WVRR1964's Stuff

[jpetersjr]

These are looking great, will be looking forward to seeing them in the sim.

[WVRR1964]

At this point (which is still early in the game) my first project will be making streetscape pack...I will start a new announcement once I've started adding items into the game....successfully. Once I'm done with that, I'm going to make a basic bridge pack. This will include the through-girder, deck girder and iron trestles and anything else I can think of. More details on that later.
Lastly, there is my main project. At this point I've got the name and the location. It will be called Wyoming Valley Railroads and it will be set in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton areas, but that's all I have figured out at this time. I'm not sure of the era and I'm not sure if it going to be centered around one particular railroad or a fictitious railroad. I'd like to show what it was like when anthracite was king but that would take a heck of a lot of research...something that might be a bit too big of a project for me to handle myself. After all there was hundreds of coal breakers and 7 major railroads at it's peak. That's a lot to research. I guess I'll have to give it some more thought.

[Chacal]

Don't forget to put aside some time to actually play the game!

[RvA944]

Don't forget to put aside some time to actually play the game!

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? there's more then just the editor ?

[WVRR1964]

Don't forget to put aside some time to actually play the game!

Oh I have been, today I bought the PRR K4s and tried to make over the hill coming out of Altoona. I barely made it!

[WVRR1964]

The later half of the day was spent on this first actual creation. For right now, the wires are a loft, and the poles are a scenery item. What I'd really like to do is to get those pole insulators looking like glass. I gave them a TrainGlass.fx shader but I believe I need more then that. The transparency settings in Blender don't translate into the game. Any thoughts on how to do that?

2013-10-21_00001.jpg

Any comments on the poles?

[arizonachris]

I think the poles look great. Those remind me of the older classic green glass insulators, I used to have a bunch I found when they tore down the poles on a route I used to live close to. (used them all for target practice. what can I say, I was a restless teen )

[PapaXpress]

Transparency is handled by the alpha channel. I think I mentioned in one of my other posts that Specular and Translucent in the modeling software is not exported to the IGS file.

[WVRR1964]

Transparency is handled by the alpha channel. I think I mentioned in one of my other posts that Specular and Translucent in the modeling software is not exported to the IGS file.

While I know what an alpha channel is, I've never set one up in Blender. It's time for me to learn. Do you know of a guide that could help me to understand the process better?

[PapaXpress]

Its not really a Blender thing (or a 3DC thing really). The alpha channel is in the texture (TGA, ACE, DDS). If you take a look at my "Blowing Smoke" tutorial you will see how I work it (briefly) in CS3 (CS2 is the same).

[WVRR1964]

Its not really a Blender thing (or a 3DC thing really). The alpha channel is in the texture (TGA, ACE, DDS). If you take a look at my "Blowing Smoke" tutorial you will see how I work it (briefly) in CS3 (CS2 is the same).

I took a look at your tutorial and also some good video tutorials about making alphas in CS2. I do understand what alpha channels are for but I'm still stuck on how they are applied to the model. In this case the insulators. The main questions I still have are...
1. Are alphas attached to the texture or are they separate textures?
2. What the best file type for an alpha channel texture? The video mentions .tiff are the best for creating alphas.
3. Can a TrainGlass.fx shader handle non-black or white alphas? I assuming that for the insulators that are just slightly see-through, the alpha would have to be a light grey.

Sorry if some instructions have already been gone over....I've been sucking in a lot of information in a short period, I'm bound to miss some info.

[WVRR1964]

Well my first run at trying to get realistic glass insulators on a telegraph pole was a successful failure...meaning that I successfully exported the model but didn't get the desired affect.
For the insulators I used TrainGlass.fx shader with green-blue texture with an attached alpha. The insulators are not transparent put they do have a hard shine.

pole1.jpg

What was done wrong? Any help is appreciated!

[WVRR1964]

Ok, I found what I did wrong with the alpha so that is fixed. Here is the latest result...

2013-10-26_00003.jpg

For some reason I feel it's still not right. It seems to be missing something. It doesn't really have that "glassy" look.
Any suggestions?

I'll try some tweaking in Blender, I'll see if I can get a better result.

[WVRR1964]

I found out that this method doesn't work. While the insulators look see-through in normal view, when looking up at the pole with the sky in view the insulators disappear. Oh well, I tried.

[RvA944]

I haven't messed around with alpha shaders in RW yet so I can't help ya, but maybe Hack or one of the other more experienced RW moders will chime in.