Railworks America

Dear MadMike,

I regret to inform you that I did not get to QA the latest UP RS3 waiting for me in the testing folder. I was drawn away by inspiration and sudden need to create something fabulous.

But I think you will forgive me... again.

WBR,

PapaXpress

P.S. You can have any color you want, as long as its dirty gray

Yay!!! To both of you:
These will fill some large gaps in the RW roster.

Dan, please excuse my ignorance, but what is that thing on the cab roof of that Geep? Is it an antenna of some sorts? Or something to do with the loading gauge? I remember when looking at pictures of first gen. diesels SP seemed to have some pretty fancy looking roof antennas, but they were all round.

Cheers,
Michael

GreatNortherner wrote:Yay!!! To both of you:
These will fill some large gaps in the RW roster.

Dan, please excuse my ignorance, but what is that thing on the cab roof of that Geep? Is it an antenna of some sorts? Or something to do with the loading gauge? I remember when looking at pictures of first gen. diesels SP seemed to have some pretty fancy looking roof antennas, but they were all round.

Cheers,
Michael

Better explained here Michael, http://railworksamerica.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3756&start=15, but that's an icicle breaker for the Donner Pass snowsheds and tunnels. The special Donner GP38s even had screen wire mesh over the windshields to keep the ice from breaking them. Lots of things going on to make the new Donner Pass route a bit more populated upon release.

GreatNortherner wrote:Yay!!! To both of you:
These will fill some large gaps in the RW roster.

Dan, please excuse my ignorance, but what is that thing on the cab roof of that Geep? Is it an antenna of some sorts? Or something to do with the loading gauge? I remember when looking at pictures of first gen. diesels SP seemed to have some pretty fancy looking roof antennas, but they were all round.

Cheers,
Michael

They were designed to keep icicles from breaking car's windshields on the top level of SP's tri level autoracks.

I am going to make a couple small alterations before I release the breaker. I have a couple questions though. When I created the model I thought it was facing forward, but it was reversed. I had to spin it 180 using the matrix. I am having trouble doing this 3DC. How do you do it? Also there is something wrong with my alpha channel. If its white the model is visible, if its darker then it disappears. This was not happening to me before, so I need to understand what I did wrong.

Next on the list, between working on the tank car and the caboose, is a screen for the cab, and the upper orbital light.

What shader did you use for the material for the breaker? if it's on a train it should probably at least be TrainBasicObjectDiffuse, if not TrainSpecEnvMask. I suspect you might just have to make it a bit thicker though, it's probably vanishing because RW isn't rendering it. I have tons of fun trying to keep signal ladders visible.

Kali wrote:What shader did you use for the material for the breaker? if it's on a train it should probably at least be TrainBasicObjectDiffuse, if not TrainSpecEnvMask. I suspect you might just have to make it a bit thicker though, it's probably vanishing because RW isn't rendering it. I have tons of fun trying to keep signal ladders visible.

Its not vanishing from a distance, and its not the first model I have made that does this.

Here is where I need to learn more of, you talk about TrainBasicObjectDiffuse and TrainSpecEnvMask, but do I enter this in the 'Rail Sim' slot?

This is all I know ( it's from a FAQ I found on the 3dC board ):

3) How do I use shaders?

To use shaders, you need to first create a custom material field called 'Rail Sim'. This can be created by File -andgt; Properties -andgt; Custom Fields. This is done automatically the first time you run the Train Simulator Wizard. But, if you are creating a new model, it is better to do this manually, so you can start specifying shaders immediately.

Once you have created the custom material field, you can enter the shader name via the custom fields tab of the Material Palette. If this is one of the 'FX' shaders you need to add '.fx' to the end of the shader name.

All the Train.+ shaders are fx shaders. Texdiff has on-off transparency if you set a transparent flag in the material ( I think! ), so that might be your alpha channel issue.

Yup, this is what I do to get the RW slots to show. However by default they are not set. I guess I just need to play around with them to find out how it works.

Papa is getting near done with the add-ons for the GP38, I've finished and packaged the Snowplow.

I would probably make the breaker a bit thicker - there's times when you're scale modelling that you have to exaggerate slightly for effect, and this isn't really any different.Well done though!

now just some of those rotating wipers on the windows and a snow/winter texture and you're set for Donner Pass!......well minus the rotary's....

thecanadianrail wrote:now just some of those rotating wipers on the windows and a snow/winter texture and you're set for Donner Pass!......well minus the rotary's....

The problem I am facing is that I can place anything I want on the outside of the windows, but when you're in the cab they do not show.

@Kali
I am not going to spend anymore time on the breaker unless its a "show stopper" problem I really want to move on to other children (so many to do!). I also need to finish up with the numbering decals so I can release the tank car. And then there is the caboose... I really don't want to burn out.

Papa is right, and one of the issues with the model is that the .geo file can't be edited. For reasons unknown, it can be converted to a .html file, but Serz won't recompile it.

I'm currently exploring the possibility of editing the cab interior reflection texture (it actually appears to reflect from the glass!) and see if we can get the icicle screen to show in the interior cab view.

The model is very well done, and worth the effort to make it better, But I wish Mr. Cornell would come back to it and update it, and/or release a the original model and a compilable .html file