without the trees and planters so I'm making a "less props" road as well (this segment will go directly in front of the Soviet Memorial). Think I should package them together or release them separately? 

Packaging together has its own turmoils to fight through.  You'll get duplicate errors for the pillars etc which can be fixed using modtools but it's the largest pain so you may as well release separately just to give yourself an easier time. 

It also gives the user the ability to not clog their downloads.  If you package together i probably wouldn't download as id be needlessly getting the no props version which i would never use. If they were separate (maybe put them in a collection) then i could choose to download the one i want.  And people could always subscribe to both. 

[Bad Peanut 826]

One extra thing to remember - although I'm sure you're aware.
When you're using subscribed items like the trees you will need to list them as required items as they won't be packaged into the road asset. I'm not sure if this stops the entire road from loading, or if it loads just without the props.
This could be a way for you to upload just one version of your asset: you could have ALL the props you would want removed (ie lights, street furniture and trees) as subscribed items. that way if people don't subscribe they will get a blank version of your road.
It will mean you will have to test out the theory because it won't work if the road just simply fails to load.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

I'll go w 2 versions, that's much easier. I'm sure that, as you said, many people won't need the "less props" version.

I was unhappy with the cobble textures so I re-did them from scratch. I also painted all the vertices on the median, even for the segments. This was the only way I could get my seamless offsets on the texture to line up. Before painting the vertices, the road would just stretch and put seams wherever it wanted. So I'm still fighting this thing and progress is extremely slow. I'm happy with my curbs tho, those were important to me:

Now let's talk about normal maps. These cobbles and curbs would look much better with some normal mapping to give them some semblance of depth. I read that normalmaps are different on roads? Do they work? And what about the spec map? I had the idea to put a light spray of tiny white dots on the spec map to see if I could get the cobblestones to glimmer a bit (an effect of these cut granite stones IRL). Think it's possible? Any tips for the spec and normal maps on roads?

[Bad Peanut 826]

3 hours ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

I'll go w 2 versions, that's much easier. I'm sure that, as you said, many people won't need the "less props" version.

I was unhappy with the cobble textures so I re-did them from scratch. I also painted all the vertices on the median, even for the segments. This was the only way I could get my seamless offsets on the texture to line up. Before painting the vertices, the road would just stretch and put seams wherever it wanted. So I'm still fighting this thing and progress is extremely slow. I'm happy with my curbs tho, those were important to me:

Now let's talk about normal maps. These cobbles and curbs would look much better with some normal mapping to give them some semblance of depth. I read that normalmaps are different on roads? Do they work? And what about the spec map? I had the idea to put a light spray of tiny white dots on the spec map to see if I could get the cobblestones to glimmer a bit (an effect of these cut granite stones IRL). Think it's possible? Any tips for the spec and normal maps on roads?

Make sure you test how the median looks with different lengths of segment because it'll now stretch to match instead of being uniform. I'm not too sure what you mean by seems but if you have a repetitive texture in a column from top to bottom of the diffuse map and the median mesh is aligned to that column then you wouldn't have a problem. 

 

In regards to normal maps I've never put them on roads (don't judge) but i thought the wiki said they work exactly like the usual way we do normal maps for building assets. I would stick to that first to see if it works. 

 

Because i don't use normal maps i have a 0% white spec (all black) but maybe because you're going to go for normal maps then you might benefit from the spec. But i would be very sparing maybe only 1% or 2% however that is a guess and i know 100% that specular don't work the same as building assets as 100% just makes the road look like metal/wet and not the usual glass effect. So you may be able to increase it. 

Keep going and keep posting progress. You're going great

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Quick question about elevations. I have only made custom  "basic" and "elevated" models for this road. The "bridge" model uses the standard one from the Large Road vanilla collection. Should I delete it with modtools save space?

 

I'm trying normals and spec today, will post when I have some results. I'm coming to grips with textures looking very different when they face straight up. It's almost like I desaturated the textures too much! If anyone wants to pontificate on this peculiarity, pls feel free  

 

I think I may also want to add a bus stop segment. Any tips on that part? I don't really get how it works atm. There's a flag that switches in the bus-stop model, or what? How do you set it up?

[Bad Peanut 826]

1 hour ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

Quick question about elevations. I have only made custom  "basic" and "elevated" models for this road. The "bridge" model uses the standard one from the Large Road vanilla collection. Should I delete it with modtools save space?

 

I'm trying normals and spec today, will post when I have some results. I'm coming to grips with textures looking very different when they face straight up. It's almost like I desaturated the textures too much! If anyone wants to pontificate on this peculiarity, pls feel free  

 

I think I may also want to add a bus stop segment. Any tips on that part? I don't really get how it works atm. There's a flag that switches in the bus-stop model, or what? How do you set it up?

Elevations: just reuse your same model from elevated for bridge because if you delete bridge it means the user can't actually page up the road higher than 3x above ground.  Basically as you page up the first 3 levels of 12m use the elevated model and the next 3 use bridge. 

Not too sure on the normals and specs, you know i'm too lazy

Bus segment:

You need 2 new ground models -

1 is for when a stop is placed only on one side of the road.  It should basically create a bus pull in by squishing the pavement part of your model to allow a 3m lane for the buses to pull into. 

The second mesh is for when there are bus stops placed on both sides of the road at the same time. 

Check out the vanilla 4 lane medium road and copy the flags used for both the two meshes. 

Good luck!

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Note to all: normalmaps do NOTHING on the basic shader. You have to use the "bridge" shader. And ofc remember it's the green channel that gets reversed for these, not red like for buildings.

Pretty happy with this:

It dirties up the cobble section a bit which was needed for the right feel. Here are the maps if people are curious or if it can be helpful:

After I do this for the node and the elevated segment, I'll start thinking about bus stops. I definitely want bus stops! It never fricken' ends 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

How do you even see the bus segment in the editor?

[Bad Peanut 826]

On 12/09/2018 at 6:35 AM, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

How do you even see the bus segment in the editor?

I delete the normal segment mesh so my road turns into a void.  Then while selecting one of the bus meshes i removed the flag requirements. Just make sure you remember which flags are for which mesh.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Yeah these flags are doing my head in. Is there a description of each flag somewhere? I understand that I can control the bus-stops with "StopLeft" and "StopRight" and I'm trying to figure out how to control the props for segments that have bus-stops right now. The trees, street lamps, and planters will all have to move back a couple of meters to make room for the bus-stop lanes.  I just have to figure out which flags go where. It sucks that you can't place an actual bus stop in the road editor... that would make everything much easier.

 

Random question, what the hell are the flags StopRight2 and StopLeft2 ??   nvm this is for Sightseeing busses 

[Bad Peanut 826]

6 hours ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

Yeah these flags are doing my head in. Is there a description of each flag somewhere? I understand that I can control the bus-stops with "StopLeft" and "StopRight" and I'm trying to figure out how to control the props for segments that have bus-stops right now. The trees, street lamps, and planters will all have to move back a couple of meters to make room for the bus-stop lanes.  I just have to figure out which flags go where. It sucks that you can't place an actual bus stop in the road editor... that would make everything much easier.

 

Random question, what the hell are the flags StopRight2 and StopLeft2 ??   nvm this is for Sightseeing busses 

Actually stop2 was initially for tram stops.  So I'm not sure what happens now if you have a stop2 in a tram road

 

For you props you are going to have 2 sets.  1 set is visible when there is no flags.  So these will be in the normal positions. You will need to set forbidden flags so they disappear when a stop is placed. 

The other set will be in position that is set back from the bus stop.  Put the same flags on that the bus shelter has on normal roads and they will only appear when a stop is placed. 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

After some fiddling, I got the hang of the flags. It was pretty straightforward.

 

Do the LOD textures scroll?  Can I stop this by painting the whole LOD mesh verts or what? It's only doing this on the bus segment LOD, which was made the same exact way as all of my other LODs. Or maybe I only notice the effect on the bus segment because it is not vertically consistent.

Main:

 

LOD:

 

[Bad Peanut 826]

18 minutes ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

After some fiddling, I got the hang of the flags. It was pretty straightforward.

 

Do the LOD textures scroll?  Can I stop this by painting the whole LOD mesh verts or what? It's only doing this on the bus segment LOD, which was made the same exact way as all of my other LODs. Or maybe I only notice the effect on the bus segment because it is not vertically consistent.

Main:

 

LOD:

 

I haven't had this trouble before but i use the mesh to define the bus stop even in the lod. That way it can't tile 

I would try painting the vertex colors to see if it helps.  It will probably be fine because it's not like you're close enough to notice. 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Painting the LOD verts worked, thank goodness. This whole process has been so incredibly tedious 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

So... I'm wondering what is going on here. I made a height-map for the cobble, so that the faces of the stones would be white and the spaces between the stones would be black:

Then I used normalmap online to generate the map, reversing the Green channel as suggested by @Ronyx69 Here it is after some cleaning:

Just looking at it now, it looks backwards, but that's because of reversing the green channel .... I think. But you really can't judge anything until you move light across it.

 

Now here's the problem. In-game at sundown, it looks correct (actually the more I look at this, the median curbs look incorrect):

but at sunrise, it looks backwards (what should look like divots between the stones looks like bumps above the stones instead):

  wtf? Any ideas?

 

It seems like the sidewalks are correct, but the medians are getting inverted so they look incorrect. Is this because of the scrolling, and because I painted the verts of the medians magenta? 

[Ronyx69 2,413]

Actually my new statement clearly was that no inversion is required ever.

But I did a test and this broken game is triggering me again.

So the weird stretched parts are not magenta, and the normal-ish parts are.

Looks like the parts which use the automatic tiling need a green inversion, but the magenta parts which don't tile don't need any inverisons.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Sonava... well, that would line up with my experience. I did the green inversion and the sidewalks always look correct (my sidewalks get tiled and do not have painted verts). But the cobble median (painted verts) always looks $%&^!ed up.

[Bad Peanut 826]

I'm living for this (you know i cbf with road normals) 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Sure enough....

 

Here is the result of my half-green-channel-inverted (non-painted faces) and half non-inverted (painted faces) normal map. For the first time, the shadows and highlights on the curbs and sidewalks are insynch. GL explaining this on your wiki, @Ronyx69 

the half and half normalmap:

[Bad Peanut 826]

1 hour ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

Sure enough....

 

Here is the result of my half-green-channel-inverted (non-painted faces) and half non-inverted (painted faces) normal map. For the first time, the shadows and highlights on the curbs and sidewalks are insynch. GL explaining this on your wiki, @Ronyx69 

the half and half normalmap:

I am SOOO TURNED ON FOR THIS ROAD,

seriously looks sooooooo good, you're gonna have so many requests to do more now hahahaha

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Is there a setting somewhere that I missed that controls where these noobs wait for the busses? They're trying to get themselves killed.

[Bad Peanut 826]

2 hours ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

Is there a setting somewhere that I missed that controls where these noobs wait for the busses? They're trying to get themselves killed.

yes! it's the pedestrian lane width, so you will have to change the width and position of the pedestrian lanes so they are no bigger than the smallest width of pavement you get when a bus stop is created.

otherwise you will get people walking over the bus stop lane (even if they're not waiting at the bus stop) - the drawback in reducing the width is that people will only use half of your pathway.

as a side note - the stop offset (i think in the car lane that is closest to the stop side) needs to be altered by 3m (more actually because that's not including you bike lane width) for the bus to pull off the lane into the stopping area. MAYBE if you do this the waiting pedestrians will automatically move over by the same amount but i don't think so. although can't remember properly.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Ugh. Thx for the info. I don't like that I have to break aspects of the regular segment to get the bus segment to work correctly. Not sure how I'm gonna handle this one.