Custom Colour Textures

[ModelerMJ]

In the section of the TranzDEM manual entitled "Dialogue: Export to Trainz: Basic Files, DEM and Ground Textures" you briefly mention the "Custom Colour Textures" check box, but I'm afraid the minimalistic explanation there is not enough for me to understand how to use this facility. I get the concept of color / kuid pairs, but I see no description of what rgb values mean what, or even what the legal rgb combinations are. I've looked in my TransDEM installation for an example file that I could learn from, but cannot find one.

Could you please explain this facility in more detail?

Thanks in advance for your assistance.
Regards,
-Mike

P.S. - In the description of this dialog, where you discuss the 5m grid option (which I am using in TS12) I think you have a typo, as the descriptions for the settings 'none' and 'all' both say "All baseboards will be 10 m grid", when in fact (I think) the 'all' setting should say "All baseboards will be 5 m grid".

[geophil]

but I'm afraid the minimalistic explanation there is not enough for me to understand how to use this facility. I get the concept of color / kuid pairs, but I see no description of what rgb values mean what, or even what the legal rgb combinations are.

That's the standard 24bit RGB colour model. RGB colour is a triple of byte (8 bit) values with a range of 0 - 255 (decimal) each in the order Red, Green, Blue. 0,0,0 is black; 255,255,255 is white; 255,0,0 is bright red; 0,255,0 is bright green and 0,0,255 is bright blue. Everything else yields a blended colour. You will usually use a external colour editor, as included with image editors, to determine the RGB values.

For each mapped pixel from the original image, TransDEM will search for the closest colour in the custom texture table and assign the given KUID to this particular baseboard ground vertex.

P.S. - In the description of this dialog, where you discuss the 5m grid option (which I am using in TS12) I think you have a typo, as the descriptions for the settings 'none' and 'all' both say "All baseboards will be 10 m grid", when in fact (I think) the 'all' setting should say "All baseboards will be 5 m grid".

Yes, indeed. Thank you.

[ModelerMJ]

Thanks for the quick answer, I think I understand now. The part about 'searching for the closest match' actually explains it pretty well - I wasn't sure if there were only a few select RGB values that aligned with the textures that come with TransDEM, or if they could be any value, which apparently they can.

I do know how RGB works, but I appreciate your explanation; and I do have a color spy program that I can use from the Windows desktop; so I should be able to pretty easily determine what textures I want to substitute for the various colors in my terrain image now.

Is it possible to get a list of the RGB/KUID associations that are built into TransDEM for the standard textures? Some of them are working very well as-is, so I will want to re-use those in my custom file. Or is the custom file 'in addition to' the standard textures (meaning I don't have to duplicate them in the file)?

Regards,
-Mike

[ModelerMJ]

geophil,

I believe I have successfully figured this out. Here's a link to a post in the Trainz forums showing what I was able to achieve.

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=79146

Thanks again for your assistance. TransDEM continues to amaze me with the features you have already thought of.

Regards,
-Mike