Animated Coal Load And Auto Numbering

[TheKman]

What is all involved in designing a animated coal load? I just don't see a thing on the internet and the game docs don't seem to cover it, only how to blueprint it. Also, what is a .BAN file for Railworks? RW tools can't see it so it can't be opened. Many of the in game hoppers have coal.ban file.

Auto Numbering. PapaXpress explains this in his engine design tutorials. He says to make the place holders and the numbers 64 X 64 textures. Is that the standard or can it be smaller? End numbers on a car are smaller than 64 X64.

Thanks

[TheKman]

Auto numbering I got figured out. Chris's Trains tutorials explains it much better, or at least I understand it better.

[TheKman]

Well....After working with .xml files and bin files from the car I designed and the G-Trax default gon, I got the car to load. But here's the problem now. The loader does indeed fill the car, but the coal in the gon is invisible.

[GreatNortherner]

Hi,

For an animated cargo to show up, it also needs a corresponding 3D mesh. In the case of then open hopper, that's an object resembling the coal load in its empty state. That's the bit of coal that you can see in the bottom of most open hoppers in the game, as the cargo mesh has to be *somewhere* attached to the car's model.

The coal load object has a specific naming convention: 1_####_freight or it likely will fail to fill up when triggering the loader in the scenario (which you've already set up correctly if you can see the particle effects working).

The devdocs have a short part on how to set up the animation. Works the same in an open hopper as it does in the tender they used as an example:
http://tscdevdocs.co.uk/reference-manua ... -Animation

You can do the same in 3DC. Set up the animation as needed, then exit animation mode, highlight the freight object(s) in the hierarchy and export the TS animation which will get you the .ia file which you then have to link up in the car's blueprint. Upon exporting through the BPE, that gets converned into the .ban file.

Cheers,
Michael

[GreatNortherner]

PS. Assuming that your hopper has the classic trapezoid body shape, you'll probably want to work with two separate freight objects so that you can hide them easier in the bottom of the car.

Same as with as other pre-defined named parts in RW, you can have more than one by just adding _1, _2, etc. to their node names. So in this case,
1_1000_freight_1
1_1000_freight_2
Which you'd then have to select both and export into a single animation file for this to work.

And because pictures can often tell more than words, here are some of one of my hoppers:

Hopper in its unloaded state. The "leftover" gravel in the bottom are the two "freight" objects which overlap (make sure they have a small difference in height to prevent flickering)

Image1.jpg

The animation paths of for both of the cargo objects. I used three key frames for that. The first is the empty state, the second is when the loads move upwards and towards the ends of the car as the rise among the trapezoid lower half of the car, the third and final key frame is then where they come to rest at max. fill level.

Image2.jpg

This shows the animation progressed to the 2nd key frame

Image3.jpg

And here is the final stage of the animation, which corresponds to how the cars will look in-game after loading them (via a transfer point or using the cargo tickbox in the scenario editor).

Image4.jpg

[wacampbell]

Michael, I did not know that. Very cool method.

[TheKman]

A BIG THANKS GUYS!! I've been throwing spaghetti at the walls for last 3-4 days.

[TheKman]

Is there anything special on how the coal load has to be designed other than what has been said above? I can't get 3DC to animate it at all..... Have clicked all over the place on my model and can't get the little red ball to show.

Also, in 3DC, animation keys would be 3? How many keys per second?

[GreatNortherner]

Hi,

From the top off my head, no, there shouldn't be anything special besides the group naming convention ("freight").

I've just checked in 3DC, and this is all I need to do:
-- enable Anim Toolbar via "View" menu (if it's hidden)
-- switch on Animation mode (leftmost button on Anim toolbar)
-- enable Animation Timeline (third button from left on Anim toolbar), click on the final frame of the anim timeline
-- select the object you want to animate and move it as needed for the final position (in this case fully loaded)
-- you should now see a red dot where the object was in the 1st frame and a green line linking it to its current frame
-- when you click on the "play" button on the anim toolbar, you should see it move

And that's it. When you're happy with the way the animation moves, exit Anim mode (click again on that leftmost button on the Anim toolbar). Then select the object in the hierarchy and export its animation as an .ia file.

For the animation keys setting in 3DC, I usually lower the default value (100) to something much lower, like 10, just so that the animation timeline fits on one screen. The time setting doesn't matter for cargo objects as the game will override this with the transfer point's time setting.

Cheers,
Michael

[TheKman]

Hi,

From the top off my head, no, there shouldn't be anything special besides the group naming convention ("freight").

I've just checked in 3DC, and this is all I need to do:
-- enable Anim Toolbar via "View" menu (if it's hidden)
-- switch on Animation mode (leftmost button on Anim toolbar)
-- enable Animation Timeline (third button from left on Anim toolbar), click on the final frame of the anim timeline
-- select the object you want to animate and move it as needed for the final position (in this case fully loaded)
-- you should now see a red dot where the object was in the 1st frame and a green line linking it to its current frame
-- when you click on the "play" button on the anim toolbar, you should see it move

And that's it. When you're happy with the way the animation moves, exit Anim mode (click again on that leftmost button on the Anim toolbar). Then select the object in the hierarchy and export its animation as an .ia file.

For the animation keys setting in 3DC, I usually lower the default value (100) to something much lower, like 10, just so that the animation timeline fits on one screen. The time setting doesn't matter for cargo objects as the game will override this with the transfer point's time setting.

Cheers,
Michael

-- enable Animation Timeline (third button from left on Anim toolbar), click on the final frame of the anim timeline
-- select the object you want to animate and move it as needed for the final position (in this case fully loaded)

This I think is where I keep screwing up. Maybe differernt for engine controls, but Papa Xpress explain these two steps very differently.
Anyhow will give what you said a try.

[GreatNortherner]

This I think is where I keep screwing up. Maybe differernt for engine controls, but Papa Xpress explain these two steps very differently.
Anyhow will give what you said a try.

Hi, this is just what works for me in my 3DC (and I've just made sure it actually works and tested this with a cube plopped into an empty scene in my 3DC version 9.3) -- there may be other ways to go about this, or different methods that apply to different versions of 3DC.

[TheKman]

This I think is where I keep screwing up. Maybe differernt for engine controls, but Papa Xpress explain these two steps very differently.
Anyhow will give what you said a try.

Hi, this is just what works for me in my 3DC (and I've just made sure it actually works and tested this with a cube plopped into an empty scene in my 3DC version 9.3) -- there may be other ways to go about this, or different methods that apply to different versions of 3DC.

GOT IT! Did my first animation. Thanks to Michael & Wayne.

[TheKman]

Ok, next problem. I still have the problem of the gon not filling up and now the sim crashes when the loader is finished filling up the car. Copy of xml file enclosed. Not doing something right with the blueprint......

[GreatNortherner]

Hi,

Found one error in the blueprint:

Entry AnimationId in the Cargo def component must be a copy of the name you've assigned to the animation in the Render component above. So in your case, enter "coal" there in the AnimationID box in the Cargo Component and re-export.

One other thing but this I'm not sure about at all: It could be that the animation ID must match the node name of the animation in your model. So in this case, "freight". But you could try it first by leaving "coal" in there and see if that works.

One unrelated issue: the drag coefficient of your car is way too high. The setting of 7.2, even though it's widely used in RW (including on my own older equipment) will act like a parachute and slow the car down at speed. I believe 1.5 is a good value to use here.

Cheers,
Michael

Image1.jpg

[TheKman]

Thanks Michael. I'll go and fix that and see what happens. The car data was pulled from the G-Trax Bethgons. I will make the adjustment you recommended.