Railworks America

At this point, I don't know if it will actually ever be seen in the game. But, I needed a break from route building again, so I took on a little diversion project this weekend.

Looking good.

What do you plan to make it, freeware?

I'm currently testing my Pacific in the game as a scenery item to get the size correct. Textures appear to look decent as well.

I haven't decided on the payware part yet. I'm thinking a low detail freeware version, and a high detail cheap payware version (the one in the photo) with possibly two variants. These particular units used by Southern / Norfolk Southern, so it's more of a fan thang than a financial thang.

I'm putting the horse before the cart here though. I've still got to go through poly reduction, UV unwrapping, mapping, and then try to get the thing operational in the game. I haven't figured out yet how to link the wheels with the bogies in 3DC. Oh, and I still got a route deadline to meet (I was hoping to release these along with the route since they are used en masse~ at Debutts Yard). Time will tell if my second attempt at a locomotive will actually come to fruition, but it's been fun building it anyway.

Same as I with this here beast.

Not really sure about this texture on the outer boiler, but it looks great on the inner boiler.





It will be a problem actually getting it running in the game though and animating, textures might also be a problem.

As well, I plan for this ATSF 3415 Pacific to be freeware.


Hope you have better luck with your project.

HAH! I was just looking at that a few days ago. I think its the coolest looking slug around.

Love the title, slug looks great too! What locomotives were these made from, looks like GP9s?

GP9s and 18s
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoPi ... x?id=86251
http://donsdepot.donrossgroup.net/dr1705.htm

Sweet, I'm finally getting good at telling locomotive models alike lol.

Looking good.

This is a very cool model, and will be a much needed addition to the game! Thanks for building this fine looking model!

SMMDigital wrote:(...) I haven't figured out yet how to link the wheels with the bogies in 3DC. (...)

You can do it exactly like you would in MSTS. Put the Bogies groups as 1st level child groups to the main group, then add the wheels as children to the bogies. Rename everything to RW standards, either in the group names themselves or by using the RS custom fields in 3DC.

You don't need to do anything else than that, just name and group the parts correctly and it will work fine in RW.

So the hierarchy could look like this:

1_0032_engine
- 2_0128_engine
- [other groups]
- 1_0256_bo01
- - 1_0128_bo01wh01
- - 1_0128_bo01wh02
- - 1_0128_bo01wh03
- - 1_0032_bo-clutter (just to illustrate that you can add more groups as children to the bogies, and they will become part of them in the sim as far as animations etc. are concerned.)

The only other thing to watch out for is that the pivot offset values in the BIN files (bogies BINs and wagon/engine BINs) must be identical to the actual pivot (offsets) in the shape file. So, for example, if the two wheel groups on a two-axle truck are -0.9205m and +1.1120m Z-offset from the truck pivot, then these are the values you should enter in the bogies blueprint.

Cheers,
Michael

Thanks GN! i will probably be looking you up if I have problems getting this thing running.

As of today, the trucks are in the paint shop, getting photo-applied texturing. Ive ben told by some that photo textures are "cheating". The reality of it is that i'm really good at drawing a Giger's Alien, but other than that I can't draw a stick figure, so its photos or nothin. The local switching service was parked next to the dentist office in town just the other day, so I got some awesome GP30 truck texture photos.

A question: what is the upper recommended poly limit on locomotives? I'm pushing 16,500 right now (high detail version), with an absolute limit of 17k. The trucks themselves are 5k with wheels and axles applied. I've taken great pains to LOD this thing properly so ot won't burden the graphics cards to much.

I believe that I read that they can be up to 40,000 poly.

Some of my buildings approach 8000 poly and I read that a scenery item could be up to 20,000 poly.

At just over 16,000 poly, for a locomotive, I think you have it at a pretty decent level for poly.

A little progress...

If you really want to keep slugs out of your garden, put some beer in the bottle caps. The slugs will go to and drown themselves in the beer. It worked to keep them out of my strawberries.

O

artimrj wrote:If you really want to keep slugs out of your garden, put some beer in the bottle caps. The slugs will go to and drown themselves in the beer. It worked to keep them out of my strawberries.

Choice: Put beer out for the slugs, or allow them to eat the garden. Well, I guess the slugs get to live a while longer!