Railworks America

Still WIP (since June!)... I need to make an extra-wide tool box, remove all my false shadows, make the frog light "light up", add tons of tiny details (because I can)... but who can tell me why I am starting this project up again? (hint: I have complained about this model in the past)



Frog lights are on!

Just one itsy-bitsy-problem when riding as a passanger

PapaXpress wrote:but who can tell me why I am starting this project up again? (hint: I have complained about this model in the past)

Because you love it so?

Hawk wrote:Because you love it so?

While this statement is true, it is not the reason I stopped working after a lengthy period of frustration. I will also say that the answer is not that I was waiting for TS 2012. I have posted posted about the "reason" a few times here (the last time was just recently) on RWA.

There are two hints left, and no hints remaining for today.

I'll take a stab at it....

If I can recall, I believe it was either because you were having an auto-numbering problem with it, or ....maybe the paint scheme was wonky???

So...perhaps you have resolved either of these issues enough to continue the project?

EDIT: ....maybe TS2012 fixed a bug that it had??? Im gonna go with that, since i know you would have resolved the above two issues much sooner, Mon Capitan!

First off... Good to see you back Dogmouse. Mike and I have some trains which need your magic touch.

Second:
Yes, I did have a problem with the numbering, but I quickly resolved that issue.

PapaXpress wrote:I will also say that the answer is not that I was waiting for TS 2012. I have posted posted about the "reason" a few times here (the last time was just recently) on RWA.

Just to play off Hawk's first guess: It was my love of the caboose that drove me away from it.

PapaXpress wrote:Just one itsy-bitsy-problem when riding as a passanger

I believe this might be due to the mesh not being closed. I'm working on a similar issue where lights from inside a building leak through the rafters. It was not until I sealed the roof and walls as a single closed mesh that the leaking stopped.

Unfortunately the model (at least this part of it) is not mine. I will send it on the BLLW and see what he thinks.

Here is another late night update on progress:


Now to make that tool box... and put on some new paint.

Hint number 2:

There are (at this time) two screen shots in this thread where you are looking right at it.

You might be able to knock up a little geometry child that will sit in the walls & block that light leak. There was a new shader for it, I think.

I will consider fixing the leaking light several people kick up a stink. I am not the original creator, and I have no idea if or when BLLW will re-release the model with TS2012 enhancements (though my repaint will include TS2012 enhancements where legally possible).

Thats really nice Mike.

MadMike????

Me thinks you have me confused with the person who I do QA work for, but thank you for the compliment. I still have some details left to add to this repaint to make it a true gem.

Well... since no one is playing the treasure hunt game I might as well present the facts:
It was that BLLW had too many windows on the model to match what SP had. I asked a few times to get window plugs, but this feature is apparently not in high demand. In fact my whole foray in 3DCrafter was to fix this specific issue (shame on me for getting sucked into having fun make other things). Now that the windows are covered I have a clear path to finish this repaint and add other neat jewelry to it so it will truly stand out as a SP bay window caboose.

here is where my pain starts:
viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2371&hilit=caboose&start=15
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=3215&hilit=BLLW#p29221
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=992&p=23492&hilit=frustrated#p23492
and finally:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3756&hilit=+BLLW#p34950

Stay tune... Kali's new scripts are working... kinda. More than likely doing something wrong but at least I know that I have them hooked in and the functions are getting called.

Hehe, well, they are in heavy development and not exactly documented!, which is why I send you that tiny scriptlet just to get something going. You might want to take a look at the caboose I put up in the same thread, it uses one child shape & resizes/moves it around.

I am using the caboose script

The problem is that I am only able to get the "CN" part of the number show. It does make the original numbers disappear. Once I can get the numbers to show, I will switch the number textures over to the white roman I want to use.

The caboose panel can handle 5 or 6 digit numbers only; I can easily bang out one that'll take less or more ( I can explain how to make your own too ) but until then if you need less than 5, you'll have to use blanks to fill the gaps in temporarily. The boxcar panel doesn't have the built-in CN prefix if you want to get rid of that.

Quick & dirty guide to autonumber panels, lets assume it's for 5 digits

* make an object of 5 quads, spaced where you want your numbers
* call the object 1_1000_primarydigits_5
* somehow, I don't know how 3dc does it, you need to assign a different material to each quad - dig out someone's guide to numbering their engine, it's the same. Use TrainDecal as the shader, the important bit is that each quad has to be assigned a texture called primarynumber_0 ( and 1, 2, 3 4 ). What's on the textures doesn't matter. The docs for TrainDecal say to call the *material* decal_blahblah, but I didn't know that when I first started using it and it doesn't seem to make the slightest bit of difference anyway; I'd quite like to know what that special material name is meant to enable. Of course I don't think whoever created traindecal was expecting people to use it in child objects...

To reduce the number of textures you can just name the textures in your texture set "primarynumber_x" so they get used as placeholders *and* actually displayed digits - I didn't do this, sorry :p

If you want to handle numbers of variable length, you need to make more objects of variable numbers of quads, and call them 1_1000_primarydigits_2 or however many you want. They must be all exported in the same shape file. You might also not want your numbers visible to 1000m, obviously, I just picked that as a number :)

That's all the important parts of the shape - the most important are the name of the whole object, and the name of the texture files. You can reuse a texture set from some other model if you want, otherwise there's no surprises making one of those.

Yesterday's caboose somehow reverted to looking in the wrong place for the number panels, if anyone downloaded it yesterday at all. New one that works proper-like went up a few hours ago.