Rolling Stock skinning ideas

[bombardiere]

Yup, I have downloaded this. Thank. I have not yet used, but I like the preview. Very British looking coaches.

The doubledeckers look good too. So many European countries are using similar coaches.

[Gumboots]

The paint job is sorta British. The livery is basically 19th century GWR, slightly adapted. The cars themselves were modelled on Bavarian cars of the period, simply because that's what I had plans for and they were close enough to a generic car of the 1840's.

[Gumboots]

Have finalised the mesh for the new 1900-1925 express cars. Mail and Troops share the same mesh (no clerestory). Pax and Dining also share the same mesh, but with a different (clerestory) roof and a few more roof vents. This means skinning is easy, with minor tweaks for the different car types on the same basic PSD.

Gave the Mail cars a test run. Everything works. Skin is a little bit dark for my liking at the moment, so I'll lighten it up just a touch. Will also give the striping and lettering a bit more contrast. Shouldn't take long to get all four types done.

Anyway they look like this.
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For comparison, the car body (not counting roof overhang) is about 5% longer than the default D era pax cars. Roof height (without clerestory) is slightly less than a default D era pax car.

Edit: Got the troop cars done too. Pax and dining cars next.
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[Gumboots]

Ok, so I un-finalised the mesh again.

Wasn't quite happy with the look of the troop and mail cars. The low arc roof left them looking a bit "underfed weasel" with the 65 foot car body length. So I gave them a bit more camber in the roof, and curved the roof ends down too. This meant a bit of tweaking but they look a lot better now, like a real car of the period. Basic roof mesh ended up the same for all four cars, except that pax and dining have the centre section replaced with the clerestory. Have also tweaked skins for better balance, which helps looks too. Took a bit of messing around to get it sorted for RT3 game lighting, but they're good to go now.

I also found I could cut the number of LOD's. RT3 does a weird thing with LOD's. Locomotives drop down to the lowest (fifth) LOD while cargo cars are still on the second or third LOD, depending on viewing angle. This means the default cargo cars waste a lot of code, because there's no need for cargo cars to have 5 LOD's. By the time they get to the fifth one, cargo cars will look miniscule and the locomotive will have been on the lowest LOD for ages.

So I cut these cars down to 3 LOD's, dropping a stack of mesh really fast. They look fine in the game, and it means less code to run so it has to be better for performance. It's also easier for me, which I like.

They ended up looking like the shots. I reckon they're classy units, and I'm very happy with them.

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[RulerofRails]

Just to let you know that I have run the A era cars about a bit. Good work. I like how you decided to put the "fancy" car type as the Diner.

[Gumboots]

Yup, back in those days dining cars didn't exist, and often any salon car would be privately owned by some rich person. They'd just pay to have it hauled wherever they wanted to go. So I went with that vibe.

I still think the A era cars need a bit of tweaking. They're almost right, but not quite there. Skin balance is a bit off, and they could do with a little bit of detailing (handles on doors of standard pax cars, for example). Will play around with them and see what happens.

Have had a crack at the rest of the early pax, mail, dining and troop cars. These should be running in the game soon. They use the same PSD as the D era cars I've just done, and share quite a bit of mesh too. Troops starts later than the other express cargoes, so the four troop cars shown are 1848-1864, 1865-1889, 1890-1914 and 1915-1939.
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The last one is the same model as the 1900-1925 pax car. IOW, the same model as the 1890-1914 troop car, but with the pax car's clerestory roof added. 1940 to 1964 will be a Pullman troop sleeper (boxcar conversion). These were actually based on a 50 foot car, but I'll be doing them as 60 foot just to fit better with the rest of the models.

Pax and mail cars shown are B to D eras inclusive: 1850-1874, 1875-1899 and 1900-1924. From 1925 they'll go to a more modern style (basic 75 footer, with rounded tail on dining car).
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[Gumboots]

Ran a quick test of the E era cars, just to check out if my plan for 1925-1949 livery would work under RT3 game lighting. It works.
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This is a basic job, done by cropping and resizing a profile shot of a model B&O pax car of the period, pasting that over the right sections of the default D era pax car skin, and dropping the result into UserExtraContent for a trial run. Took about ten minutes. Running on default D era mesh at the moment.

So it's good to go, but I'll give it a few tweaks. I'll ditch B&O text, so it doesn't shout "Baltimore!" when the train is running around some place on the other side of the world, because that sort of thing bugs me. Also have to make a round tail dining/observation car to complete the set, which will be easy and fun.

Anyway the short version is the pre-WW2 express roster should be fully sorted this week, barring Armageddon.

[bombardiere]

I like. Me happy.

. I'll ditch B&O text, so it doesn't shout "Baltimore!" when the train is running around some place on the other side of the world, because that sort of thing bugs me.

If you have finalised B&O version then can I have it as an option. Pretty please. Ok, I agreed it would look odd in Africa, but I like when it has a real life livery.

Is that your D version, three axle bogie, based on some real life prototype?

[Gumboots]

It's not finalised yet, just roughed out. I'll do it in combination with the F era car, since both will use the same mesh and UV mapping. The main differences will be that the E cars will be modelled as 75 footers, while F era and later will be 85 feet (IOW, stretch the mesh by 13%) and the F era dining car will have an observation dome on top (there is plenty of room for mapping that on the skin).

The D era car is based on a Pullman unit from the beginning of the 20th century, but there were so many minor variations of them that I felt free to just take the main dimensions and use those to develop my own model. I didn't get obsessive about it.

Edit: Got the B and C era pax, dining and mail cars running this morning. They look the business, IMO.
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Will do the troops A, B and D cars tonight.

Edit: Got them done. Pack is over here - Gumboots' Dungeon of Evil thread.

[Gumboots]

Hey just for fun, as a no-brainer break from doing express cars, I tried throwing a rough skin on that model of the Milwaukee Class A Atlantic that I made a while back. I had been thinking it would be tricky to skin, but after giving it a bit of thought it turns out to be quite easy. This was all done by taking a profile illustration of the loco, and projecting the UV mapping onto the illustration via a straight orthographic profile view. That accounts for where it's a bit rough, like towards the centreline at the front where the illustration gets stretched around the mesh, but overall the results are surprisingly good. It's certainly a useful starting point for something better, and has given me some more ideas for how to tackle skinning.

[RulerofRails]

Nice. If it was running in game . . . it's good enough for me to use it.

[Gumboots]

It's a bit rough for a finished product, although I admit it would look decent enough when zoomed out.

[Gumboots]

Just had a go at the proposed G era double boxcars, since I figure I should finish some more cargo cars. They work, but I found another RT3 bug/glitch/whatever.

These are the doubles that use two different sized cars: a 40' PS-1 and a 50' X58. Obviously both are mapped to the same skin. Anyway, although they trundle down the track like they should, the catch is that they are scrunched into the back of the tender at the front, and there's an excessive gap to the caboose at the rear.
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What is happening is that although I set the body origin exactly centred between the inner ends of the two boxcars, because the front one is longer than the back one the game engine tries to even the lengths out. The halfway point between the outer ends of the two boxcars is shown by the Blender cursor in the middle section of the screenshot.

What's happening is that RT3 is shunting the cars forward so that their outer ends are centred around this point. Despite this, the LengthPoint and TrackPoint files are not affected. They work normally, AFAICT, because the front of the first boxcar is protruding out past where the front length point is.

This all means the front boxcar gets shunted into the tender, and the back one will have a large gap to whatever is behind it (caboose, in this case). The way to fix it, obviously, is to reposition the boxcars so that their outer ends are centred on the Y=0 point. Which I will do shortly, then test again.

[Gumboots]

Alrighty then. Shunted the model bits around, exported them to .3dp again, sorted the hex attachment/length/track points, and gave them another run in the game.

It works. They behave perfectly now, which is gratifying since I was a tad concerned RT3 might do something even weirder this time. Fortunately, it didn't. Not this time. So, we now know how to do multiple units with unequal length cars: simply set them up so that the outer ends, or outer wheels, are centered on Y=0. Easy.

I have noticed one catch with another idea though. I also tried adding a transparent rectangle to the body file, in the hope that would give a large, easy-to-hit, non-visible target to allow seeing the cargo type just by hovering over the gap between the first and second cars. Turns out the devs very helpfully coded things so that hovering to see cargo type only works on non-transparent pixels. Transparent ones aren't visible to the cursor, so that idea is cactus.

This means the only ways of seeing the cargo type are a/ hover the cursor over the middle bogie, which works but is tricky on a moving train, or b/ look at the cargo icon if it's a cargo which has one available, or c/ use some custom skinning of various cargoes if necessary, or d/ check it out in the train list profile. Which is all workable, just not quite as convenient as I would have liked. It's RT3. You get that.

[Gumboots]

Hey just on a whim, because I've been using Camelbacks as shunters* the last day or so, I got to thinking about a quick and easy revamp. The Camelback is one of the default models that is just a bit too rough IMO. The octagonal smokebox and candy cane paint job are a bit more than I can stomach for normal use.

Fixing the paint job isn't a big deal. Fixing the basics of the mesh, without going crazy pedantic everywhere, is also pretty easy. I had a quick go at the mesh just for fun, and it looks a lot better.
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This could easily be combined with a revamp of the stats. The default stats are:

Available: 1896-1926
Purchase price: $80,000
Annual maintenance: $7,000
Fuel economy: Very Good
Acceleration: Poor
Reliability: Average
Pax appeal: Ugly
Top speed: 60 mph
Free weight: 30
Pulling power: 5

For re-purposing as a good shunter, these could be changed to:

Available: 1896-1956
Purchase price: $80,000
Annual maintenance: $7,000
Fuel economy: Very Good
Acceleration: Above average
Reliability: Good
Pax appeal: Gruesome
Top speed: 23 mph
Free weight: 120
Pulling power: 6

This would be perfectly usable for short hops between stations, but too slow for trips of any distance. It would be reliable enough to haul freight of the era without a caboose (caboose on shunters seems stupid) and would be strong enough to haul it at top speed on flat terrain, while being about the same as the default stats up hard grades (ie: pretty crap). It would also be cheap to run, which is important for a shunter as any cargo price differentials are going to be minimal.

If it's done like this, suddenly the Camelback has a valid use in the game, and one that fits with how similar locomotives were used IRL.

*The game's beastie is a Reading B7a, very roughly done, and they really were shunters. They were useless for anything else. Some were in service until the early 1950's.

[Gumboots]

Got it running. I like it.

They make an excellent shunter with these stats. Would also be an acceptable little unit for freight on short branch lines. Too slow for long distances though, which is what was intended, and not so good on heavy grades. They're best suited for grades of 3% or less.

Since this is probably the first time I've used Camelbacks since Noah was a lad, on account of the default one being so ugly, I just noticed that it has a few minor bugs. Wheels are a bit oval, RHS connecting rod hex needs tweaking, and there a couple of other very minor niggles. I'll whip something up to fix all of that. Since the default files are hidden in some of RT3's massive PK4's, I'll just do the reskin and debug kit as loose files for dropping into UserExtraContent. They have to be loose to override the contents of a default PK4, so that's the sensible option and will save having to repack half the game.

Anyway, with a bit of tweaking the Camelback actually becomes fun to use, so I'm going to be using it.
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[AT41B]

I was just looking at the Camelback, cabin not painted in red, and I remember when I was a preteen, there was a loco that moved cotton to and fabric from the textile mill. It’s track was about 90 yards from my house. It looked very much like the camelback. It made a daily run to and from. It also served the farm implement manufacture and fertilizer plant that was within a half mile from my house.

[AT41B]

these were local yard tracks. The main lines here then were NC&St L, Southern, and L&N railroads. Oh BTW, this was in Huntsville, Alabama in the late mid to late 40s.

[Gumboots]

Cool.

Apart from the Wootton firebox it's just a basic 0-6-0 switcher, and there were stacks of those things running around yards and docks in the late days of steam. Offhand I don't know what the railroads in your area used, but it probably wouldn't be hard to find out if you wanted to.

[RulerofRails]

It looks much nicer now.

Using shunters is a concept that I haven't experimented with mainly because I don't often do multiple stations. I have always viewed short-haul count/revenue to be more of a "cheat" although probably better classified as an exploit. In saying this, there are some exploits I do think are ok to use, like buying/selling shares will game is paused when I get a bonus/buy territory access, cargo stacking. Just have trouble with the notion of hauling a few cells and getting paid for it in a process that can loop endlessly.

With overlapping stations there is the practical risk that this movement may upset industrial production (not really a concern on Riga map), since the station further from the industry can rob its stack of resources repeatedly. This is not really in-line with a low-impact plan to manage resource flows for maximizing industrial production. One could argue that it's good for rail profits, but you may not haul as much of the finished goods. Of course, for high haulage tasks this doesn't matter.

Anyway, IMO your tune ticks the boxes, except that if you really want to limit it to short-hauls you should increase fuel costs which are based on mileage. Should be higher than a freighters. You set the H3 at level 6, so I would suggest using level 7.