Rolling Stock skinning ideas

[Gumboots]

I just realised something about loco modelling. Usually when I'm roughing out things, I set a couple of basic rectangles 2.6 units each side of the track centreline. These are the main frame plates, which all steam locos have and which are usually just inside the wheels (some old UK/Euro/World locos have outside frames). This is a quick and easy starting point for the frame mesh while I nut out everything else.

The problem is that I've been leaving these frame plates in my running betas, and that makes them look like a block of black sliding down the track. My brainwave today is that I should always cut the proper outline shape of the plates with alpha before getting the thing running, and then throw at least a basic layer style on it. This is simple to do, and doesn't have any problematic effects on UV mapping.

The frame plates always have to be done as vector shapes (working in raster is useless for this job) and vectors scale perfectly to any size, up or down. This means I can just throw down a basic rectangle to any scale on the texture, then draw a series of vectors inside it to get the required alpha mask (without worrying about details like rivets, etc), and then sort the rest of the UV's without worrying about whether the frame plates will fit or not. If I need to change their size they'll scale without problems anyway, so I can just fit them in wherever I like. No stress.

If I make a habit of doing it this way, the running betas will look a heck of a lot better for very little extra work. It's work that has to be done sooner or later, and it's easy, so all running betas should have it. The ones I made for the Penn462 revamp the other day took hardly any time, and make a huge difference to the looks when compared to the weird box that the PopTop original had down the middle.

[sbaros]

I've been using Camelbacks as shunters* the last day or so, I got to thinking about a quick and easy revamp.

Probably I'm missing something. Where is shunting involved in RR Tycoon?

[Gumboots]

Nowhere really. I was actually using them for very short hauls of minimal value per load. I just called that "shunting" because it wasn't a "real route", and to explain the very low top speed, etc.

I was playing my Latvian Republic 1920 map, and on that map I always st Riga/Exportosta up with three or four stations. This is just to keep congestion to reasonable levels in that area when there are a large number of trains, all of which are running my long custom consists, and to give complete coverage of the twin cities and the ports on the coast. There ends up being a north, south, east, and west station (more or less) with each one handling cargo from a specific section of the map. The short routes between the four central stations have only a few suburban tanks for express traffic.

That results in some freight cargoes having their prices change between those three or four stations, but with minimal value per load. If you don't shunt the freight around it can cause price island effects at the ports, which makes hauling the required medal cargoes difficult. Running a couple of Camelbacks set to low priority/all freight helps stabilise the prices at the ports to a level that is just haulable from elsewhere on the map. The "shunters" don't make much money in the scheme of things, but they keep specific haulage from rural areas to the ports flowing.