TSM Conversion: Worth the Trouble?

[SMMDigital]

Just thought I might get a few opinions and helpful tips on the subject...

To make a long story short, I tried converting one of my old .dst's to an asset that is workable in Railworks. By the the time I was done removing all the objects that crashed 3DCanvas, the Asset Editor, or Railworks, I only had one original part left! By the time I finished rebuilding the original textures and adding detail to bring it up to Railworks standards, the project took three times as long to complete than if I had started from scratch with Railworks in mind.

In my opine, importing and converting a .dst from TSM just isn't worth the bother.

[petebauer]

Thank you. I have the same opinion.

Pete

[Hawk]

The biggest problem with importing dst's into 3DC is the texturing.

If you have any untextured polys in the dst, you'll get problems.

If you tiled a texture in your dst, you'll have problems.

If there's any animation in the dst, you'll have problems.

What I always did when importing dst's into 3DC was remove all textures, import, then re-texture the model. It also helps if you delete any polys that currently aren't textured or that you know won't be textured.

[qrfan3]

I may be speaking out of school here but I was under the impression that Dick Cowen has converted many of his .dst works into Railworks.
Not taking anything away from Hawk....maybe DickC can elaborate some on the technique as to what is required.

[Hawk]

I sent Dick an email pointing to this thread.

[KCJones]

Thanks for inviting me in guys

Yes I am in the slow process of converting all my MSTS (TSM) models to RailWorks standard using 3DC. Texturing can cause a problem when importing from TSM. Just remember that each piece of the model can only have one texture associated with it. If different poligons of the same part have different textures the results will look most odd.
To be honest I mainly use the TSM model as a template, replacing most of the TSM imported parts with 3DC built or altered parts as I go along.

Is it worth the bother? Well, as usual, it depends what you are doing. I find it useful as a starting point, but I do have a large library of locomotives in TSM format that I want to convert and why re-invent the wheel. (Actually wheels are something I do build from new in 3DC )

Dick.

[Hawk]

What about animation Dick? I've never imported anything with animation, although I think it would be a problem with 3DC.

[KCJones]

As far as my experience goes, animations are handled differently in the two programmes. I have never attempted to import them. I find animating in 3DC is easier ( and more fun) than TSM anyway.
Dick

[Hawk]

The way I have done it is to load the model in TSM and go through it carefully and delete all unseen faces. Then go to 'Part/Remove Orphaned Points/All Parts' and say 'Yes'.
Then go to 'Edit/Check Part Geometry' and say 'Yes' to all parts. Hopefully there will be no errors found. If so I would suggest fixing them before importing into 3DC.

I've found it better to strip all textures from the model so the dst holds no texture information. That's where TSM and 3DC don't see quite eye to eye.

If there's any animation I would strip it out too, however - I've never tried importing a dst with animation.

You should then be able to get a good clean import.

Hope that helps some.