86 Class Update

Ive been busy over the past couple of weeks. I spent most of that time getting used to Gmax again and remembering how to do all of the tricky stuff. I started on the Tangara first, but will post that later so that it appears above this post.

The 86 Class is by far my favourite locomotive, and Ive been itching to get back to this. Looking at it again after so long, I noticed a lot of little problems that I didnt see before, and I have fixed most of those. I also found some short-cuts that I took earlier to save a few polys, have come back to bite me. I left a few edges disconnected, so that I wouldnt have to add a vertex to the other edge (adding polys), but now I can see some tiny annoying gaps, so Ive fixed that, even though it adds a few extra faces.

I corrected some problems with the front of the base, aligning it better, and improving the corners. These fixes saved a few polys. While I was doing that, I figured out a cheat to save even more polys, and took out around 200 or so, without affecting the look of the model. This was mostly underneath. The foot holes through the front plate, and other things were mirrored on the back of the plate. I realised that with backfacing polys being invisible, that I could remove the detail at the back, which is rarely seen, without changing how the front looks, so underneath is now just a simple flat wall, saving all the faces which made up the corners of the holes which didnt really need to be there. Unfortunately all those saved polys came back, and brought friends, when I started on the interior detail.

Previously I had a couple of Auran brake levers temporarily in place, and the brake stand from one of the models on the the Art Source CD, which is almost a perfect match, but not quite. The independent brake is mounted quite low, and on the 86 class, has a bent handle to raise it up to where the driver can reach it. The train brake handle also has a slight bend in it, and the mount to the brake stand allows it to be removed. I quickly knocked up a mount and attached it to the top of the brake stand, then tweaked the Auran levers to be more like the real thing. Im quite pleased with the result, which you can see in the enlarged picture (or check my flickr pages for the latest screen shots).

I finally found a picture of the reverser handle (I had it all along) and realised that the reverser lever was not quite right, so I made it a bit shorter and stubbier. I added the small rails around the horn and wiper controls (added those controls too) and also the drivers and observers switch panel above the side windows. All of these will operate, and the attachment points are all in place. The speedo was floating in mid air (the cyan thing on the left) so I finished it off by adding the mount, and mounting it to the wall. To save on polys, Im not going to model the cables that extend down into the dashboard from it. You can pretend that they disappear into the wall through the mount :p Finally, I added the doors and cut out the windows in them. they're set up to be animated later.

I created some industrial push buttons and mounted them on the dash. I plan to reuse these later in the Tangara too. On the 86, these control the pantographs, and there are a couple of fault ack/reset buttons in that cluster too. I also made one (slightly different) for the backwards transition button, which can almost be seen on top of the master controller between the throttle and regen handles.

One thing that Trainz doesnt do well are push buttons. You can set toggle switches up as levers, and they work fine, but there is no built-in push button function, and nothing close (like a lever is to a toggle) that will easily do the job. I have a couple of solutions in mind, and Im sure other creators have used both methods in the past. One is to make each button a lever with a very long radius and a tiny amount of movement. By placing the pivot several metres away, you wont notice the slight arc in the buttons travel, but it will be very sensitive and possibly difficult to operate. The other is to borrow a steam engine trick and make them animated, with a collision mesh to trigger the animation. This is the method Im leaning towards, as it seems a lot simpler and more reliable. It seems that all modern cabs have push buttons now, so I hope that Auran have a better solution with Trainz 2009.

File Version: 123
Poly Count: 11434

Note: The poly count shown here is for the Gmax model in progress. The count will generally be higher than that of the finished in-game model since it includes duplication, tools, jigs, and other pieces which may not be part of the final model. It may also include parts which are generally counted separately, such as pantographs, interiors, or bogies. LOD modelling will be used to further reduce in-game polygons.