Back in the game...

[GoldenPig]

Hey there, folks! It's been a long time for me but after leaving SLI (for a variety of reasons) and playing a really good looking sim like RS2012, I realized how much I missed making trains. I just started playing RS2012 and am eager to start making some models. I haven't had a chance yet to scour the forum for the answer to the question I am about to ask, but I thought I'd ask here and maybe save some scouring. :)

My question: Is there a pdf or document for content creation for RS2012 (including Max and Photoshop plugins)? Creating content for MSTS was super easy and judging from how nice the models in RS look I think there might be a couple more steps for making stuff. :) Any help or just pointing me in the right direction would be awesome!
Thanks so much!

Looking forward to making some rolling stock for this cool and groovy sim! It's been too long!
=DBeck

[jpetersjr]

Welcome.

Yes there is a tutorial on building locomotives for the game.

In the tutorial the person uses 3D Crafter Pro to make the engine.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4864

[GoldenPig]

Fantastic! Thanks!

[BNSF650]

Danny wellcome brother good to have you with Railworks. Cant wait to see some of your stuff in Railworks!!

[jpetersjr]

Hope to see you do some American steam locomotives, love steam power.

[BNSF650]

Anything thay mr beck makes is great. Out

[Kali]

My question: Is there a pdf or document for content creation for RS2012 (including Max and Photoshop plugins)? Creating content for MSTS was super easy and judging from how nice the models in RS look I think there might be a couple more steps for making stuff. :) Any help or just pointing me in the right direction would be awesome!
Thanks so much!

There is a howto to get a very basic engine out of Max and into the game in the developer docs - I'm not quite sure where you can get the download for those anymore, perhaps it's still on the railsimulator.com site, but there is an online version ( sadly lacking images ) at railworkswiki.com. I'm not sure if there's a list of shaders with a really decent explanation anywhere, use of those is more like folk knowledge! but it would help to know what content you want to create first. As a start though:

Locomotive exteriors: TrainBumpSpecEnvMask.fx
* Breaks down into ( I suspect my definitions are not terribly correct, but they're a good start ):
- Train - make a second lighting pass
- Bump - has a normal map, I'm not really terribly sure why it's not Norm. Not a proper surface heightmap, just does tricks with the lighting.
- Spec - has specular highlights
- Env - uses an environment map; you can't change these yourself though
- Mask - channel 1's map, which in this case is the diffuse colour, is used for an effect; in this case it's the level of specular highlights/environment map intensity.

That's probably the most complicated and expensive shader. For rollingstock it's recommended to use TrainSpecEnvMask, but normal maps can add a nice depth. Most of the other vehicle shaders are built out of those components.

There are various shaders you can use with buildings, it depends how you set the textures up; if it's unique & not really tileable and not something you leave in the far distance, I've been using TrainBasicObjectDiffuse; that's basically just a diffuse map which responds to lighting, with the second lighting pass so it looks better. There are a couple of shaders with shadow maps ( I think they're actually referred to as lightmaps ), but I've got no experience actually using them; I believe the one that arrived with RW3 and is recommended would be TrainLightMapWithDiffuse? I don't know though, I can't remember where it got explained.

There are other speciality shaders for lights, glass and other semitransparent materials, rail tops & decals, and other specifics. The game chokes on any textures bigger than 2048^2, it's generally recommended to keep the material count for the model as low as you can without compromising quality, and the naming scheme for objects ( detailed in the creator docs ) is vital. Nothing much else I can think of, other than that most of the shaders don't support alpha transparency so plan your windows and so on as discrete geometry elements.

The ACE exporter for Photoshop doesn't really need a tutorial, you just save your textures as .ace and they get converted when your model is built. It's only if you're working with an existing model you can't build or you want to do some fancy trick with mips that you need to use the .dds exporter, and that isn't really RW specific either.

[jpetersjr]

Taking a look at some of your original MSTS creations, would love to see that SD45-2 in the game, and possibly as freeware if possible.

[BNSF650]

I would pay for anything from him

[GoldenPig]

Hey thanks for that, Kali! Very helpful.
Any of the stuff I make will be freeware btw ;) As a warmup for RS I am gonna do SP's GP35e (a personal favorite)

=DBeck

[Kali]

"- Mask - channel 1's map, which in this case is the diffuse colour, is used for an effect; in this case it's the level of specular highlights/environment map intensity."

That was really terribly worded, but to be fair to myself I'm sick :P. "channel 1's map" was meant to say "Map 1's alpha channel", which in Photoshop terms is just a mask. Max still looks for "image alpha" though.

[BNSF650]

Hey thanks for that, Kali! Very helpful.
Any of the stuff I make will be freeware btw ;) As a warmup for RS I am gonna do SP's GP35e (a personal favorite)

=DBeck

Oh nice! SP all the way ! Cant wait for this

[BNSF650]

Hey Danny any progress yet? I also see that the old MSTS 2 BNSF Geeps are in MSTS Now.. Sure wish we could get them in railworks.

[petersde]

Welcome back, Danny. All of your work with MSTS was top drawer! Your SLI work looked good even on less-than-stellar video equipment. Your creativity and work will be another welcome addition to Train Simulator.

Keep sluggin'
Dave

[imnew]

Danny, you still with us ?