How to handle textures for Trainz

The following tutorial will show you how to handle simple textures for later use in 3dsmax. If you are new to Photoshop, you should check out this first:




Photoshop Transform tools - presentation

First of all when you intend to make an object for Trainz, you should have photos taken from each side of it. In case you don’t have you can make them in Photoshop but the result will not be so realistic. So, here a have some kind of box that you can find almost everywhere in Romania along the trackside. I’ve made some photos (front, back and side) and now they need handling. Here are the photos:

After I loaded all the photos, I’ve made a new file File>New in which I will put all the photos. The new file is 512x512 pixels. The photos must be cut, getting rid of the parts we don’t need. After that, just apply a black background.

 

The only thing left to do is to save the image. You should save it TGA on 24bit.

 

This is the simplest mode in handling textures for Trainz. The key is to use as less texture file as you can, this improves gameplay, and object loading.