T1:FW – T1nk-R Wooden Fence Pack

for Trainz Railroad Simulator 2019+

This page introduces the T1:FW – T1nk-R Wooden Fence Pack for Trainz Railroad Simulator 2019+. The pack contains a large set of wooden fences on masonry support/basement for the game in 100 base variations, all with gates at the beginning, with gates at the end of the fence spline and without gates, totaling up to 288 fence splines and 200 individual objects.

The fences mostly fit a European, especially a Central and Eastern European setting, however you are encouraged to take a look at them, since some may look familiar at other locations of the world, too.

About

Benefits

• Freeware stuff
• Season support with snow-covered winter sets
• Multiple levels of detail (LOD) so that the farther an object is on your screen, the less detailed version is drawn to save CPU, GPU and memory
• PBR materials render objects quite realistic; no more unintentional plain surfaces
• All fence splines and objects share the same 2 materials for non-snowy look and 2 other materials for the snowy look, yielding in superb performance
• No transparent textures to improve performance further
• Splines bring two texture variations of fences, chosen randomly, to give a less monotonic look

All this means using all the multiple variations of the fences on a route comes at no more cost than using just one: since materials are shared, using a different variation does not require a new draw call. You can have your setting as colorful as you want. And you can create miles of fences: if a fence gets far from the camera, it will be replaced with a simpler version, and it will completely be hidden at distances where you wouldn’t see it anyway. If a lot of fences appear on a screen, a large portion of the fences will likely be farther in the view, and will therefore use much less computing resources.

How to Get It

Fire up your Trainz, open Content Manager, and simply search for “T1: FW” (without the quotes). Alternatively, you can visit Auran’s Download Station and look for the same, but I wouldn’t understand why you’d do that. 🙂

Support

Limited to my time and possibilities, I’m happy to help you to get the most out of these assets. I also appreciate your remarks and bug reports, and will try to fix bugs, however no promises are given. So far, please go to Trainz Discussion Forum, and open a thread in an appropriate forum, which is, I guess, Content Creation Support. Please try to mention me in your post, or drop me a private message after you submitted your post, since I’m not actively monitoring the forums and might never see your post otherwise. To send a private message, visit my profile in Auran’s forums. Also on my profile page, you’ll find an announcement thread for this pack, where I’ll keep you informed of updates. Feel free to subscribe for that thread.

Legal Stuff

Let’s get thru it fast. TLDR: it’s free, the only thing you cannot do is sell directly or make it look as if it were created by you.

The pack and each of its items are accompanied by the following copyright notice:

Copyright (C) T1nker (GusJ). Feel free to use this asset in your freeware or payware Trainz routes. To express your honor, you are welcome to give credit to me, however I understand it’s impossible and non-sense to mention dozens of authors in a document accompanying a route. You can create derivative works, including repainting the asset. There are only three limitations: (1) publish/share your derivative work under a different KUID; (2) don’t change the KUID of this asset (if you use it in intact form), (3) and don’t sell this asset. You can use it in commercial routes, unless the purpose of the route is to incorporate this asset solely for selling it. Support is available via Trainz forum. Visit my profile at https://forums.auran.com/trainz/member.php?1103598-gusztavj and either look for my threads or if you cannot find a suitable one, drop me a line. Please note, support is provided by courtesy and is subject to my free time and limited knowledge. 🙂

Details

Due to the huge number of items in the pack I decided to give you a description on how to use the items and how to quickly find what you need.

First and foremost, the pack consists of splines and objects, both detailed below. Splines are complete fences with a length of your choice, while objects are single, individual elements for fences.

The rule of thumb is to use the splines unless you have a reason to use an object (simply because this is the simplest way to build). Such a reason can be when you want to create a fence with an open gate. Since splines with gates all show the gates closed (as gates are usually closed), to make a fence with an open gate, you can place two splines of the same fence, and place the left and right wing of the gate, rotated to a direction of your choice, in between the two splines.

All objects have normal and snowy versions. The snowy versions are displayed above the snowline and in Winter, from 1 December to 29 February. To set a different period for Winter, please visit the section about customization.

Fence Splines

Fences come in 96 variations, with

• 8 different support (or basement) types
• 3 different wood patterns, and
• 4 colors

You can find each type of support with each color and pattern of wood in the pack. For each such a variation, you’ll find 3 more combinations: a fence with no gates, a fence with a gate at the beginning of the spline and a fence with a gate at the end of the spline.

Support types include: (1) rock, (2) brick, (3) lime, (4) decorated concrete, (5) gravel concrete, (6) white sandstone, (7) rusty brown sandstone, (8) yellow sandstone:

Wood patterns (railing) include: (1) spikes, (2) planks, (3) slabs:

Colors include: (1) brown, (2) green, (3) red, (4) white:

Having separate start and end gates makes sense because fences has a front and a back side, and there are suspension  bars on the back side, so they have a direction. Fences without gates are called G0 fences, fences with gates at the start are called GS fences, and those with a gate at the end are called GE fences, and look like on the image below.

Dimensions

A block of the fence is roughly 2 m (1.96 m + 0.15 m wide pylon at the end), while the double-wing gate and the entrance is altogether about 5 m (5.09 m), that is, the shortest meaningful length of a fence with gate is 7 meters.

• It is not recommended to use the spline for a shorter fence, or it will look too distorted.
• If you need a shorter block, go and take a look at the individual objects, which feature a half-width block. In addition, instead of the gate built into the spline, you can create your own one-wing or double-wing gate and entry, using the individual objects.

Naming conventions

Since Trainz strongly limits how much of an asset name is visible, I’ve used codes as prefixes to human-readable asset names to make them easily identifiable and searchable. Spline names follow the pattern of

T1:FW:<SUPPORT>:<RAILING>:<COLOR>+<GATE>

where:

• T1:FW: is constant. You can use T1:FW in the Content Search Filter window to filter for T1nker FW series assets.
• <SUPPORT> denotes the type of masonry the support/basement is made of, and is one of the followings:
  • BRK: Brick
  • CDC: Decorated concrete
  • CGR: Gravel concrete
  • LME: Lime (white brick, if you wish)
  • RCK: Rock (natural stone)
  • RDS: Rusty brown (or red) sandstone
  • WHS: White sandstone
  • YLS: Yellow sandstone
• <RAILING> is the type of railing (wood pattern):
  • SP: Spikes (9 narrow planks)
  • PL: Planks (3 wide planks)
  • SL: Slabs (one piece)
• <COLOR> is the wood’s color:
  • BR: Brown
  • GR: Green
  • RD: Red
  • WH: White
• <GATE> tells you if the spline has a gate or not
  • G0: No gate
  • GS: Gate at the start of the fence
  • GE: Gate at the end of the fence

Examples:

• T1:FW:RDS+SL+RD+GE consists of a red sandstone support, a slab pattern in red, and is assembled with a gate at the end. Hence its name, Red slabs on rusty brown sandstone support (wooden fence) with gate at the end
• T1:FW:CDC+PL+RD+G0 consists of a decorated concrete support, a plank pattern in red, with no gates. It’s full name in Trainz is Red planks on decorated concrete support (wooden fence) with no gate

Individual Objects

There are a total of 4 types of separate objects added to the pack which you can use to amend your splines, sets, or just use a small part of a fence construct: blocks, pylons, entrances and gates.

The objects can be found on the Objects pane of Surveyor. The name of all objects begins with T1:FW:, and the rest depends on its type.

Just a tip for the day: rolling is enabled for all objects so you can lay them down to make a building site or some debris.

Full-width and Half-Width Blocks

You can find a full-width and a 1 m wide half-width version of each fence block, with the basement, the railing (wood) and the suspension, but without the pylon attached. You can use the full-width version as a simpler way than laying down a spline when you only need one block of fence. The half-width version can be used when you need a small appendage. Note that the half-width versions are not just cut-in-half versions of the full-width ones, but carefully elaborated pieces. 🙂

You have (8 supports) x (3 railings) x (4 colors) = 96 full-width and 96 half-width blocks, using the following naming scheme:

T1:FW:<SUPPORT>+<RAILING>+<COLOR>+O

where T1:FW: is constant <SUPPORT>, <RAILING> and <COLOR> are the same as for splines, and +O is just a kind of marker that this is an object, not a spline. You can use this as a search term in Content Manager to filter for objects.

Example: T1:FW:BRK+PL+GR+O is a block with brick support, planks pattern in green, and it’s a separate object. The name continues either with the term “Full-width” or “Half-width“.

Pylons

Pylons in all the 8 different masonry types. A typical use of separate pylons is to place them around individual gates and entrances.

Pylon names follow the pattern of T1:FW:<SUPPORT>+O. As they don’t have rails, you don’t need separate variations for different railings and colors.

Entrances (for Personal Entry)

Entrances for all the 3 wood patterns x 4 colors, with left and right latch. A typical use of entrances is when you don’t want to have a double gate, or want your set to have an open entrance. In the latter case, simply place your entrance, the pylon if you need one, and rotate the entrance object so that is looks open.

Entrance names follow the pattern of T1:FW:<RAILING>+<COLOR>+<LATCH>+O, where <LATCH> is EL for entrances with left-side latch and ER for entrances with right-side latch.

Gate Wings (for Car and Freight Entry)

As with entrances, you can use gate wings for open gates, or if you don’t want to have entrances, or if you want to have just a one-wing gate. The double gates found in splines are divided into two wings:

• Left wings of double gates for all the 3 wood patterns x 4 colors
• Right wings of double gates for all the 3 wood patterns x 4 colors

As wings come without a pylon, there’s no need for separate objects for the various support types. Just place the pylon you need next to the proper side of the wing.

Gate names follow the pattern T1:FW:<RAILING>+<COLOR>+<WING>+O, where <WING> is GL for the left wing and GR for the right wing.

Customization and Troubleshooting

Rule #1: You are free to customize the pack, however you should not distribute any customized or otherwise manipulated version of the pack and its objects under the same KUID or under a KUID that contains my user ID to avoid interference with my updates and to avoid breaking features. So, the first part of the KUID needs to be replaced. If you customize stuff for yourself only, and leave the KUID intact, updated versions of my objects may take precedence over your versions.

What if items of this great pack are not listed in my game?

I’m not sure how it works exactly, but it may happen that the assets of the pack are not listed for you if your route has a region other than Hungary. If you can’t see items of this pack, try to edit the config.txt file of one, and change the category-region tag from HU to the value of your route.

Let me know if you run into this problem and if this solution worked for you so that I can update the pack to work everywhere.

How can I change when Winter comes? How to hide snow on mountains?

Seasons are defined in the config.txt files of the objects. To edit when Winter begins and starts, or to not show the snowy version above the snow line, look for the following part of the config.txt file of the asset in question:

season-selector
{ 
  above-snow-line 1
  branch-true 
  {
    output-season 1
  }
  branch-false
  {
    season-range 0.500,0.749
    branch-true 
    { 
      output-season 1 
    }
    branch-false 
    { 
      output-season 0 
    }
  }
}

Your customization options:

• To change when Winter is, change the season-range tag’s values as described in Trainz Online Wiki
• To not display snowy version above the snow line, change output-season‘s value to 0 in branch-true under above-snow-line.

Don’t forget to submit your edits.

How to refine LOD transitions?

When configuring LODs, I tried to make a good balance between look and performance. Depending on your scenes, however, it may occur that the transition from one LOD level to another is noticeable and you feel it degrades the visual appearance of your route. In such cases, you can try to change the distances when transitions occur. To do so, you need to edit the config.txt files of the objects.

• For individual objects, just look for the mesh-table-lod-transition-distances tag, and update the values to your choices. The first value is the distance when the LOD0 version transitions to LOD1, and the last is when the object disappears completely. In a reasonably dense urban setting, you’ll not miss fences disappearing at 1500 m, but you can increase this value if you want.
• For spline objects, a little more coordination is needed. To learn the actual distances, search for lod-distance tags.
  • Such tags exist in the track, the optional endcap-prev and in the optional endcap-next container. If you change a value in one, make sure to change them accordingly in the others, or the end pylons or the gates will have a different transition distance than the blocks, and it may yield in weird look.
  • Also note that some lod-distance tags are duplicated. Middle fence blocks may contain a lod-random-bias tag. If the lod distance you want to change is within the high-detail or low-detail container of a lod-random-bias tag, then it will have two instances, and you should change both.
  • So if you want to change the LOD0 to LOD1 transition from 20 meters to 30 meters, make sure to find all instances of log-distance with a value of 20 in the config.txt file, and change them all to 30.

Any chance to use it in older Trainz versions?

Sorry mate, the pack contains components, such as PBR materials and Trainzmesh meshes that are not supported in older Trainz versions. Porting them back would, anyway, yield in fences that already exist. I believe it’s the new features that makes them worth considering for use.

Known Issues

Nothing is perfect. My packs may also contain bugs and imperfection. Even I’m aware of some:

• BUG-350000-001: From some angles, you may find a very narrow gap between pylons and basements. I’ve spent hours on hiding that, but with no success yet. I don’t even know if it’s a rendering or a modeling bug. The objects are completely sticked together, that’s sure. Sorry for that.
• BUG-350000-002: From some angles, and with some specific Sun positions, the rocks of the support may look kind of inside-out, but I’m not sure. Furthermore, it probably affects only one face of the objects. I’ve also spent hours with fixing that, played hours with texture parameters, but this is the best I could come up with so far. If you have an idea how to fix this, be so kind as letting me know.
• BUG-350000-003: Brick masonry is displayed instead of the proper one for individual block objects with rock, lime and red sandstone masonry, and decorated concrete masonry is displayed instead of the proper one for individual block objects with gravel concrete, white sandstone and yellow sandstone.

History

v0 @ 2021-04-09

This is the first released version.

v1 @ 2021-04-30

• BUG-350000-002: Direct sunlight whites out some masonry. Fixed a bug for which the yellow sandstone and the lime basement almost looked white in direct sunlight. This has been fixed.
• BUG-350000-003: Wrong masonry on individual blocks. Fixed a bug for which brick masonry were displayed instead of the proper one for individual block objects with rock, lime and red sandstone masonry, and decorated concrete masonry were displayed instead of the proper one for individual block objects with gravel concrete, white sandstone and yellow sandstone.