Buffer Progress

I guess Ive needed a break from the Tangara. This is normal for me. I spend months focused on a single project and then have to get away from it for a while. Im sure that I will get back to that soon.

Ive done some more work on the buffer stops that I started months ago, and now have the model finished. Im still trying to get the textures right, but this is a good thing, as I really do need to learn more about texturing before I start trying to skin something as complex as the Tangara.

As always, Ive read tons of forum posts and tutorials, and am jumping right in, avoiding many newbie mistakes. Ive figured out the relationships between ambient, diffuse, and specular lighting. Ive tweaked Gmax so that it will actually output these values (the default Asset Creation Studio settings dont do specular etc) and Im using the Max plugins so that bump mapping will work.

The Content Creation Guide recommends that you should only use bump mapping on locomotives, but I am experimenting with it here, because these buffers have a coarse wood grain which normally shows as bumps under the thick white paint that they are covered in. You can see the grain in the picture, but that screen grab has no bump mapping and looks kind of flat. When I get something that I am happy with, I'll move on to the scripting.

Its set up as a signal (as buffers should be), and I have set up the light that way too. Ive seen other buffers which use seperate corona effects or a night mesh to light them, but to me, setting the lamp up as a signal light seems like the right way, and works fine. I'd like to script it so that the light can optionally be placed in the center (as shown) or moved to the left or right post, or completely removed, since I have seen many different configurations in my travels.

Im thinking of using mesh attachments to do this, with a properties dialog used to switch them on and off. I will start on the script once Im happier with the way Trainz is rendering the textures.

Train Stop Fixes

Someone pointed out some problems with the train stops - most notably they werent initialising properly and would be in the wrong position until at least one train had passed. This has now been fixed.

There is also another issue, which I think is related to TRS2004 since I cant reproduce it in 2K6, where if you fly back to a signal, crossing a base board boundry as you go, the train stop appears in its default position, despite nothing having changed since you last saw it in the correct position. At this stage, I dont think there will be a fix for that one, as it seems that there are no obvious messages or hooks when this happens that I could detect and bind a fix to.

I'll be uploading an updated version soon.