Tangara Progress

Ive gotten back into the Tangara, as well as spending some time on evaluating web site CMS tools, for a future Redfern Workshopz web site.

First the Tangara. Essentially all I have done this weekend is to finish the floor of the upper deck, including the ceiling and light fittings of the lower deck, and integrated it all into the stairwells, so that I can easily hide the stairs and upper deck while working on the lower deck. Its not a lot of progress since the last report, but it is progress.

The light fittings are also in place for the upper deck, but not complete yet. There is an upper ceiling, but you cant see it in the picture. This angle also shows the work I recently did on the interior portion of the gangway. I started on the gangway exterior, but deleted it again, as I am not quite sure how to implement it. I have an idea for something cool, so Im going to think about it some more, and will probably do that last.

From here the next steps are seating and handrails, and then the interior is just about done (other than texturing). Theres still a few glitches on the exterior that I need to look at, so Im not quite finished with the base model yet.

I have decided to set up a website for Redfern Workshopz. Im a PHP geek, and have my own web server and hosting etc, so thats not a problem. The problem is software. I could write it from scratch, but I really dont want to spend that much time on it. Over the last 5 or so years I have looked at various CMS packages, for various projects, and they have all come up lacking in some area.

Unfortunately, 5 years on, nothing much has changed. The Nuke variants still rely on an undiciplined rag-tag collection of user contributed modules for features that should be standard, and the lack a centralised download site makes it almost impossible to find the module you need. some quite basic CMS features are still completely missing.

Other CMS tools also lack many of the nescessary features. Its not that hard. All I want are the following: News, Blog, Gallery, Downloads, Project Manager (including Issue or bug tracking), Wiki and a Paypal IPN enabled shopping cart, for payware items, if I choose to go in that direction. Of course the ability to add static display pages to show off my creations would be nice too.

Having stumbled on the CMS Matrix, and compared features of various CMS packages (uh... all of them) I finally settled on Drupal, and have spent a bit of time setting up a site to evaluate it. I will still have to write some modules myself, but at least the basic framework is there (partly as user contributed modules) for all of the features I need. Ive found that the latest beta breaks some of the contributed modules, so Im about to start over with the latest stable release, which has wider support.

Current Poly Count: 2460
File Version: 151

Well, its about time!

I spent yesterday on Sydney Harbour, celebrating Australia Day. I even got a bit of a tan. Last week, I attended a friends wedding, and entertained some other friends that my wife invited over for dinner. It would have been rude of me to sit at the computer and ignore them. I have also been working late at my real job to catch up on some things that are a bit behind, and will still need to work late from time to time over the next couple of months, but hopefully the weddings and national holidays are over, for a while anyway.

Over the last couple of weeks, besides all of the other things that have distracted me, I have been doing a bit of research, and finishing up the Train Stop. I uploaded it to the DLS last night, but am just waiting on some last minute formalities before I release it from the preview area so that you can download it. I was so excited that I uploaded it before I had checked it properly, and ended up having to upload it again after removing some debugging code that I had left in the script.

I also realised that I should probably ask permission to modify one of Natvander's scripts. I had not thought about it since there was nothing in the license or in the script itself that said I couldn't, so I just presumed that it was ok. Then, after had I uploaded the Train Stop, my better judgement convinced me that I should at least ask, out of courtesy. I will be delaying the release. until I get this cleared up.

Last week, I also had an idea for a really quick and small model... the NSW Track Flag. It took me just a few hours to knock it out, and script it (ok... it took about 8 hours - but that included 4 hours of tearing out my hair trying to figure out TrainzScript :) The flag was uploaded a few days ago, but I currently have an update awaiting Auran approval, so if you havnt downloaded it already, you should probably wait until mid next week. If you have, download it again once the update is available.

Recently I signed up with HET (Historic Electric Traction) - probably the first of many organisations I will be supporting. They are a group of volunteers who contract their services to Railcorp, to restore and maintain Railcorp's historic fleet of electric passenger trains. They work out of the old Redfern Workshops, which is just a few blocks from here, and I hope to go down there occasionally and help them maintain the red rattlers and other historic trains that they have there. I have a bit of an alterior motive as well - I hope to get some photographs of the buildings and particularly Traverser No 1, and model them for Trainz.

A couple of other Trainz projects have shown up on the horizon. Im very interested in the Cityrail project (recreating the Sydney Cityrail network in Trainz) and have offered to help build any models that the guys might need to support that. Naturally the Tangara is going to be a part of it, but I have my eye on a few stations and buildings around the place as well.

Next week, I plan to work on the Tangara some more. I havnt done much over the last 2 weeks, and hope to make that up next week. I spotted a few glitches that will need looking at, but nothing major. I should have the gangway finished very soon, and will probably then work on the glitches. Now that the Train Stop is out of the way, I hope to finish the buffer, and start on the catenary splines and related static bits and pieces.

Oh, and my other task for this weekend, is to set up a website for Redfern Workshopz to allow me to add a few features that cant be done on this blog. More on that, as it progresses.

Progress Report

I spent some time this weekend working on the Train Stop, since a couple of people asked about it recently. The model is finished, it has a rough texture, and now, the script finally works.

Trainz Script is even more painful than making textures. It has a hundred different ways to do similar things. You have to figure out which way is the right one for your situation, and despite one method name being similar to another (ie: inferring that they are part of the same method family) they work in completely different ways!.

Take SetMeshAnimationState() for example. I was alternating between that and SetFXAnimationState() since I was not sure which was the right one to use in my situation. Both come from the MeshObject class, but they work in slightly different ways. While SetMeshAnimationState plays through the whole animation once, either forward or in reverse (which is what I wanted), SetFXAnimationState starts or stops the animation loop (which I didnt want). I originally had the animation set up as an effect, but my example script (grabbed from the forums) was using SetMeshAnimationState. Naturally this combination wasnt working. When I finally figured out I needed the FX version of the method for an effect, the animation looped (not what I had in mind). I ended up having to reconfigure the model, in order to use the SetMeshAnimationState method, which is the one I wanted to use all along.

I spent many hours figuring that out, and now finally have it working properly.

A few final steps remain before its ready for the DLS. Im dying to get my green "DLS Contributor" flag, but before I can upload it I have to tweak the model to move its origin slightly, tidy up the script to remove a few unused functions, and redo the textures.

Trainz seems to always render the textures lighter than they really are, meaning that you have to make your textures darker for them to look right. Being slightly colourblind, Im already battling with getting the textures to look right, and on top of that I have to make them look too dark in Gimp. Its never easy.

At least its one step closer to the DLS now.

No real improvements on the Tangara this week. Im three file versions ahead of where I was last week, but thats not really much of a change. The Buffer model still needs finishing, although Im already using it in a couple of routes. That shouldnt take long. I'll probably get to that after I release the Train Stop. Hopefully by the time its ready, the current problems with uploads being rejected for no apparent reason, will be fixed.

Letters to and from the Editor

I havnt done much on the Tangara this week, so far (I still have tomorrow as one of my "Weekend" days. I seem to have spent most of my time reading and writing emails or forum posts. Some of that time has also been spent on research, but the model itself hasn't gotten much further. Late nights at work, and familiy commitments saw my free time reduced somewhat.

I was surprised to get so many comments on the last post, and I wanted to respond to some of the points made in them, so that is mainly what this post is about.

It seems that there are indeed a few people checking this site daily, so I will keep that in mind and try to post a couple of times a week, but it wont be as frequent as when I first started.

I had a chance to go through the sounds that I recorded last week for the Tangara model. The sound quality was not as good as I had hoped. Im using a small digital recorder, and it apparently has a cheap microphone, with no option to plug an external one into it. Some of the recordings were reasonable, and Im hoping to clean them up using software later. I'll keep trying whenever Im out and about, and Im fairly sure that I will come up with something workable by the time the model is ready for it.

Not having owned any older versions of Trainz, I cant compare, but there are indeed a lot of features in the latest version for content creators to take advantage of. Most of them have been around for a while and are documented in the TRS2004 Content Creators Guide, but I have found, in my experience that many content creatirs dont take advantage of them. I plan to push the envelope, and use as much as I can. Im always really impressed when I see an item that fully exploits the available features, and Im sure you would be too. Dreddman's QR Watertank is one that recently caught my eye, and it is a good example of what you can achieve with a little extra effort. Be sure to see the final picture on page 3 of that post. Its on the DLS by now.

I actually came across the Melbourne 4D train a few weeks back, while looking for some Tangara specs, and did a little more research on it. It certainly provoked a bit of interest, as I found many old posts about it archived from the aus.rail newsgroups, and even a couple of pictures. Given its similarity to a Tangara G set (on the outside anyway, minus the access panels) I was going to do a standard gauge version of the 4D as bonus. Oh well, I guess thats out of the bag now :)

Ive been talking on the Trainz forums recently about the four 86 Class locos that are currently parked at Eveleigh, so I thought the above picture would be good for this post. It shows 8601, 8609, 8622 and 8644 parked in the siding between the Australian Technology Park buildings (Former Eveleigh workshops) and the Eveleigh end of the Redfern Dive (The track on the right). They're not coupled into a consist, just parked close to one another. I noticed that Google Earth shows three of them (unless I mis-counted), so they have been there a while. I guess 8644 came along later.

These passed to Pacific National when it bought Freight Corp, and were then sold to Silverton in 2003, when Pacific National got rid of its remaining electric fleet, reportedly due to higher electricity charges from the newly formed Rail Infrastructure Corp. Alas there are now no electric locos running in NSW, and these four are presumably awaiting their fate, at the young age of only around 21 Years - about half the working life of the 46 Class electric fleet. Cityrail leased these four back from Silverton for work on the Bondi Turnback. Using electric locos in the tunnels removes the problems of desiel exhaust in the confined space. I bet they wished that they'd kept a few, when they realised that! Once the turnback was completed, having no use for them, and rather than take them all the way back to Broken Hill, Silverton parked them here, where they sit idle, except for a few odd jobs such as special tours.

Cut down in thier prime, like the 85 class before them.

Latest Tangara Progress

I started out doing daily updates, but I figure that no-one really checks here that often, so for simplicity, Im going to update weekly, usually on Monday nights, with occasional updates in between, if needed.

This week, the major changes are that Ive completed the underside and started on the gangway. I also fixed a lot of things that were not quite right - with Gmax I guess you are always doing that. Theres over 1600 verticies in the model so far, and as new bits are added many of the older ones need a little tweaking to get them into the right position, and to reduce the poly count. All that tweaking takes time, and Im also trying to spend a bit more time with my wife.

In the picture, you can just see the drivers console, which I added recently. You may also notice the bottom (outside) of the stairs. I still have a bit of detailing to do on the underside, such as compressors, tanks etc, but Im not going to go overboard on it. (Ie: Im not going to model every last pipe).

I started on the gangway from the inside, so from this angle you cant really see much of the detail yet. Don't panic, Im not going overboard here either. Im adding enough detail that you will get the overall look and feel of a Tangara, without seeing every last rivet. I havn't added any textures yet, and some of the minor detail will be contained within those (EDR hatches, Access panel outlines etc). I have read that to create a good 3D model, you shouldnt fake too much detail, and that is what Im aiming for. Im adding what detail I can, while still keeping an eye on the total poly count.

Anyway, the final model will speak for itself. I want it to generate a "Wow! Thats really cool!" reaction - thats what Im aiming for. It will go beyond most of the generic stuff you find on the DLS, as far as features and effects go. Once I have finished the model, and built the trailer, it will still take me a few extra weeks to write some scripts for it. I have big plans, and Im pretty sure that all of my ideas are possible. Then it will be time for a little alpha testing, before its sent to the beta testers for a couple of weeks, and finally to the DLS. dont bug me about being a beta tester yet - I'll let you know when to email me.

On Saturday I wandered down to Central Station, jumped on a Tangara and recorded the door sounds (opening and closing) as well as engine sounds - though the Tangara is fairly quiet on the inside, so I probably got more air-conditioning noise than engines. I got on and off a number of trains and went all over the place, from Strathfield to Wolli Creek.

I plan to make another trip next week, and will probably sit at a station for a while, and record them as they come and go. I noticed that you get a better sound in the Underground stations, and since most of the Tangara fleet lives on the Illawarra line, I'll probably be sitting on Platform 25 at Central for a while. I particularly want to capture the whiney sound they make at low speed, while accellerating or decellerating slowly.I also want to get some photos from above (from a bridge) for the pantograph layout. Wolli Creek will be good for that, as are a number of places.

All of the sounds will be edited and added to the model. The door sounds will be heard as the doors operate, and I will see how I go with the engine sounds.

Poly Count: 2400
File Version: 140 

New Years Progress

Im back from my New Year break, and have made a little more progress on the Tangara. It really feels like it is starting to come together.

I spent a lot of time during the holidays on the interior ceiling, particularly in the vestibule area where it joins with the upper deck. Its more like the real thing now, and less polys too. I basically did one corner and then flipped it around to join both halves, and then flipped the whole thing once again, for the vestibule at the other end.

I moved a few other bits around. The windows are now at their proper 425mm offset from the center line, and everything seems to line up with the template, but even so, there are still bits that dont look balanced. I'll work on those some more later.

I added the drivers control console, and guards seating to the cab, tidied up the skirt a little - the cutout for the train stop trip is now only on the left side, like it should be. (Updated since the pic).

Finally, Ive started on the underside. This has to be there before I can start on the gangway, so I may as well do it now. Underside you say?? Ive had enough derailments in Trainz to know that yes, you will eventually see the underside. (Tangara's have been known to derail and roll over). Nothing special here (nor on the prototype), but it needs to be done. There will be a little detail to look at but not much.

As I get bored on the bigger jobs, Im doing a little bit of detailing every now and then. It shouldnt be long before I start on the upper deck and seating, and maybe a few handrails.

I also managed to find a specification document for the new OSC (Outer Suburban) trains on the net, and it contained a wealth of background information. Despite looking like a milenium train, the performance benchmark for most of the specification is the Tangara, presumably because Cityrail has had a lot of problems with the bugs (Milenium trains are often refered to as Milenium Bugs, or Bumblebees). Theres going to be some cool new features in these trains too.

Poly Count: 2100
File Version: 125

Happy New Year

Ok, so Ive not done much, model-wise during the holidays, but thats OK because I already said I would be taking a break.

Ive never really been into making New Year resolutions... I mean why lock yourself into something that you are only going to forget or ignore in a few weeks time. Anyway, this year isnt much different, except that I discovered the Geek-Foo Resulution Generator, for anyone who's too lazy to make thier own resolution, or like me, just doesnt bother. Here's one I selected earlier. Click the link to generate your own.

In the year 2006 I resolve to:

Take over the world.

Get your resolution here

Yup.. That'll do. I'll get started on that right away.