Art File Creation Tutorial in Paint Shop Pro

In this tutorial you will learn how to create the art files shown in driver.

Note. To complete this tutorial you will need to have available a suitable route for the creation of the screenshots.

You can download the sample 512 and Icon maps with textures here and the track* here.

The Paint Shop Pro templates are available here.

*The track was created by CloakedGhost275 by my request it is a modified

version of his Rail Ties and is used with his permission.

1. Screenshots

The first item we need is the screenshots. If you downloaded the above maps then for the 512 images select and place your rolling stock item on the track on the Consist 512 images map and run it. Switch to the tracking cameras take a screenshot with the "Print Screen" key.

Do the same for the Icons

2. Paint Shop Editing

Once you have the screenshots you will need to edit them in Paint Shop The screenshots are located in "C:\Program Files\Auran\Trainz\ScreenShots" with the "C:\Program Files\" being the location you installed Trainz to. Also open the Paint Shop templates or create two new files one 512 x 512 and one at 128 x 64. Once you have them opened or created we can begin editing the screenshots. Select the 512 screenshot and then select the "Magic Wand" tool and change the "Tolerance" and "Feather" to 0 and click on the black area on one side of the track in the screenshot. Hold down the shift key and click on the other side of the track. If all of the black area is not selected then continue holding down the shift key and selecting more black area. Once you have finished then we need to invert the selection so that only the locomotive and the tracks are selected. There are two ways to do this, the easiest way is to press Control-Shift-I and the other way is to go to the "Selectoins" menu and select "Invert" either way the selection is inverted and ready to be copied to the template. Press Control-C or select "Edit", "Copy" and then paste the selection onto the 512 template by pressing Control-L or selecting "Edit", "Paste", "Paste as new layer" from the menu.

Figure 1 Magic wand tool

Figure 2 Magic wand tool settings

Figure 3 Loco and track correctly selected

3. Resizing and relocating

The first thing you will notice after pasting is that the image is too large, to change the size of the image select "Resize" from the "Image" menu. In the Width and Height boxes select and type a setting from the table below.

	Icon	512
Resolution	Width and Height	Width and Height
1600 x 1200	40	60
1024 x 768	65	90
800 x 600	80	120
640 x 480

NOTE: These dimensions are a guide only.

After you have resized the image you then need to relocate it to an appropriate location. If you are using my Paint Shop Pro templates then for the 512 image position the lower track so that it covers the white line and is about a tracks width from the left edge. For the icon place the lowest pixels on the line. Once you have completed this select "Merge", "Merge all (Flatten)" from the layers menu to merge the layer with the back ground.

Figure 4 Transform type in boxes

4. Alpha channel

After you are satisfied with the image size and location select the "Magic Wand" tool again and select the black areas again. Press Control-Alternate-I to invert the selection. Select "Save to Alpha Channel..." from the "Selections" menu. In the message box that appears make sure the preview window shows the locomotive and track white and the surrounding area black. Select the New Channel and click OK. Rename the New Channel to Alpha 1. You have now created and saved an alpha channel which should look like figure 9 a white image of the locomotive and tracks with a black surrounding area. To see the original RGB image select the Channels drop down box and click on the "RGB" entry

Figure 5 Save to alpha menu selection

Figure 6 Save to alpha dialog box

Figure 7 Channel name message box

Figure 8 Alpha channel

5. Save location

The correct location to save the files to is called the tutorial_art sub-folder with tutorial the name of your rolling stock item. Save the 512 image as tutorial_art_512.tga and the icon image as tutorial_art_icon.tga. When saving both files ensure that the radio button next to 24bits is checked and the most important point is that the Compression is set to "Uncompressed" this is true not only for the consist image but for any tga file used in Trainz.

Figure 9 Save options

8. Text files

Now that you have saved the files to the correct location you will now need to create the text files that allow Trainz to find the image and its alpha channel. Create two text files called tutorial_art_512.texture.txt and tutorial_art_icon.texture.txt. Open the text files and enter the following information.

512	Icon
Primary=tutorial_art_512.tga Tile=st Hint=Dynamic Alpha=tutorial_art_512.tga	Primary=tutorial_art_icon.tga Tile=st Hint=Dynamic Alpha=tutorial_art_icon.tga

Once again replace the word tutorial with the name of you mesh and folder structure.

February 18, 2007

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