Railworks America

My first try at reskinning. Not really my cup of tea (honestly I like route creation better), but I'm feeling bad for all my requests on Mike for SP equipment. As you can tell there is still much I need to learn. The color is close, but a bit bright and the top is a rust color... need to find where that is. And I am still looking for the right font. I am open to any recommendations.

I used the RWA donation rolling stock.



I used the tutorial by styckx (though I had to translate his instructions into PSE8).
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1202

Good work!

PapaXpress wrote:And I am still looking for the right font. I am open to any recommendations.

This site has the Southern Pacific font, but it's not free.

http://www.railfonts.com/

You can view their catalog in pdf format.

Here's another site that has a few fonts.

http://www.railsimstuff.com/fonts1.php

That's Pete Willard's site. He's a member here, but he hasn't posted in a while. Maybe you could PM or email (through the forum) him about the SP font. His user name is pwillard.

Excellent work for a first effort.

There is another site with logos and such. Do a google image search, and use 'Southern Pacific logos' as the search phrase.

BTW, don't worry about picking on me, I'm partially disabled, retired, and a railfan since age 2. This is fun and challenges me.

Thanks everyone, and after some more research I found a font that comes really close.

I am noticing that the texture is a bit too glossy. How would I make it less?

The other thing you can do is find the biggest side-on picture of a SP vehicle that you can, and copy the lettering. You can paste it into a blank image, maybe clean it up a bit, and then copy a letter at a time from that if the spacing is wrong.

Gloss is likely to be the alpha channel, make it darker - much darker. Most RW stock seems to be way too shiny.

I had the same idea about finding a picture. The web is a poor source for SP gondolas. I do have Volume 2 SP Color Guide to Freight & Passenger Equipment but there are no straight on shots. Since I have the font now, I just need to find the right spacing between the ribs.

I am very new to this. I know what the alpha channel is, but I don't know how to manipulate it. Can someone give me a step-by-step on what I should be doing here (and why)?

My goal is to re-skin the RWA donation stock to SP (and Cotton Belt) since there is almost nothing out there, and (with permission) post them to the file library here.

Hi,

One possible way to edit a texture file's main and alpha channels is using RW_Tools in conjunction with a tool called DXT2BMP.

First, you should open the texture file with RW_Tools, then go to the "Graphics Tools" menu and select "convert tgpcdx to dds". When this is done, minimize RW_Tools, don't exit it.

Look up your directory program files\RW_Tools\TempDDS.

In it you'll find the texture in four formats, one of them is .dds

Open this file with DXT2BMP.

You will now see a large image of the main texture, and a small image of the alpha channel.

Using the menus of DXT2BMP, you can send both images to your paint program (which ever you use). Edit these files to your liking, save both files (with overwriting) and then save copies of them in places where you'll find them again.

Then go back to DXT2BMP, refresh the alpha and main image to check that your edits were saved correctly, and then save the .dds file, overwriting the original.

Finally, go back to RW-Tools and run "convert dds to tgpcdx", again in the graphic tools menu. It should automatically update the file you loaded in the beginning. Your car should have a new texture now, with the correct alpha channel in place too.

Hope this helps!

Michael

I am at work now so I won't be able to try this out, but DXT2BMP sounds familiar. My DDS plugin for PSE will show a Nvidia utility which I can make some adjustments to the image before exporting, would I be able to do something like that using the plugin?

To make life easier, you can use RSBintool ( UKTS has it in the library if it's not here ); you can import/export from that as dds which you know how to get to, and it will show you the final resulting RW texture.

PSE = photoshop elements, I take it? when you import the dds file into it your channels tab will have Red/Green/Blue/Alpha channels; click on the Alpha channel, you'll get a greyscale image, the more white a part of that image is, the shinier the corresponding part of the texture will be.

I am not a fan of how UKTS implements their download site. Now don't get me wrong, I completely understand why they are doing it; its just that I dislike waiting in line (up to 4 hours sometimes!) for a free tool/file/whatever. Yea, I know I can fork out some cash... but I would rather (and have already) donate to this site, which has less draconian download rules.

You are correct, PSE is Photoshop Elements. I do have PS 8, but when my computer died I was unable to unregister it and now the software will not register on my new machine. I already went down the email route, and now I will be forced to call their support line to see if I can get this resolved. In the mean time PSE seems to be doing everything I need it to.

I am getting pumped about trying this out after my kids get to bed. Its a nice break from laying track... but then again I need to lay the track so I can show it off

Is that a win-win catch 22?

PapaXpress wrote:I am not a fan of how UKTS implements their download site. Now don't get me wrong, I completely understand why they are doing it; its just that I dislike waiting in line (up to 4 hours sometimes!) for a free tool/file/whatever. Yea, I know I can fork out some cash... but I would rather (and have already) donate to this site, which has less draconian download rules.

I'm with you... Just went to their site to try to download the above mentioned files.... According t them I was 139 of 139 in the queue! But since I've found several things on their site that I can't seem to find elsewhere I though I pop a few bucks to sign up for the premium service...

All I can say is lots of luck. Tried 3 times to sign up, all three times WorldPay failed to accept my card! I have never had any problems with this card, and according to my bank there should have been no problem with the transaction! I'm beginning to wonder just how safe that site IS??

I don't think they UKTS is nefarious. They are just shot themselves in the foot with too much process. I will not give them any money.

We are off topic though... I will post some updates tonight with the new font, alpha channel tweak, and *hopefully* closer color match.

Actually the later problem is bothering me a lot. So the color I need is Tuscan Red, and the chip on the site is very close to what is in my books, however; in PSE the color is off (brighter?). I am not sure if I should drop some red, or adjust the hue... *sigh* I guess the good news is that I am learning a lot from all this.

The setting for Pennsylvania RR Tuscan Red is R:110; G: 40; and B: 40. I also apply a Brightness Adjustment Layer of -25 to make the colors more accurate. Sometime I just have to "play" with the settings to get the colors the way I want them. I usually get my colors from a picture or use the settings from this website: http://3dtrains.com/guides/msts_colors/ ... ndex.shtml.

To make an alpha channel, you should create a Layer Mask over the whole image, and then paint the areas black for no gloss, white for full, and gray for in between.