Railworks America

I have been skinning Richard Cowen's FT/F3/F7/F9 repaint kits, and saw that there is a second headlight available for the F7. Several of the locos I'm modelling had the second light, some didn't. For the life of me, I cannot figure out how to make the second headlight work. The original instructions say to learn how to edit .bin files from the web. There's a wonderful collection of jewelry to individualize the locos, but currently they're worthless to me.

Can anyone point me to someplace that explains how to add stuff to a .bin? I know how to delete unwanted sections, how to edit the file pointers, and how to edit the loco name. Every time I try to add something it crashes spectacularly.

OK, I will take a stab at this. I think you can open the bin files using RWTools, which in turn will make them XML, and somewhere in there you will need either need to add a section or enable it to include the headlight.

I don' have the XPack yet (I am asking Dick if he would be open to a bundle price for remainder that I need... yes I would like the whole collection), however since I want that WP and SP F7 you just finished I maybe pushed to buy it separately. When I get it, I can try to help more with the coding side of things (I am better at coding than with graphics).

Update: I really should have a cup of coffee before posting anything... I completely missed that you were editing the bin files as XML.

Also after massive amounts of searching during lunch, I cannot find one example of where someone used Dick's F7's jewelry. As far as I can tell when they wanted the second light they would skin either Marc's or Cesar's F7.

I can tell you how to add generic items, but unfortunately you really need specifics in this case, and I don't have the models involved.

Usually crashes are caused by you not writing correct XML, often because you have a typo somewhere or you forgot to close a tag. It sounds like you're trying to add child objects; in that case copy an existing child object section ( everything inside a <cEntityContainerBlueprint-sChild> section, including those tags ), change the ID number, change the filename to point to the child - a child is a blueprint, so it's called as an xml file when on the disk it's a .bin file, and don't forget to check the provider section - and then you'll have to change the location matrix to the right place, and I hope that is provided for you somewhere.

You might say "well, I just changed everything I copied and pasted", but really you copied & pasted the syntax & changed the values; hopefully that will be enough to stop any crashes.

If it's not a child object then I have absolutely no idea without owning the kit.

There is no F7-LowerHeadlight shape file (geopcdx) but there is a F9-LowerHeadlight.geopcdx.

1) Copy the F9 file into the F7 Fittings folder and rename to F7
2) Open this file with RW_Tools and change the two occurances of f9a-01 to f7a-01 and save.
3) There should already be a F7-LowerHeadlight.bin file in the F7 Fittings folder.
4) If you don't fancy editing the shape file you will need to use the f7a-01 and f9a-01 for locos with lower headlights.

I hope this helps.

Dick

Ok, adopted a daughter block that drew the pilot. Pulled an 8-digit number out of my butt, and inserted it in the proper quotes. Changed the daughter name to 'HeadlightLower' and then changed the file name to 'F7-LowerHeadlight.xml'. It works. It worked for the E7 as well. BUT, and there's always a BUT... the lower light ring shows the dreaded 'Missing Texture' message on both. More searching to be done.

Open the geo file of the child in RWTools & check the texture paths, the materials are all near the top ( or you can use the tree view ), It will probably be fairly obvious.

You can wire a child headlight up to the main one ( providing the child one lights up at all, anyway ), but it needs a bit of scripting. Thankfully for single-ended engines it should not need to check which way it's facing.

Mike, I should purchase Kit 06 F3 and Kit 09 EMD E7 for this, correct?

I cannot find any reference to the FT (Kit 04 FT), was this a real engine, or a rare one?

The FT was the original F series type, I think.

Isn't there a default RW F7? I know there is a Chief from 3D Trains (I have that one and it's fantastic) Maybe there was another F7 in the pack I bought from Marc without the Warbonnet livery.

Yeah, here, it's the one on the far left: (you may have to zoom in a little)

No, you're right, there's a default F7. With a big chunk of work it could be very good too texture-wise ( although as someone who's never seen a real F7, I have no idea if the model is the right shape ).

Just purchased.

Yea, I have Marc's F7 as well. The problem is that there are many models out there, and skins for each. Since Mike is using Britkits, and has graciously made SP power I will support Mr Cowen (with the hope that he makes more motive power I can use).

But lets face it. For both the F3 and F7 I paid $15.88 USD (£9.50 GBP), which (after a long thought) is a bargain.

Kali wrote: With a big chunk of work it could be very good too texture-wise

I think Mad Mike said as much, it was very confusing as to how to try and reskin it. Texture map or what not (I'm just a driver, I know zip about any of this editing)

It's a lot better than a great deal of the stock out there to reskin, it's just a bit annoying as the bodysides are split across two textures. That and just making paint templates for it takes forever as there's so many parts. It's all nicely laid out & fully bump-mapped though, one day I'm going to try & see how good I can make it.

Kali wrote:It's a lot better than a great deal of the stock out there to reskin, it's just a bit annoying as the bodysides are split across two textures. That and just making paint templates for it takes forever as there's so many parts. It's all nicely laid out & fully bump-mapped though, one day I'm going to try & see how good I can make it.

Marc at 3D Trains has done a repaint template for the stock F7. It doesn't have the bump maps, but he has layered it nicely.

http://www.3dtrains.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=16671 (requires registration to download)

Here's an oddity: The lower headlight works and colors properly on the F3...

Oh, nice, thanks for the link. That's large amounts of the annoying bits out of the way.

You'll have to ask Mr Cowen about the headlight, too specific a problem for me to know what the matter is I'm afraid :(