Characters

Following a suggestion on UKTS that a pack of people would be a useful addition the set of UK Freeware Packs, I thought I'd give it a go.

I got this rigged character in 3ds max and animated him as if he was using a mobile phone and it seems to work ok.



Unfortunately, when I try to export him to RW I get error messages telling me the bones are not properly named. The RW wiki says that the naming must follow the guidelines, but doesn't actually provide any guidelines. Big help!

Tried renaming the model bones after looking at the sample character file in the development folder in RW, but still no joy.

Guess I'll have to come back to this one at a later stage.

I'm back

Took a little longer than I thought but I'm back, at last.

It's amazing how much you forget when you're away for several weeks, so I've decided to start with something fairly easy.

Having had some involvement with Ben Yates' recently released Cockermouth Keswick Penrith Route, I selected an item that was missing from the route, for my re-introduction to modelling.

Connected to the signal box at Cockermouth Junction is this unusual bridge structure which allowed the signalman to exchange tokens with Down locos, without having to cross the tracks.

As it is so out of the ordinary and iconic to the route I decided it would be a good model both as an addition to the route and as an exercise for myself. Anyway, here's my version.

Apologies

To anyone who reads my blog, apologies for my absence.

I'm afraid real life is very much in the way of virtual hobbies these past few weeks, so I have been unable to add to my body of work since my return from the USA. Hopefully the next couple of weeks will see things back on an even keel and I can return to my modelling. So, to quote Arnie "I'll be back", in the meantime thanks for your patience.

Holiday

I'm off to the USA for a couple of weeks (ash clouds this end and tornados that end, permitting), but before I go a picture of one of the bogie open goods wagons I managed to complete in time.

56041

The combination Guards/Goods van was obviously very successful, because the L&B later built their own version of the concept at Pilton Yard, #23, later#56041. Based on the same pattern, it had the addition of side duckets to improve the guards visibiltiy.

Brake Van

The next piece of rolling stock is one of the early brake vans. Originally open ended they had been glazed in by the 1930's, the period in which we are constructing the route.

Here's the van awaiting duty in Pilton Yard.

As the couplings on the L&B were asymmetrical, with the "chopper" at the "Down" end of the vehicle, it's necessary to ensure the wagons face the right way. I had some doubt as to which direction the brake vans were oriented but this photo from Yeoman's book shows the van with the glazing at the "down" end and the guard standing on the step.

So, I fitted the van out the same way.

A couple more bogie wagons to do then on with the passenger stock.

More Goods Vehicles

Continuing the build of bogie goods vehicles, I have now completed the 8 ton Bogie Goods Van.

Thought I'd celebrate with a little run over the Chelfham Viaduct.

Bogie Wagon

I completed my first wagon with the new freight bogies some hours ago, but I have only just got it into the game.

Tried and tried to load it into the game but no success. Changed all sorts of things but no joy, then eventually realised I had made the ultimate newbie mistake.....I'd missed a "-" sign off one of the bogie axle values. Doh!

Anyway here's the new platform wagon for the L&B.

The photo below was sent to me, not to show the crash, but to illustrate the presence of coal rails on the 4 ton open wagons.

Consequently, I have amended my model accordingly.

Bogie Woes

Moving on to the bogie goods vehicles, I found Chris had made a really nice freight bogie, which I thought need a couple of small additions to complete it. Don't know what went wrong but when I rendered the finished item the normals were a total mess and I decided it was easier to start afresh than try to fix the model.

Consequently, I began modelling a new bogie using the same blueprints that Chris had used, but struggled to get the model to look right.

It took me best part of a day before I realised that both endviews were upside down! Hardly surprising I couldn't make sense of it all. So, as a result of my own foul up, my re-build meant I actually ended up with a more accurate model.

Here's the completed bogie ready for me to start on the bodywork.

Goods Van

Due to the fact they share a chassis the open wagon quickly re-modelled into the 4 ton Goods Van.

I think the S and R need to be faded a little to match the ones on the wagon plus one or two other minor texture tweaks, then it should be finished.

Coupling

Having sorted out the stencil shadow and auto-numbering on the 4ton open goods wagon, I completed the wagon blueprint and placed the model in game using the NG couplings currently available. I didn't, however, like the look of the couplings as they were much shorter than those used on the L&B, so decided to make my own.

Thanks to the help of Captain Bazza I quickly put together a new coupling which, I felt, more closely represented the L&B version. I decided to also include the vacuum pipe, as part of the coupling model, so I could animate the linking together of the pipes when wagons couple up.

This has not been a total success as RW has hardcoded elasticity into the couplings, which means the pipes move apart when the consist is under load, as can be seen in the in game screenshot below. Not sure what to do about this issue, do I just accept it as a consequence of the game engine design, revert to a non-coupling vacuum pipe, or wait for inspiration as to how to get round the problem?

Anyway, here's an in game screenshot showing 2 wagons behind Kevin Martin's model of Lyn. The gap between the pipes is disappointing but, otherwise, I am quite pleased with the results.

W.I.P

Have commenced work on the L&B rolling stock and the first model is taking shape, its the 4ton open goods wagon.

Having the usual fun with the TrainBumpSpecEnvMask shaders, hope somebody will write a tutorial on these bump map shaders sometime, but, in the end, I think I got the look I was after(getting the S and R to extend over the metalwork was interesting). Still to add the Stencil Shadow and the auto-numbering, then need to get the wagon in game and working.

All comments welcome.

L&B Latest

Chris (Ferrisybuga on UKTS) made some rolling stock assets for the route but has moved on to University and the current demands on his time are more important than making models for the route, however, I'm pleased to advise he has passed the source models over to myself so that they can continue to be developed.

Over the next few weeks I hope to complete the work he started to add to the L&B experience.

I'm also pleased to advise that Gary's health is continuing to improve and work has re-commenced on the route scenery.

Has been a while

Sorry, haven't posted for a little while, but a combination of health, holidays and new computer issues have got in the way.

Can somebody please explain why it's so difficult to transfer stuff from your old machine to the new? A week of my life just disappeared.

Anyway, what little time I had to spend on modelling was used up helping Ben with Penrith Station on his Cockermouth, Keswick & Penrith route. Here's a quick look at the results.


Once again, I used my old MSTS models as the basis for the new Railworks version, although the canopies are mainly new, just a few textures re-used.

CKPR

I have been helping out Ben Yates with his CKPR route and decided to try and resurrect one of the TSM models from my MSTS version of the route.

Was a bit of a pain, firstly I tried the new Italian shapefile converter, but it didn't work. It does seem a bit hit and miss as it has worked on other models. Anyway, I had try another method which was to import the .dst file into 3DCanvas then export it to a VRML file, which was then imported into 3ds Max. 3DCanvas does export 3ds files but Max doesn't like them, says they are an invalid format!

Having imported the file I tidied up the mesh (I wasn't a very good modeller back in the TSM days) then applied some shaders and voila....




Not the best model I ever made and certainly not to the standard I would currently expect to achieve, but not bad for a tweaked TSM import.

An apology to L&B fans

Regretably, due to ill health two of the main contributors are unable to continue at this time.

Kevin, who is contributing rolling stock (Lyn) and Gary, who is the route builder are both unwell and unable to continue for the present. I apologise to any L&B fans reading this blog but there will be limited development on the route for the foreseeable future.

However, both Gary and Kevin have expressed a desire to finish their work when they return to better health, so all is not lost.

On the goods news side, Captain bazza's dead computer has been replaced and work has restarted on the Manning Wardles.

We wish Gary and Kevin well and look forward to the day they can return to the route.

Cauliflower update

The loco and tender are now in game and working.



There's still alot of work to do but at least its a positive step forward.

Unfortunately, I am having my usual difficulties with the coupling of the rolling stock as I get overlapped buffers, and failure to couple, problems. Its one area of RW I've always had difficulty with, so if anyone out there knows how to do it, let me know!

CKPR

I live in the Lakes District where there are two railway lines of particular interest, the Furness Railway and, my favourite, CKPR(Cockermouth Keswick Penrith Railway).

I spent several years researching the route and developing it for MSTS, but never released it. Consequently, I was very interested when Ben Yates started to produce a version for RW and a great job he is doing of it. Ben and I have had some correspondence on the route and he expressed a desire for a Webbs 18" Goods 0-6-0 loco, nicknamed Cauliflower, as they dominated the traffic on the route upto and into, the 50's.

I had a similar desire when I was doing my MSTS route and as no one expressed an interest in helping, I made my own.




As I understood Ben's frustration I decided to try and resurrect my old model. Firstly I imported the .dst files into 3DCanvas from which I exported the files in .3ds format. These were in turn, imported into 3ds Max and I had myself a model of a Cauliflower.



The mesh was a mess and took some sorting out but finally I was able to export the loco as a RW scenery model.



Still a bit of work to do on textures and shadows but not bad I thought, for a first loco!

Then I started on making it a working model for the game. Spent days wondering why it wouldn't show up until I realised you have to have a simulation blueprint before it will appear as an engine. Since then I have struggled with blueprints for bogies, couplings, brakes, cabs etc etc etc not to mention scripts and csv files, animations and audio. I'm nearly bald with the hair tearing frustration. Still, the engine now appears in game, although I get a SBHH system crash if I go anywhere near it!

So watch this space for imminent reports of my early demise from RW Physicsitis.

Aaaaaargh.....!!!

The amount of work I put into modelling for Railworks is a good demonstration of how much I like the game, but occasionally it makes we want to tear my hair out. I hadn't intended to post anymore on the subject of the Transporter bridge but I thought I'd give a liitle background on my last few days, in the hope it may help someone else.

I have been trying to add sound to the model and had endless problems. It took longer to add the sound than to build and animate the model! As too often, the wiki is worse than useless and only confuses rather than informs, so the only way to go is looking at the work of others, for which Mike Simpsons RWTools is invaluable.

The problem I wish to draw attention to is caching by the asset editor. Here's a comment from Pete(karma99) which I found invaluable.

Sounds like the asset editor and it's infamous caching.. if you try and rebuild with a file that's older than the last one it saw, it will ignore it.
It's trying to save time recompiling everything on every build, but it's a pain in the ********* butt if you don't get every single part of the export perfect on the first go!

If you go to the Assets/Kuju/Shapeviewer folder and delete the appropriate folder in it (ie Scenery) you should be able to get a fresh export without it remembering everything.
Note: DO NOT delete the files in the route of the Shapeviewer folder. If you do this the Asset Editor can sometimes die horribly and just stop working altogether until a random point in the future!

Whilst this was good advise, I found it was also necessary to delete the entries in the relevant assets folder as well. Not certain but perhaps the .tgt files may be the culprit here?

Anyway, I found that everytime I made a change to the sound file it was necessary to undergo this tortuous procedure to ensure the changes took effect, otherwise I was never sure if I had made a mistake or the system was just messing about.

Ok, rant over, but I sometimes wonder if the phrase "user friendly" was ever used at Kuju?

Quick update and a problem.

I decided that a transporter bridge needed to move, so I created an animated version.



Whilst doing this I came across a problem. Both the bridge and the gondola have night textures which illuminate parts of the model at night, by use of the AddATex shader plus the suffix -night on the object name. e.g 1_0512_decklights_night

As the gondola is now moving, its night textures had to be seperate from the bridge ones, so I split them accordingly. Consequently, neither appeared in the game as, apparently, RW only supports one object with the -night suffix! Not an issue with static objects, but certainly a problem with animated items.

Very big crane!

Many of the counties in the UK have significant rivers flowing through them, Thames, Severn, Avon etc. but I was born and raised in County Durham which is (I believe) unique as it is associated with three major rivers. There is the Tyne to the North, Tees to the South and the Wear throught the centre.

Each of the rivers has iconic bridges associated with it and I grew up seeing them on a regular basis. Kuju have already created the Newcastle-upon-Tyne crossings for railworks and Darpor is currently doing a great job of the Monkwearmouth bridge at Sunderland, but there was a recent request for a model of the transporter bridge across the Tees at Middlesborough.

If you have read the earlier entries in my blog you'll know I like cranes and the transporter bridge is a very large variation on a crane, so I was unable to resist the challenge. So here we have it, the Middlesborough Transporter Bridge.




This is an extract from a history of the bridge...

The Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge has been a symbol of the area since it was opened in 1911.

It is a total of 851 feet (259.3 metres) in length which makes it the longest of those remaining in the world. Its cantilever construction has three main bridge spans that give it its unique appearance. The bridge is, effectively, two almost independent structures joined at the centre of the River Tees. Each half of the bridge has an 'anchor' span of 140 feet (42.6 metres) and then cantilevers across the river some 285 feet (86.8 metres) from the tower leg to meet its twin from the opposite bank. The passenger gondola is suspended by steel cables and runs on a wheel and rail system approximately 160 feet (48.7 metres) above the River Tees.

The Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge is fully operational and provides a regular quarter-hourly service between Middlesbrough and Port Clarence for 18 hours a day. It remains the largest of the Transporter Bridges operating worldwide, and provides a valuable public transport service, crossing the river in two minutes.

Traffic update

This whole traffic idea was stimulated by the shortage of 1930's vehicles for Railworks, so I'm pleased to report that Jeff Layfield has added a bus to my collection. Seen here causing a traffic jam.



I also took the opportunity to create another vehicle model of my own, so here's the pre-war Morris 8. Once again the spokes have been removed from the wheels on the Traffic version of the model.



I also experimented with laying the invisible path below an existing road. This works just fine, but I can't deny that placing the loft under an existing road loft is a bit of a pita!

More traffic news

Thanks to Jeff Layfield, I was able to place a couple more vehicles on the traffic blueprint, but this highlighted a further problem. As I hope you can see in the picture, the wrong way round effect puts the driver on the wrong side of the vehicle and the lettering on the front and back are reversed.



Consequently, it was necessary to mirror all the models, so they appear the right way round in game.



Its not easy to see but the second picture also illustrates what we decided to do about the non-rotating wheels. All static reference points were removed from the wheels, for instamce holes, nuts and spokes.

As a consequence of all the work that was needed to get these models working in game, I am convinced that moving vehicle models should be made especially, whilst static scenery models should be made seperately. It may be possible to use the same model for both, if it is a modern symmetrical vehicle and the glass is obscure, but totally pointless with asymmetric classic/vintage vehicles.

P.S. Just had a further thought on whether to have different models for static and moving traffic. Static traffic looks naff at night with its lights on and moving traffic silly without them, so another reason for seperate models.

Road testing Jeff Layfields Foden

As previously mentioned, I want to create some 1930's traffic for the route but it's not possible to create traffic in Railworks without access to the original .igs file of the vehicle model. Jeff Layfield has kindly agreed to donate his Foden model to let me try and see if I could get it working.

I created a Vehicle Properties Blueprint using Jeff's .igs file for the vehicle source, so I had something to run on the road. Next I made the Traffic Control Blueprint which populates the road with as many vehicle blueprints as you wish to select and finally the Vehicle Path Blueprint which links your vehicles with the road. In this case I chose an invisible road for convenience as I had previously set it up when I was animating Captain Bazza's ships. They were all exported to game with the following result.



As you can see, the wagon is facing the wrong way and RW have still not resolved the problem with vehicle paths which turns the model inside out and the wrong way round!

Firstly, to deal with the direction of travel I imported the .igs file back into 3dCanvas (realising how much I had forgotten since changing to 3ds Max) and rotated the model 90 deg left. From the film you would think it should be 90 deg right, but remember that RW turns the in-game model end over end. Then I normalised the objects, which resets the pivot point to the correct orientation, and the lorry should now run the right way round.

Next, I needed to solve the problem of the inside out look. There are 2 ways to do this in 3dCanvas. Firstly, use the double side plug-in, which does exactly what it says... it makes all the poly's double sided. Not the best option as it doubles your poly count and may cause some z-fighting issues.

The second way is to open the properties pop-up of the object then enter BackfaceCull=0 in the RailsimX field. This tells the game to texture both sides of the polys, so overcoming the inside out effect.



Whilst altering the properties I took the opportunity to change the Diffuse value to 50, as 3dCanvas' usual setting is a bit bright in RW.

So, I then re-loaded the model into RW with the following result.

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I think that's a success, although I can see there's some z-fighting on the underframe.

Discovered the problem with the underframe was due to overlapping polys, so deleted the excess polys. Whilst I was working on the model in 3dCanvas I took the opportunity to add softshadow, stencilshadow and night glows to the model.



One problem remains to be solved and that is the wheels, which don't go round. Looks weird! Don't know if scrolling textures might solve that, will have to think about it?

Back on topic

There is a shortage of 1930's vehicles for Railworks, so I contacted Jeff Layfield to ask his help in providing motive transport for the route. More on this later.

But it set me thinking. For some time I have wanted to try out the poly-modelling technique of model building, as opposed to the primitives method I normally use. So, as I was looking for more 1930's transport, I thought a new vehicle was a good way to try out this method and here are the results.

Off topic

Just for a change of scenery I offered to help John Bennett with a couple of items for his Bacup route.

The first was an attempt to transfer one of John's sketchup models into Railworks using an import script I found for 3ds max. The importer worked fine, but then I had to tidy the model up a bit followed by renaming to RW standards.

Also took the opportunity to add night textures, stencil shadows, smoke and waterscenery effects.



John also asked if I could use one of his watercolours as a basis for a Burton the Tailors shop.



A generation ago these were on every High Street and all had distinctive "Art Deco" facias. On a personal note, at one time I used to do alot of business with Burtons and visited their Leeds HQ on many an occassion, but that was in a former life:)

Anyway, I gave it a try and with a bit of artisitic licence, came up with the following.

Problem solved

In my earlier blog on crossings I mentioned a problem with Pilton Crossing. Although the crossing is single track, on the Pilton Yard side there is a junction so it quickly becomes twin track which meant the trigger was too close to the crossing.

Thanks to AndiS, the problem is solved by the simply increasing the number of triggers in the blueprint to 3.



Click on the image for a better view.

.....and finally!

At last! The final station building for the route, Lynton & Lynmouth Station.



Over to Gary now to scenerise things.

Level Crossings

I was a bit fed up with doing buildings so, for a change, I have been updating the level crossing I made for Braunton Rd.

Had some fun learning the basics of 3ds max animation, which, like everything in 3ds max, is very powerful but easy to get wrong. Thanks to the guys on the UKTS forum I was able to overcome my difficulties and produce the results below.





Thought I may as well continue and make the crossing for Pilton Yard as well.





These are based on AndiS's lua scripts as I don't know how to use the new RW crossing scripts. Perhaps I'll update them again when RS eventually release the details of their new crossings?

AndiS, if you're reading this, perhaps you can tell me if its possible to have a single track level crossing with more than one trigger for when there are two tracks converging to one, just before the crossing?

Goodshed

After a major crash of 3ds Max, at long last the goodshed for Lynton is finished.

I must try RSDerek's less is more approach to modelling, it must be less stressful.



Must tone down that white brickwork on the chimney a bit!

Lynton Yard

There are a couple of strange structures in the Lynton goods yard, as can be seen in the following picture. (click the picture for a larger version)



On the right is an unusual leanto building which appears to have been some kind of store. To the left are some odd wooden structures which I believe were intended for the use of the coal merchant for storing coal awaiting bagging.

Anyway, here's my attempt at modelling them.