It goes up, It goes down

A quick update to show some more of the pantograph. Ive added the cross-arms and animated it. There is still a little more to do on the details and animating other bits such as the pistons which operate the pantograph. So far the entire pantograph, including the base, weighs in at about 980 polys, which I reckon is pretty good, considering whats in it. I need to add a few more though.

I also discovered a small miss-match between the interior and exterior around the small side windows, so that has been fixed as well.

While I'm here, Im going to play around with the blog template a bit. It seems that I cant do much about the width without changing all of the background images. Eventually I'd like to redo the whole thing with a proper Redfern Workshopz header and a variable width template. Perhaps one day.

You can actually see that Im only working on half a loco in the screen shot above.

Update: 31 Jan - The pistons are now animated. Im not going to animate the springs. Still some polys to add on the contact. The pant is now 1020 polys. I removed some jigs that I had hidden - the model is now 8703 polys. File version is 108.

File Version: 106
Poly Count: 9031

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 various tools, jigs, and other pieces which may not be part of the final model. LOD modelling will further reduce in-game polygons.

Pants!

My head hurts.

I've done a bit more on the 86 Class. I added the last of the hand holds (at the front) and have started on the first pantograph. All that concentration has given me a headache.

Im making a heavy duty version of a cross-arm pantograph, as was originally fitted to the 86 Class (Like the ones you see on the S sets, but tougher). I also plan to build a heavy duty version of a high speed panto, which were used on the 86 Class in later years. (Like the ones on the Tangara). While the loco itself is going to be payware, the pantographs will be free, and available on the DLS. I will also eventually be building a light duty version of each, and have already started on the high speed version for the Tangara. These will also be on the DLS, and having all four versions used by Railcorp / Cityrail will allow me to use them on other locos in the future. If you like them, you could even use them on locos make by other creators.

I've finished the base and the contacts, and added the pistons and springs. I need to tweak those some more. I havnt built the cross-arms yet, but they will be next. You can just see the pivot bar for the arms in the base, if you squint :)

Somehow, I managed to freeze the ditch lights, so they havnt been appearing on recent screenshots. They're back now, and integrated into the base so that they wont go missing again. I havnt started on the headlights yet.

I also did a bit more work on the catenary, and have the first model almost ready for testing in Trainz.

Im off to Japan at the end of this week, so if I dont post anything for a couple of weeks, you know why.

The poly count has crept up a bit - remembering that the number below represents half of the loco. Im not sure if you can use LOD modelling on pantographs, but I guess I will find out. Im building this one with a lot of detail, but I can make it a bit simpler if I have to. I plan to animate it, and besides the usual up and down motion, you should also be able to see the pistons and springs expand and contract. I want the workings to be apparent. The panto itself isnt really using a lot of polys. The number below includes a lot of things that will be separated into different files, so individually, it should be fine.

File Version: 102
Poly Count: 8931

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 various tools, jigs, and other pieces which may not be part of the final model. LOD modelling will further reduce in-game polygons.

Sliced & Diced

Ive stripped the Tangara back to bare metal and sliced it up a little. This will allow me to break the texture maps of the body into smaller chunks so that I can get a better resolution on the texture itself. It will also help when it comes to constructing the remaining carriages.

Now that I have finally figured out how to UVW Map the body, I removed all of that, and using the Slice tool, cut the body into thirds (Kind of like they did to the 4D, if you ever saw Ian Green's "after" pictures). I then spent a few hours hand optimizing the cuts to reduce the poly count as much as possible. Together the two slices ended up adding about 80 polys.

Next, I will redo the texture map from scratch, since there are now more maps / materials to work with.

Along its length, the body was essentially one piece. I could divide the maps horizontally into walls, roof, floor etc, but I still had to fit the full 20 metre length across a single 1024 pixel texture. I didnt want to use a larger texture, so this gave me a resolution of about 20mm per pixel, which was not good enough for lettering or fine detail. I can now bring that down to around 6mm per pixel, which although not perfect, is a big improvement.

File Version: 384
Poly Count: 17631

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 various tools, jigs, and other pieces which may not be part of the final model. LOD modelling will further reduce in-game polygons.

NSW Catenary

Ive had this on my project list for a while now. One of the guys on the Trainz forum who is working on the Cityrail project asked for catenary, and I figured I could help out, and added it to my list. I figured it was about time I actually started on it.

Ive knocked out the first variation. There are quite a few more to go, but hopefully they will be easy, since I now have the main components made, and only need to work on the differences for each variation.

Obviously the Tangara comes first, but I wanted to show a little progress on these.

I have yet to texture this one, and test it in Trainz, but I will do that soon. Once I have it looking the way I want, I will work on the rest, in-between working on everything else, and release them when I have enough variations to build a decent overhead system.

I plan to add tension weights and anchors, as well as dual track (dual mast and gantry versions) and will also do a few "glue" pieces to join things together, such as wire only etc.

This one is a 40m inner arm version. The polly count is a little higher than I'd hoped, due to the I-beam and insulators, but I thought it was important to capture those - especially the I-beam, as it makes our masts distinctive.

File Version: 01
Poly Count: 209

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 various tools, jigs, and other pieces which may not be part of the final model. LOD modelling will further reduce in-game polygons.

Tangara Texturing

Just a quick update to show whats happening with the Tangara. Im currently in the middle of texturing the Control Trailer, which will be my "base model". As you may know from earlier posts, the plan is to complete the base model, including textures, before I continue on to the remaining carriages. To make all the different train variations, (T Set, G Set, 4D etc) I will need to build around 8 carriages all together, and it will be so much easier if I start from a base model which is already textured, rather than building and texture mapping each model from scratch.

Im starting on the body. This is my first time texturing such a complex model, and there has been a steep learning curve. I think I must be on about my 10th attempt by now, each time starting over as I figure out a better approach. I think I finally have the idea, and should hopefully be able to show you the finished result in a few days, with some basic textures on it. Then its on to the interior...

The texturing process has highlighted a few slight problems such as extra faces that I did not see before (stuck inside something else or back-facing) and edges which should have connected, but didnt etc. As I map each surface to a material, I occasionally end up with a few left-over faces which did not get mapped to anything, so its just a matter of tracking them down and fixing the problem. Wireframe mode has helped find a few stray edges that showed up this way.

As far as posting is concerned, it seems Im damned if I do, and damned if I dont. I just installed Picassa on the new machne, and it has shrunk the screen shot down to a reasonable size (as compared to my 1280x1024 screen), but now I cant add tags to this post and it doesnt contain the template that I set up to show poly count etc, so once I post this, I will have to edit it to add all of that. Sheesh.

You may just have to put up with the large screen shots because manually resizing them is more effort than a simple post should require. Picassa seems to be having issues, so Ive uploaded them manually again.

Update:
Ok, well I finally have the body mapped. Here is a shot with the texture file straight out of lithunwrap - naturally it needs a bit more work.

Before I start drawing a Tangara on it though, I need to do a bit more tweaking. I want to add the doors and gangway, which are separate objects, so that I can put them on the same bitmap as the body. This will help keep the major parts together for reskins and the various versions.

Im also thinking about breaking the sides and roof up, because even with the length taking the whole 1024 pixels across the top of the bitmap, the resolution isnt as good as I hoped. Breaking them in half will double the resolution, but will use more space on the texture. Oh, and I removed the transparency from the windows in preparation for giving them a proper texture.

File Version: 381
Poly Count: 17557

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 various tools, jigs, and other pieces which may not be part of the final model. LOD modelling will further reduce in-game polygons.