bombardiere wrote: ↑Fri Aug 25, 2017 9:01 amI have wanted to do bad engines too. Such as this Vittorio. A bad engine in a normal map, but perhaps in special conditions, it could be useful. Like a good grade climber.
Well the Vittorio was designed for heavy grades, but AFAIK it wasn't a bad engine as such. There's not a lot of information available, but the information that is available doesn't mention any problems with it.
Anyway, I am into UK locos. Probably can be seen from the work I have done.
![Cool 8-)](./images/smilies/icon_cool.gif)
So, I like of what you have shown about your projects. School Class is one of my favourite.
UK locos are usually so clean, which makes them easier to model and skin, and its easier to keep the poly count down.
The Schools is one of my favourites too, but I got stuck on that one because it's more complex than it appears at first. It got to a point where I was having to rethink the entire thing to get the poly count reasonable. The other problem with it is that there's not really a use for it. UK express is already adequately covered for that period. A more useful addition would be the Peppercorn A1 for post-WW2 and (as Tornado) the 21st century. That ones turns out to be fairly simple to model, and skinning shouldn't be too bad either.
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Back to reality wake up call.
![Embarassed :oops:](./images/smilies/icon_redface.gif)
Of course my solution to those valves would be to make them statistic.
![Rolling Eyes :roll:](./images/smilies/icon_rolleyes.gif)
You have probably learnt thatI do not fuzz over small details. Such as locos without coupling rods.
I have thought about walking beam engines a little bit, and you could fudge the drivetrain so it wouldn't have to be completely static.
Okey, you are the new loco chief. What I can do to help you?
A better question is what are you interested in doing? If it aint interesting it will be hard to keep motivation levels up.
My skills have some what improved, but I am far from game component creator. At least I have learnt to add some grunge and effect to the texture to make those more lively.
I'm still learning too. I don't regard myself as an expert at this stuff yet. Getting better though.
I think you have wagon project well under control, so here I can offer little. I want to do a set of British style wagons one day, but that will not help your current project. I did some hexediting back then, but it was really pain, so today I want avoid it as much as I can. That is why my locos were missing rods etc, because I got frustrated with hexing.
Well honestly: I'd
love some help with the wagon project, if you could stand doing it.
1. One or two industry building model to new cargoes / industries. Milo had to use warehouse model for most of new industries and it was a placeholder idea until something better could be done. I think it has been an annoyance to many. I have read that buildings have a footprint issue, but other than that a new building model should not be too taxing. Perhaps I could take a footprint of existing building and base a new model to that.
Footprints are a bit of a mystery. Milo might have known how they are coded, but none of his notes gave the rest of us any useful clues. Footprints are mentioned a couple of times, but that's all. So for now we're stuck with using footprints from existing buildings and working within those limits. But of course you can still completely change the entire building mesh and skin if you want to.
2. I could texture one of your new loco models. Such as Russian S. Assuming I am up to your standards. I have never done a UV map before. I don't think it difficult, just tedious.
Yup, you're right about UV mapping. And quite honestly,
my work isn't up to my standards.
![!DUH! *!*!*!](./images/smilies/smilie120.gif)
In other words, after a while I can always see ways of making it better. So don't worry about my standards. They're impossible anyway.
![Mr. Green :mrgreen:](./images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif)
Plus as long as the basic mesh and UV mapping is good, it's easy enough to change skins later.
I have figured out a few useful things. Like for wheels it's handy to lay out the UV's so that the centres and edges are at even numbers of pixels. The game switches textures to the B skin at pretty close range, so if wheel pixels aren't set to handle clean division by 2 then they will start going eggy while you're still close enough to see it. Heaps of the default models have this problem, and it's so obvious that they really should have had more sense. I try to set them up so they will split evenly down to at least the C skin. That way by the time they turn to crap you won't notice.
The same idea can apply to other components too, depending on how obvious they are and how the graphics are done.
For locomotive and cargo car scale, I've been doing everything to a scale of one modelling unit (ie: RT3, Blender or 3DS base unit) to 10 inches. This seems to be the scale that was intended, based on track dimensions and a range of model dimensions. Default models vary a bit for scale, but if all custom stuff is done as 1 unit = 10 inches then it will all play well together. It's also easy on the brain. Even ok if you have to start with metric plans, since you could use 1 base unit = 250 mm and it would be close enough that nobody would worry (10 inches = 254 mm, so only a 1.6% difference).
I've also like setting up the UV's so that most of those are at a consistent scale too. The Pennsy H3 was done at 20px/inch. It was the first one I've done like that, and it makes things a lot easier IMO. It means you can use the same layer styles across different components and they will look consistent. It also means setting up UV's accurately is a lot easier, since Blender sometimes gets things out of whack when unwrapped. For some special components that rely on alpha a lot (drivewheel spokes, etc) I used a larger scale just to make them less jaggy.