Questions about Surfaces, decals, and brushes.

[General Tso]

I've been using surfaces, decals, and brushes to improve the appearance of my map. And a few questions have popped up.

I have found that each of the above items are available in different sizes.

Say I have an irregular area to cover up. And I could use one large decal to cover it but most of the decal is hidden. Or I could use several small decals and have less "wasted decal" because they come closer to exactly fitting the area.

Assuming I do this a large number of times over the whole map. Would one or the other of these methods be more efficient in the use of computer resources? Also would one or the other be better when it comes to performance (FPS)?

Also while I have noticed some differences between surfaces, decals, and brushes. I still don't know exactly what each one is and how they are different than each other. Could someone either explain the difference or show me where there is such an explanation.

[MessengerOfRage]

what a great question!
fetch a drink, this can take some time. :)

brushes and surfaces, the nominclture is not clear on the difference so I'm not totally sure what you think of as a brush or a surface so I will link the assets I am talking about, if I miss one of the assets you use please link me and I can have a look.

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=416082909
that's what I call a brush, at least "brush" is the term I put into find it to search for them.
move it thinks they are in the category surface and the game treats them as buildings (they count to the builing limit and open a building like info box when clicked on)... so yeah that's what I meant by nominclature is not clear. ;)
for the sake of this conversation let's call them brushes, ok?

brushes paint on empty ground like on grass, sand, oil or ore texture.
they don't paint on streets or sidewalks.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908377307
they come in different sizes from 1x1 to 12x12

pros:
if you just want some gravel or pavement somewhere they are the most convienient way to do small areas like a gap between the sidewalk and the house.
And the 2nd most convienient way to recolour large areas (best option acted up on me so brushes are my favorite)
cons:
they count towards the building limit, that's a concern if you want to grow your population up to a million, you need every building to house pops at that size.
the large ones are mouse magnets... if you have buildings sitting on a large brush it can be really hard to click the buildings as you are allways clicking the brush instead.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2864913941
surface painter... most people will think of this mod if you ask them what they use as surface brush.
was developed to replace the brushes from above.
paints on unused ground AND sidewalks but not on streets.

pros:
has more texture variants than the brushes.
places no objects, counts towards no limit just retextures the ground.
has variable brush size... up to gignormous so really convienient on large areas.

cons:
it's granularity is quite coarse for a brush like tool
i's pixels seem to be on a hex grid so no squares with nice outlines, 2 of the 4 outlines will always look splotchy so you'll want to rework the outline with brushes from above or surfaces from below.
it becomes fiddely on small areas as it's paintings have something like an outline so when you paint pavement over your sidewalk you'll have the same texture in your painting as on the sidewalk but the border between painting and original is separated by a thin green line promting you to place a brush or surface there...
an old version of that mod acted up on me... it started to forget where it was used... some of the older surface paintings on the map disappeared... got me to only use the brushes from above. the new version hopefully repaired that bug but I don't know, I am to lazy to test it out.

[MessengerOfRage]

ploppable asphalt and other surfaces:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2150667902
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=881291183
and the loading time bugfix for plaoppable asphalt
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2688768140

those are props like a table, just that they have no legs and the tabletop is incredibly thin so it becomes just the top surface.
with the right mods surfaces can be raised and moved around. (prop anarchy, move it)
with one more mod surfaces can be tilted, enlarged reshaped and even retextured (procedual objects)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908395551
together with stairs, walls and invisible paths I use surfaces on hard to decorate slopes ... like make that ugly slope a terraced plaza, or have city block on that slope be flat and use walls and stairs to separate it from the street
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2549215531
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2548182297
2nd screenshot: plz immagine buildings placed in the gaps, I hid them to show the surfaces.

to me it's whenever the terrain tools get to clumsy for my detailing needs = surfaces and walls to the rescue ;)

ploppable ashpalt surfaces come in a normal and a sunken version. if you play without mods the sunken version is street level and the normal one is sidewalk level.
with mods they become raisable and the difference is moot.


DECALS <3
decals are a bit complicated to wrap your head around completely.
to me it helps to NOT think of them as an object but as as a sticker or a stamp... it gets applied instead of existing itself. ymmv

decals have a height you can't see directly and when applied they print on every surface, network and the ground in that height.
I stacked a couple surfaces here and applied a decal arrow to them.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908409094
see how that arrow paints on every surface up to some height? that's what I meant by decals have heigt... but need a surface, a network or the ground to be applied to.
they apply to networks... pro: they paint on streets, con: they paint on walls

sadly that height isn't visible without tricks and there is no standart, it's up to the creator to define. large heights make the decal play well with uneven ground but leave visible streaks on walls they touch... small heights restrict the decal to flat surfaces but arn't as visible on the walls.

here I've put 3 decals with different heights partly under a wall (that's one trick how to see the height), see the decal doesnt wrap up the wall it takes the colour on the ground and smears a streak of that colour up the wall.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908409117

decals fade out at the upper and lower end of their height...
you can see that with the arrow and with the streaks on the walls.
this means one can make them partially transparent by raising or lowering them.... which 'I do alot, most deorative decals, dirt, stains, tire marks, road arrows are to bright or intensive to my eye, making them a bit transparent looks sooo much better.

decals are visually way more diverse than surfaces and brushes... there are theme decals which use the textures from your map theme, the will look like your surfaces and brushes.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=895061550
and then there is sooo much more, street markings, dirt, stones, tiles, leaves, cracks, oils stains...

[MessengerOfRage]

Originally posted by General Tso:

Say I have an irregular area to cover up. And I could use one large decal to cover it but most of the decal is hidden. Or I could use several small decals and have less "wasted decal" because they come closer to exactly fitting the area.

Assuming I do this a large number of times over the whole map. Would one or the other of these methods be more efficient in the use of computer resources? Also would one or the other be better when it comes to performance (FPS)?

from my experiance the above shown ugly streaks on the walls will make you want to fit your decals so they don't touch the walls to much.... so small decals win

from a FPS POV it's the ammount of objects in your view what's to worry about, so large decals win... but I don't think you will see any difference by placing decals.
trees on the other hand ... , I like me some high quality trees, ones I can zoom in onto and recocnize the species by it's leaves... oh boy it slows down and stutters when I pan out and look over the city and adjient woodlands.

[snowflitzer]

Hey Coooky, put that in a guide ;)

[General Tso]

Coookyman thank you very much for the detail explanation! I had some ideas how things work and you filled in all of the blanks.

When I mentioned brush I was talking about the exact items you linked. I just stumbled across them yesterday and think they are awesome. I'm final able to fill in some areas on my first airport with concrete. And I can do it without the problems associated with surface painter.

Speaking of surface painter. I never used the old version. But I'm using the new version and it appears to be working fine. At least as long as I stay away from things like roads and taxi ways. But that's a problem with the game system and not a problem with the mod.

And thanks for the detailed explanation of decal height. I didn't know anything about that. I was wondering why my one wall had streaks at the bottom of it. I didn't notice it when I placed the decals. So when I did see the streaks later I didn't think of the decals.

Thanks again for all of the great info. As mentioned by snowflitzer. You should consider making a guide. I'm sure a lot of people could use it.