86 Class Update

Ive spent most of the last couple of weeks working on the 86 Class. This is the one that has been tearing at me to be finished, so I needed to make some progress on it. I've done a lot, and now that it’s ready to be texture mapped, I can leave it for a while and catch up on the Tangara too.

I finished off the body detail, headlights, marker lights, side mirrors, windows etc, and cleaned up the roof, then mirrored the body and base to create the other end of the loco. I started on the low res interior next. This is the one that will be seen in DCC mode, from outside the train (through the doors or windows). Technically, its part of the body, but I'm keeping it separate for now. I isolated parts of it that would have detailed textures, and then used a micro texture to map out the general colouring on the rest.

A micro texture is a 32x32 bitmap with 16 colour squares on it (4x4 each). Using detailed textures only where they are needed and micro textures for everything else greatly reduces the amount of memory required by the graphics card to hold all of the textures.

I added all the under-frame gear - compressors, motor-alternator, main reservoir, etc and joined the body and base together, then hand optimised it to get it ready for texturing. I also added the Comeng builder's plates and will texture them separately later. At this point, I built the bogies and moved them off to their own file, ready to be imported into Trainz. The pantograph has also been finished and is ready to import.

The horns had been on my hit list for a while now. They started as a single horn from the Art Source CD, which I used to create a basic set of 5 horns for the 86 Class, but they are very high poly. I finally got around to fixing them and mounting them properly. I took over 1800 polys out of the horns alone!! (900 each end)

I did some fine tuning of the low res interior texture mapping, and then went back to the high res one (for Cab Mode) and cut holes in the drivers desk for the gauges and indicators. I had been leaving that until last since the boolean (cutting) tool always tries to optimise the mesh but usually ends up doing more damage than good. To avoid that, I detached the face of the panel before I cut, limiting the damage just to that area, and then hand optimised and repaired it before re-attaching it to the interior.

As a final touch, I added the Auran Fire Extinguisher in the appropriate place. I’m going to make that a trade mark - each of my cabs will have an Auran fire extinguisher somewhere :)

Now that I’ve mirrored the two halves of the loco and added al the asymmetric detail, the poly count has doubled, as expected. My previous post deals with that. Also check out my Flickr sets by clicking on the slide show to the right… I’m uploading screenshots there as I go.

Overall, there was quite a lot of work in this update, and now that its done, I’m ready for a change, so its back to the Tangara for a while. I’ve learnt a lot while doing the 86 Class, and have used different techniques in places, and these will be transferred to the Tangara so that both models will benefit.

File Version: 150
Poly Count: 22,900

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.