We shall build a locomotive not because it is easy...

[PolyesterMafia]

Hmm. And all this time I thought it was a problem with the 3DCrafter IGS exporter.

[mrennie]

The bounding sphere issue was supposedly addressed in the TS-2014 release, but alas it's still present, especially on large or tall objects.

What I do (and have done since the days of RS) is to create single polys (flipped) and place them at the corners of large buildings opposite the height of the object. If the building is 100' x 100' and 20' tall, then the polys are at the extreme corners and set to -20'. Since the polys are flipped, they're unseen if the object happens to be near a hillside (less polys than a cube, albeit it doesn't matter for the big picture). Towers and utility poles are easier, as they usually only require a single poly centered and opposite the object's height. I use the width and length of the tower/pole to determine the size of the one poly here.

That's exactly what I do with long, narrow parts such as main rods, where for the purpose of doing animations it's more convenient to have the group centre at one end (the end that fits onto a driver). At the opposite end of the rod, floating in space, I attach a small single-face triangle, textured completely with a transparent material. It stops the main rod from disappearing at certain viewing angles. I do this quite a lot with cab controls such as the throttle, because the bounding box problem occurs a lot in the cab due to the close proximity of the camera and the panning around that happens.

[thebigroyboyski]

Thanks for the tips guys
At the minute I'm spending ages deleting all the fracture lines ( not sure if that's the proper name) that are appearing as I cut out my windows. My coach has two rows of windows on the one level so I'm getting loads of them.
I'll get a screenshot of my progress up once I'm a bit more happy with how it looks and is hopefully sitting in the game.
Cheers again for help.

[mrennie]

Thanks for the tips guys
At the minute I'm spending ages deleting all the fracture lines ( not sure if that's the proper name) that are appearing as I cut out my windows. My coach has two rows of windows on the one level so I'm getting loads of them.
I'll get a screenshot of my progress up once I'm a bit more happy with how it looks and is hopefully sitting in the game.
Cheers again for help.

I found that there's a much safer way to do cut-outs (3DC does them very, very badly, leaving lines where there shouldn't be any). Say I want to make a round hole in one face of a box. I place a cylinder into the scene, of the required diameter and rotate it so that the end (the circular face) is flat against the face where I want the hole and in the correct position. Next, I delete that round face as well as the square face it's sitting on. Then I select the cylinder and hit "invert selection" so that the outside faces are now facing inwards. I then merge the box and the cylinder into a single part. Then I use the "Create triangle from points" plug-in to make triangles going from two adjacent points of the outer square to a point of the cylinder where the round face was, repeating all around until there's a square face with the hole in it (and you get the inside faces of the hole for free, just as if you'd done a negative extrude operation). I use this technique a lot to make all kinds of shapes.

Another tool I use even more is "Set Point Position" to place points individually and accurately. It's often the easiest way to make a particular shape.

[PolyesterMafia]

One thing about the fracture lines that are created when doing cutouts is that the models seem to work best if you leave a couple or so of them in to attach the cutouts to the edge of the shape. For instance, on the GP40-2, each cab window is connect by an edge (fracture) line to at least two points on the periphery of the shape, usually a corner point. I have found that if you delete any more fractures than that, it starts messing with the shape in other areas and odd things will happen, such as triangles that disappear for no apparent reason after a Save operation.

Unless it is severely interfering with your unwrap, don't worry about trying to remove all of the edges/fractures. It will not reduce the poly count by much, and if it causes issues with the paint or odd reflections, that can usually be fixed with the Crease operation.

[thebigroyboyski]

I'll see how I get on tonight with that method Mike or I'll just keep deleting the extra lines. There just seems to be a lot of them I can't delete and when I try deleting from the end points all sorts of crazy things happen. I've only done two windows so far out off seventeen on one side of the coach and already have about ten lines I can't shift.

[mrennie]

I'll see how I get on tonight with that method Mike or I'll just keep deleting the extra lines. There just seems to be a lot of them I can't delete and when I try deleting from the end points all sorts of crazy things happen. I've only done two windows so far out off seventeen on one side of the coach and already have about ten lines I can't shift.

That's another reason why I prefer my method. Deleting lines is necessary when they shouldn't be there (if you leave them, other strange things can happen), but deleting lines is also dangerous. One way to do it is to use the "merge faces" plug-in to merge two or more adjoining faces (faces that share a line), which will remove the shared line. However, you have to be sure that the faces are all aligned on the same plane.

[mrennie]

Something else I would normally do in cases like that, where you have a lot of identical parts, is make one part and texture it fully. In the case of your windows, I'd make one surrounded by a square frame, Then, after texturing it (and exporting it to the asset editor to make sure it really is fully textured and looks right in the preview window), I'd duplicate it lots of times, and use the shift tool to shift it along an axis (in your case the z axis) the right distance. Then I'd join them up (joing points or using create triangle). There are lots of ways to do things, and with experience you find the ways that save time without messing things up.

[thebigroyboyski]

Homework done

Testshape.jpg

Now to start the windows.

ViewlinerBody2.jpg

[mrennie]

Nicely done

[5292nate]

Dude! Fantastic!!

[thebigroyboyski]

Cheers guys. It'll take me a couple of days to get all the windows done but it is looking good so far. All I can see is triangles right now from deleting so many lines.
I'll post an update shot once all 37 windows are cut and the frames are in.

[mrennie]

Cheers guys. It'll take me a couple of days to get all the windows done but it is looking good so far. All I can see is triangles right now from deleting so many lines.
I'll post an update shot once all 37 windows are cut and the frames are in.

Something I highly recommend if you've got 37 frames to put in is to make one and then texture it completely before you copy-paste it to make the other 36. It'll save a lot of work.

Looking forward to seeing the result

[thebigroyboyski]

Something I highly recommend if you've got 37 frames to put in is to make one and then texture it completely before you copy-paste it to make the other 36. It'll save a lot of work.

Looking forward to seeing the result

I would never of thought of doing that, ta Mike.

[thebigroyboyski]

I've not had much of a chance to work on the Viewliner lately but i have got the gangways half built and i have windows down one side now. I've also had a little play at creating basic textures.
A couple of pics of the progress so far,

Viewlinerbody3.jpg

Viewlinerbody4.jpg