Some Projects

[GenericZack]

Mother of.... These are amazing!

[trainboi1]

Mother of.... These are amazing!

If you think that already, you're in for a shock:

Comparing this with the first render I posted of a Mason, even just on this site, I'm not sure I recognize anything...the only piece that I've kept is the pilot, and the cab/tank deck.

...

Now at some point I was going to export Copley Hill shed to test out materials, and instead I got a virtually new Mason Bogie...funny how that goes. I'll see about doing what I originally intended now.

[trainboi1]

Hardly American but...

Success! It may require some texture editing, but that would be a structure in-game, so I'm happy for right now.

[PickeringLumberCorp]

Just saw this thread, and I must say these models look amazing! I really do think we need more 19th century stuff in TS, as some of the most aesthetically beautiful locomotives of all time came from his time period. I am really looking forward to more Central Pacific stock, as Mike's Jupiter (and sisters) need some stablemates (especially El Goob!).

[trainboi1]

Indeed...as I posted on his thread, having a full route with his pack would be virtually useless at this point because you couldn't attempt to run the CP with four engines! There were a couple dozen of the 4-6-0s IIRC, and I have plans for the 173 and its ten clones in the future, and while you can't run the CP with four engines, you could definitely attempt to run it with 40...XD
Some progress:


10-section (plan 3521) lounge-obs as a first railcar test. You can never have enough Heavyweights, though obviously I have some work to do on the textures. Also need to work on getting the wheels rolling and doors opening...any suggestions?

[jpetersjr]

Those Pullmans are beautiful, glad to see you're making progress getting them into the sim.

[GenericZack]

Mother... Of....

[RAILSOHIO]

Getting a the passenger car into the sim,and getting it functional is a great start. You will be able to work your way up to getting the locos running. And that Mason is beautiful. Also,I have said this before to others,and I will repeat. Do not be too concerned if there is a "proper" route for a locomotive. I will purchase a locomotive if I like it,period.

[trainboi1]

Getting a the passenger car into the sim,and getting it functional is a great start. You will be able to work your way up to getting the locos running. And that Mason is beautiful. Also,I have said this before to others,and I will repeat. Do not be too concerned if there is a "proper" route for a locomotive. I will purchase a locomotive if I like it,period.

That was mostly in reference to whether or not Mike should build some sort of route for his CP pack. I argued for why they shouldn't bother.

Wheels rolling, textures I think should have a little shine but too flat is better than too ridiculously shiny in my opinion. The windows aren't black like that anymore; that was only for one export. Every other time, they have been white in the sunlight and actually properly colored in the shadow. Still need to figure out how to make the doors animate.

[ZekTheKid]

Looking very nice!

[PickeringLumberCorp]

I would definitely purchase a locomotive if I liked it without the need for a route. A Central Pacific route would also be something I would buy, but I would advocate that development of such a route be put on hold to see if a more fleshed-out Central Pacific locomotive fleet would be successful.

[mrennie]

Still need to figure out how to make the doors animate.

In the "Control values" section of the car's "Wagon blueprint", you need two controls called "DoorsOpenCloseLeft" and "DoorsOpenCloseRight", minimum value 0 and maximum value 1. For each of those controls, in the "Interface elements", add an "Exterior animation" element with the "Anim style" set to "Toggle".

Animate the doors (left and right, or front and back) and export the animations separately for left and right (actually, my cars have end doors, so I open and close them both at the same time regardless of which side the platform is on, therefore I export the entire doors animation to a single .ia file).

In the car's Wagon blueprint, reference that animation in an "Animation" element in the "Anim set" within "Render component". For example, in my coach caboose, I added an element with "Animation ID" set to "Doors" and "Animation name" referencing "RailVehicles\Passenger\Coach\Default\Coach\Animations\CabooseCoachDoors.IA".

Then, in those control values ("DoorsOpenCloseLeft" and "DoorsOpenCloseRight"), set their "Animation ID" to the appropriate animation (in may case, I set them both to "Doors").

[buzz456]

Indeed...as I posted on his thread, having a full route with his pack would be virtually useless at this point because you couldn't attempt to run the CP with four engines! There were a couple dozen of the 4-6-0s IIRC, and I have plans for the 173 and its ten clones in the future, and while you can't run the CP with four engines, you could definitely attempt to run it with 40...XD
Some progress:

10-section (plan 3521) lounge-obs as a first railcar test. You can never have enough Heavyweights, though obviously I have some work to do on the textures. Also need to work on getting the wheels rolling and doors opening...any suggestions?

As far as the textures are concerned adding a darker alpha layer will get rid of the shine. For animating the doors take a look at the G-Trax lwt. wt. cars or any of the recent passenger offerings. They are use basically the same method to get the doors to open and close.

[mrennie]

Making the wheels turn is fairly straightforward.

The node (or group in 3DC parlance) for the front and rear trucks should be called, respectively, 1_2000_bo01 and 1_2000_bo02.

Within each truck's group, there need to be two groups, one for each axle, so you end up with a hierarchy like this one:

- 1_2000_Coach
-- 1_2000_bo01
--- 1_2000_bo01wh01 (front axle of the front truck)
--- 1_2000_bo01wh02 (rear axle of the front truck)
-- 1_2000_bo02
--- 1_2000_bo02wh01 (front axle of the rear truck)
--- 1_2000_bo02wh02 (rear axle of the rear truck)

It's very important that the group centres coincide with the centres of rotation of the trucks and axles, otherwise the wheels and trucks will turn in very peculiar ways.

Next, you need two "Bogey blueprints", one for each truck. Be careful to measure the wheel radius very carefully and convert it to metres. For standard gauge, the "Wheel gauge" should be 1.435 metres. For "Geometry", put "bo01" or "bo02" as appropriate. In the "Axle" section, add two "S axle" elements. The "Radius" is the same as before. "Horizontal offset" needs to be measured from the model and is the distance of the axle from the centre of the truck (assuming the truck pivots about its centre). It'll be positive for the front axle (wh01) and negative for the rear axle (wh02). "Node id" is "bo01wh01" for the front axle of the front truck, etc.

In the car's blueprint, you need to reference those two bogey blueprints, setting the "Bogey pivot X" to the distance in metres of the truck's pivot from the centre of the car.

If it's all been done correctly, the game's engine will then take care of rotating the trucks and axles (and anything attached to the axles' groups/nodes in the model, which should obviously include the wheels) automatically.

[imnew]

Beautiful work trainboi1