Am I blind?? - E412 (Brenner) Skin

[HighVoltage]

Out ouf a crazy idea this afternoon I started (and finished) work on a reskin of the Brenner Loco, which was build to pull heavy trains over the Brenner-Pass between Austria and Italy, linking Germany and Italy...the original skin must be an Italian painting I found out, I wanted to make a skin how the Austrian Locos look like...so far, so good...

but somehow I CAN'T SEE the E412 Brenner in the drop-down list (where it says Train Model) of the TrainSkin tool...just checked, for every loco provided by PopTop (the .tga's) there is an entry, EXCEPT for the Brenner...
(in the Train Skin, Profile view, Beatuy shot drop down lists all files can be selected, also my own!)

Now, 3 possibilities
1) Am I blind?
2) Have I screwed up something?
3) is this loco missing at everyone elses copy as well?

AD 3 -> now this is what i ask you for in the first place, as this one can be done within a minute I suppose: Please check if you can find the E412 / Brenner in this list!

[nedfumpkin]

It's note in my list anywhere. So you aren't blind or anything.

But all is not lost, you can still do it manually if you have the tools. All the tools you would need can be dowloaded with the TM Passenger set... http://hawkdawg.com/cgi-bin/counter/download.pl?file=060

[HighVoltage]

It's note in my list anywhere.

Strange....
Very strange...

but as it's me it WAS GOING TO BE the only one engine I re-skinned that is NOT in the list, for whatever reason!!!!!!!
couldn't have been any other way, really!

But all is not lost, you can still do it manually if you have the tools. All the tools you would need can be dowloaded with the TM Passenger set... http://hawkdawg.com/cgi-bin/counter/download.pl?file=060

hmm...let me see...you mean the files in folders PK4Pack and PK4Unpack, right?! I've started to read the readme file (on page 3 ?!)
I managed to pack the 3 tga files (I've not converted them to dds manually yet) with the tool easily
However, it's not the conversion to PK4 that makes problems, I don't know how I should link these 3 .tga's / .dds files to the Engine Type that is the E412 / Brenner

(In the Train Skin tool I can write 'E412' in the first drop down line (which also allows individual content) and select these 3 files, and create the pk4 file (correct 432 KB in size)...however it won't show up in the game - and that is, I GUESS, because the skin, these 3 graphics files, are NOT linked with the engine)

[HighVoltage]

By the way, here are a photo of the real loco, and my 2 skin files (I won't be repainting the Beauty Shot)

[nedfumpkin]

NVidia offers a utility for converting tga to dds, and that is what I use. The link to it should be in the docs.

[HighVoltage]

seen it, but there are plenty of files to download
is it the Plug-in for Photoshop ("Adobe Photoshop Normal Map and DDS Authoring Plug-ins") that I need? Or the "DDS Utilities??

but then again, as "TGA files can be used instead of DDS files" I tried the TGAs first, but it didn't work....will it work as soon as I have used the converted DDS files?
Still can't see how the skin can be tied to the Brenner loco ..?!

[nedfumpkin]

I use the command line utilities. It's easisest for me since I don't use photoshop.

Best bet is to unpack another skin set to see all the files you need for the extra skin.

If you want, post the tga files in a zip and I will put it all together for you.

[HighVoltage]

Best bet is to unpack another skin set to see all the files you need for the extra skin.

If you want, post the tga files in a zip and I will put it all together for you.

Alright, I'll see how I come along, will do so tomorrow...it's 3 AM here, off to bed now

If I don't manage it, you helping me would be very kind, thanks for the offer!

[HighVoltage]

Best bet is to unpack another skin set to see all the files you need for the extra skin.

Yep, that helped!
I unpacked the AMD103 and one file, the one with extension .dsc, contained the info which loco the skin is for!
I opened the file with the text editor, and in the 3rd line there was the filename (without extension) of the engine in the EngineTypes folder.

So I took my Brenner .tga's and converted them to PK4 with the TrainSkin tool, however without selecting a Train Type in the first drop-down list, but I wrote E412 in there myself, just like I did before. Then I unpacked thejust created pk4 file and opened the .dsc file, and in the 3rd line there were some...uhm...strange letters...Chinese?!
So I replaced this string with "E412L", the loco filename of the Brenner, saved the file, and packed all these files to pk4 again with the command window
...and you see...it's there and it's working fine!!!
Some minor tweaks are to be made yet, and the Profile view doesn't work (invisible, as one can see from the screens), but I think I can solve this problem easily...must be something with the layers or channels

[nedfumpkin]

I'd be more concerned about how someone is writing on your game with crayon. :)

The profile is in the profile dds, and also the profile.imb file. You need the alpha channel from what I can see, but also the image size is in the imb file. Height is always 32, but length should be whatever the image works out to. Looks like you might have to fix the length.

[HighVoltage]

I'd be more concerned about how someone is writing on your game with crayon. :)

*lol* - it was IN A RUSH!

The profile is in the profile dds, and also the profile.imb file. You need the alpha channel from what I can see, but also the image size is in the imb file. Height is always 32, but length should be whatever the image works out to. Looks like you might have to fix the length.

Thanks for the infos, but I'm already managed it to work!

This morning I opened the profile.imb file and adjusted the width to 128 like you also advised me now - but that didn't do the trick!
The last line begins with "ImageWH" and then usually "0 0" and then 2 more numbers, the last of the 2 seems to be "32" all the time...however, when I created the skin using my own name (in the dropdown list) the third number was 0 as well, which shouldn't be I figured out; and when I used the AMD103 for example (using my E412 skins - which won't work, I know; just for test reasons) it was "114"; it's 138 for the ICE, and 140 for the Eurostar (do you know what this is for?)
so I wrote 114 instead of 0 on the third space, and finally it worked!
....(I know it's not a proper solution, but otherwise I would have to unpack ALL loco pk4's to figure out which number the Brenner might have got...?!)

Also the AMD103 and the alternative Amtrak skin still work perfectly!

So, if nobody advises against it, the skin would be ready for use!

[bombardiere]

Hello. Hhhhhhmmmm I may remember this one incorrectly too as it has been some many years. I remember that Skin convertor didn't work Win98. So may be it does not work with Vista either.

Nice looking loco By the way. A great impromevent over game's loco.

[HighVoltage]

Hello. Hhhhhhmmmm I may remember this one incorrectly too as it has been some many years. I remember that Skin convertor didn't work Win98. So may be it does not work with Vista either.

Nice looking loco By the way. A great impromevent over game's loco.

Well, the Skin converter does work under Vista, just the E412 engine wouldn't show up in the drop-down list for the engine type

You're right, I like it a lot as well....actually a similar loco by the ÖBB (same chassis, only a little shorter, very similar painting (just the white ÖBB logo was reduced in size a lot), the Class 1014 won a prize for the best loco desing when it was released (around 1994 I think). (The Brenner Class 1822 was released 1990)

Will send the skin to Hawk tomorrow, off to the pub now

[bombardiere]

Oh Yeah, now I remember. Yes I have same problem with my version of SkinConverter. E412 is missing from the list.

I soved it by hacking the Skinconverter with a hex editor and replace an engine with E412. Perhaps not the best way to dot it.