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.
Saturday, 23 April 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, 14 April 2011
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.
Sunday, 20 March 2011
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.
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.
Friday, 11 March 2011
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.
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.
Monday, 7 March 2011
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!
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!
Thursday, 3 March 2011
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.
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.
Thursday, 24 February 2011
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.
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?
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?
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