WIP CN SD40-2W DLC Reskin Projects

[Kali]

Alpha channels only deal with how reflective the surface is; in the new engine a lighter alpha channel won't make the colour lighter like it used to ( much, anyway - there is a little effect of so much reflection making things seem lighter, I noticed, however it's not like the old additive alpha method which can turn dark colours white if you're not careful ). There is some wierd issue that sometimes DXT compression will put dots all over blocks of mono colour, if you suffer from that then adding noise is meant to cure it - personally I've not run across it yet.

The bogies/trucks are part of the main mesh unfortunately - the bogie blueprint is just for the sake of making it turn and making sure the wheels work and so on. If you want to use parts of the new textures you'll just have to match them to the same part of the old one, I'm afraid.

I'll go and check the physics out at some point & see if it needs some tweaking. Seems a suitable path for getting any rework out.

[roinuj]

There is some wierd issue that sometimes DXT compression will put dots all over blocks of mono colour, if you suffer from that then adding noise is meant to cure it - personally I've not run across it yet.

I'll give a try to see if using a solid colour alpha may help to smooth out the texture. It may not end up being the alpha that cause what I see to be some artifacts but its a simple enough experiment to see if will help. I'll keep the noise trick in mind as well.

The bogies/trucks are part of the main mesh unfortunately - the bogie blueprint is just for the sake of making it turn and making sure the wheels work and so on. If you want to use parts of the new textures you'll just have to match them to the same part of the old one, I'm afraid.

I'll see if I can make something work.

[Kali]

Made a few tweaks to the default paint:

SD40w1.jpg

The truck texture is absolutely horrid, ugh; tempted to make a new one from scratch but a bit more effort than I'm willing to spend right now.

Anyway tidied a few things up in the blueprints:

* Added bogie and coupling audio
* Used the brake control from the new SD40
* Used the brake settings from the new SD40 also, but with much slower apply/release
* Sanitized the dynamic brakes
* Reduced maxpower to what it ought to be ( new, but well... ). If that seems to be too low, then there's probably something wrong elsewhere.

Attached in case you want to use 'em in your paint, Don. There's other things I usually bung in like smoke, but I'm trying to sort a new scripted engine out for smoke/temp controlled stuff/audio modulation atm.

[roinuj]

@Kali

Thanks! I'll add it to my paints and give it a try.

[roinuj]

I think I've done as much as I can with CN9295. Time to move on to another version for my package.

I tried messing with the alpha channel but it didn't make much difference. I also reworked my weathering on the boggies/trucks. I think it looks better then the brown dust mess I had earlier.



Onto something new.

For fun I think I might add the DESX version that Chessie8638 posted. One question for the painters, the texture for the cab only has one side so any painted on details will be reversed on one side. Any tricks to get the DESX label added?

[krellnut]

That looks awesome. If I may be so bold to suggest, if you could add some shiny fuel spillage around the filler, that would increase realism big time.

[roinuj]

@krellnut

Actually, on the other side is the fuel spill. I think I'll put it on both sides in my final edit for the paint.

Thanks for the suggestion.

[Kali]

Looks great!

Labels can be done as child objects - it's a lot less work than it sounds. Similarily the banner on the hood.

[Kali]

Ok, going on further discoveries I've twiddled the sim file a bit more so you don't run out of air just switching :rolleyes:. Any better operation of the auto brake is going to have to wait a while.

[roinuj]

Ok, going on further discoveries I've twiddled the sim file a bit more so you don't run out of air just switching :rolleyes:. Any better operation of the auto brake is going to have to wait a while.

Thanks Kali. I tried the changes last night. I noticed it responded different then the default especially in the acceleration. I'll run it a more to get use to it. I think when I package the reskins I'll stay with the default blueprints but offer the tweaked version for players to try on their own.

I'll look into the lables option. Something new to learn.

@All

I noticed the reskin packages from the library have duplicate assets with the prefixes NC or MT. I finally found out they were options with no crew. Is this something I should include in my packages I create?

[Dan]

Very nice. Have you thought about doing the Expo Unit?

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 474&nseq=5

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 522&skip=2

[roinuj]

Just thought everyone would like to have a sneak peek at my next WIP of the DESX 5306. Its ex CN 5306 that was repainted and is sun by Diesel Electric Services in Sudbury Ontario. Its kind of an unusal offering to add some colour.

Took me hours to figure out what was what on the texture so I could change some item colours. I still havn't found the handrail from the cab to the front steps but I was able to make it white by accident.

I still have more work to do such as tweaking the base colour (I think its a little too dark), light weathering, cleaning up details, etc. This will probably be as fars as I can go for now until I learn more about adding labels and child items so I can finish. Hopefully I'll be able to find some online reference (if there is any) so I can figure that out.

[imnew]

You sure are a busy busy man, excellent work !

[roinuj]

I kind of got obsessed in figuring out the texture to change the colours and the next thing I knew, I was well under way. Actually with my base layout done, it doesn't take that much time to added new paints, especially in the case of the CN units, its basically weathering details. Photoshop Layers is your friend.

Its either spend time on these or goof around on BF3 and get killed far too often.

[Kali]

All the fun of hand-baking...

Making labels is about the most basic thing you can do in a 3d program; the complicated part is working out material settings, which isn't actually hard. Mostly I think it'd be working out how to set materials up in a 3d package that's the hard part...

Heh, I have a huge pile of games I haven't even started on, the creative/investigative bug won't let go long enough.