Railworks America

Alright decided to make a post to follow my progress on the 60 Ton Boxcab I plan to make freeware and so I could have a place to ask questions if I need to seeing as how this will be the first train I've built. (if this is in the wrong place feel free to move it to the right board)

I will be making this in several liveries including, Lehigh Valley, Erie, C.R.R of N.J, C.& N.W.R and the Ingersoll-Rand Demonstrator model.

Here's an update, still need to add the brake system before i start on the other side and build the connecting bits

And this is as far as I got before I realized I screwed a few things up, one being I used the wrong measurements so the model itself is the wrong scale, and I apparently used the wrong version of the program as the one I have is missing features that the Tutorial I was following had. So for now this means I have to completely restart from the ground up, which means it'll be a few more days until I can update this again.

May I suggest you start with some expendable project, like a few simple shapes, and get them all the way in the game, textured and shaded and the correct size.

Think the modeling looks great so far.

One of these would definitely be a welcome addition to the sim, awesome engine.

But Charcal is right, getting a locomotive, or a train car into the sim is no simple task, I'd suggest starting out with some basic scenery for starters, maybe model a simple house, or a garage.

Something small and basic, not so much the modeling part, but the getting it into the sim part.

jpetersjr wrote:Think the modeling looks great so far.

One of these would definitely be a welcome addition to the sim, awesome engine.

But Charcal is right, getting a locomotive, or a train car into the sim is no simple task, I'd suggest starting out with some basic scenery for starters, maybe model a simple house, or a garage.

Something small and basic, not so much the modeling part, but the getting it into the sim part.

I'll have to search for a new program because I didn't realize I'd have to buy the $60 version of the program I was using in order to export files that I could use to import into railworks, so as of now this project is dead until I can find a different free program I can use since I don't have the budget to spend on buying a 3D program to use.

Blender is free.

https://www.blender.org/

BoostedFridge wrote:Blender is free.

https://www.blender.org/

Alright I can give it a try with blender, is there a tutorial I could use that is specifically for Blender? or do I have to try and take PapaXpress' tutorial and work with it in Blender?

Nvm I found some tutorials for Blender, I'll get back to building the train tonight and post pictures sometime later

Be sure to keep an eye on your poly count now or you will have to re-model several objects later down the road.

For example, when you first create a cylinder in blender, the properties panel in the bottom left will have a box called vertices.
This usually defaults to 32 but that is almost always overkill. If you do not change that to a lower number when you first place the object, you won't be able to access that panel later on.

Just a quick tip so you don't complete 75% of your model only to find out just one of your trucks has 28,000 tris, lol.
I've added at least an extra 5 or more hours of work because I didn't even think about poly count in the beginning.

Be sure to stick with it, looks like you're off to a good start.

Alright having a bit of trouble, I'm trying to place down a decal or something so I can use it as a scale in order to build the engine against the blueprints I have for it. But when I go into Object Mode the decal just vanishes from the plane I put it on, anyone know how I can fix this so in the Object Mode I can view the decal in order to position everything correctly?

you can move components around in edit mode. its how I get around it.

PapaXpress wrote:you can move components around in edit mode. its how I get around it.

Seams the only way i can view the decal is in the Texture Paint mode, every other mode it just appears as a white blank plane

Here's what I got done with Blender, Also not to sure on if I'm grouping/naming the parts right or not since I don't know Blender's child/parent system.