Railworks America

So I notice there hasn't been any activity on this section of the forum for over a year, but I have come up against an interesting issue. Specifically, this:




In simpler terms, it appears to me that my engine is rotating around the front pivot point and the back end is aimed towards some point at what I assume is the route origin (in this case, somewhere beneath Oroville turntable). In addition, when placed in Quickdrive it is listed under the steam locomotive section but gives the "no engine found in consist" error. Any ideas?

Oh, and to prove it's not a mesh problem, I put the tender mesh in the loco blueprint:

That is the weirdest thing I have yet seen in custom asset creation for this game. (Did you win a prize? couldn't resist)

Swapping loco and tender models with the same strange results in the "tender locomotive" does indeed seem to indicate that something crazy is going on the blueprint area. I don't know the specifics of setting up a steam loco, but if I was in your place I would begin by attempting to rule out things as possible error sources. Maybe you could look into these things in the RailVehicle component section of the loco blueprint:

1) That the overall dimensions of the model in the blueprint match the physical data in the 3D model. This includes CollisionLength, Height, Width, front/back pivots, coupler pivots, Collision Center. The values in the blueprint should generally be the same as what you can measure in the 3D program, in meters distance from the 0,0,0 point of the model.

2) Check the bogey section in the blueprints and verify that it has all the correct data (particularly the X offset). It must be identical to the lengthwise offset of the corresponding boXX group in the model. Make sure that the bogies aren't accidentally flipped, so bo01 has the positive shift from center, bo02 (or in your case maybe bo03) is the rear one, with negative x offset.

3) Finally, make sure that the Blogie Blueprints referenced in the S bogey groups are correctly linked (Bo01 for Bo01 etc.) and that they in turn contain correct dimensional data (wheel offsets from bogie center, wheel radii) for each seperate bogie.

That's all I can think of for now.

Cheers
Michael

Michael,
Thanks for getting back to me. I've narrowed it down to the trailing bogey; if I remove it the engine is unsteady but otherwise works fine. Absolutely no idea what I'm doing wrong though, but I suppose that's the way of things...

So far this is the best I've done for a trailing truck blueprint:

And the loco setup:

Hardly a complicated setup...I've also tried setting the horizontal offset to 0 for the axle and 2.57105 on the pivot, as well as just not doing an offset at all and having the truck rotate around the axle instead of the pivot. Nothing has worked.

Hi,

I think I have spotted some omissions in your blueprints.

Bogey Blueprint: I take it that's a single trailing axle (4-8-2 or 4-6-2 maybe) by that setup? I'm not familiar with that setup, but either way it appears you haven't filled in all needed fields. "Geometry" needs an entry, input the corresponding group name from the model here ("bo03"). The same goes for the Axle entry, you must input the node name into Geometry field ("bo03wh01").

The bogie component in the engine BP looks okay at first glance.

Cheers
Michael

GreatNortherner wrote:Bogey Blueprint: I take it that's a single trailing axle (4-8-2 or 4-6-2 maybe) by that setup? I'm not familiar with that setup, but either way it appears you haven't filled in all needed fields. "Geometry" needs an entry, input the corresponding group name from the model here ("bo03"). The same goes for the Axle entry, you must input the node name into Geometry field ("bo03wh01").

It's worth noting that's how I originally set it up. After downloading a tutorial for driver animation, I figured that the weird sort of setup above is somehow the only way to make the rods animate. So I set it up on the rear truck too, figuring it would only help things. I'll revert it to the system you mention later, see if I can't get it to work that way.