Alpha Sorting and other fun stuff

Ive been working on the secret side project a little, and spent a bit of time trying to figure out an Alpha Sorting problem. Alpha sorting is basically the layering of transparent objects so that you see what you would expect to see behind them. For example, when looking through a carriage from the outside, you would expect to see through the windows nearest to you, then the interior, and then through the windows on the other side to finally see whatever was behind the carriage.

I'm working on a door animation and when the doors are open they partly cover a window in the carriage body behind them. The problem is that the part of the window that should be obscured behind the solid door appears to be in front of it.

I found a few mentions of this kind of problem on the net, but none of the tips seem to apply to Gmax or Trainz. At the moment I'm ignoring the problem, but I will ask on the forums later on - I have plenty of other things to keep me busy at the moment.

Ive finished installing Gmax on Minotaur, and tweaked it the way I like it. I also have most of my other tools and utilities there now (Normals map generators, editors, format converters etc) so the new machine is feeling a lot more comfortable and easier to work with.

I also replaced the old template of this blog with the new "Blogger Beta" layout widgets which are a lot more flexible. When I moved this page to the new blogger I was worried that I would lose the modifications that I had made, but the guys at Google / Blogger are so smart that most of my custom modifications were automatically converted to the proper widget and the whole process was a breeze! I'll be going back through old posts and adding tags to them so that you can easily find them from the Tags section in the sidebar.

I'll be in Japan at the beginning of February, but hopefully I'll post a few more updates before then. Among other things, we will be buying a 7 day Rail Pass, and catching the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) from Fukuoka to Tokyo. we plan to take our time and stop at Osaka, Kyoto and Mt Fuji along the way.

Happy New Year

I've been meaning to post an update here for a while, but writing tends to take time, getting the thoughts down, editing, rearranging, editing some more, correcting etc... I havnt been able to bring myself to do it until now. The good news is that while I havnt been posting here, I have been making progress on some of the infrastructure that I mentioned before - the underlying base on which everything else sits.

I've cleared away a lot of the clutter - various little things which were being ignored and were nagging at me. I reorganised my blogs and migrated them to the new version of Blogger. It helped that they released the new version recently - it meant I could finally migrate a couple of blogs that needed some features that werent supported in beta until just before the release. Theres links to my other blogs in the sidebar in case you're interested, but I havnt updated them in a while either - I'll get to that soon. Some are still works in progress, so dont expect too much just yet.

I updated my web server and created 8 new web sites (4 sites and 4 development versions of them) which I am still working on - including a Redfern Workshopz site. I moved all of my web-based utilities and internal applications over to the new sites and continue to set them up. At the moment they're not accessible until I get the layout and themes right, but at least they are there, and I have been migrating content over from the old sites (which are also not currently online).

I did some maintenance on the servers, fixing a few hardware problems along the way. At least 2 of them have died in the past few months and needed parts replaced or the operating systems rebuilt (or both). One of them has been upgraded, and Im still setting up the RAID array for the new disks on that one. Ive also built two new computers - one is a Home Theatre PC (Personal Video Recorder), and the other is built specifically for 3D modelling. Im still working on the HTPC - I had to canibalise some parts from it to fix a few hardware problems, and I borrowed its power supply for the 3D Modelling machine.

I have only just finished building the new machine for 3D modelling. Its nice. It runs an AMD X2 Dual Core 4600+ CPU (basically two 2.4Ghz CPU chips in one) on an Nvidia NForce4 chipset, and has TWO Nvidia 7600GS based graphics cards. The dual graphics cards are linked together via Nvidia's SLI interface and work as one, giving around twice the graphics power of a single card. If I can remember how to display the frame rate in Trainz, I'll post it here, but Ive seen it running at 40fps while switched back to the desktop. Trainz runs really smooth with all the performance parameters set to the max, but still (even in SP1) has some flickering and the audio problems that we all put up with.

I've loaded up Gmax, and an old copy of 3DS Max, and have copied all my models over to the new machine. Last night I installed the Normals Map plugin for Gimp, and set up the Trainz Content Creation Studio, with the Max 4.2 plugins, to enable bump mapping in Gmax. Im still setting up a few other supporting utilities, but its all working and looking good so far. I've probably forgotten a bunch of other things that I've been doing recently, but suffice to say, I havnt made any further progress on the Tangara or the 86 Class since the earlier posts - Im hoping to remedy that situation very soon.

Appologies for not responding to the comments, but I have been reading (and publishing) them. I also appologise to the people that emailed me and didnt get a reply. Sometimes I just need to get away from things, especially if I've been working on them for a long period or if Im concentrating on other things. Its just how it works with me, and is pretty normal. Don't let that stop you from sending them though - I need someone to bug me every now and then to keep me focused on things. I appreciated recieving them, and each one reminded me to get back to working on the models as soon as I could.

Well, thats about enough text for now. Its late (early actually). I'll add links and things later.

Reorganisation

Someone once said: Life is what happens while we are busy making other plans

You will have read below that after 7 months I needed to get away from 3D modelling for a while - which I did. I started to get back into it, but a lot has been hapenning in my life recently, and on top of that, once I stopped modelling for a while, I started noticing all those other things that I had been ignoring for 7 months.

I desperately want to finish the Tangara and other Trainz related stuff that I am working on, but right now my life seems too cluttered to really get much of anything done, so I have decided to clear away the clutter by restructuring all of the various projects that I am working on - Trainz and non-Trainz related. This will make things a bit simpler for me.

Im currently reorganising my blogs so that I can move some content out of one into another, and use the first one for its original purpose. The new one can continue to accumulate all the stuff thats been going into the original one recently. This wont affect this blog, or you guys - its just something else that I have on the side. Once the blogs are reorganised, I will post links to them here, for those that may be interested.

I also run my own web server, and have around 6 computers here which are always online. A couple of them need their software updated to more recent versions, and I have been doing that over the last couple of weeks. These machines support everything that I do online in one way or another, so its important to keep them working. This is one of those things I had been ignoring.

Once that is done, I plan to set up my own Redfern Workshopz web site, as well as a couple more for other projects. Once all that is done, things should be set up a bit better, and up to date, so it wont need so much attention in the future. I really need to get those web sites online for my own sanity, as they are the key to a lot of the recent turbulence in my life.

I think about the Tangara every day - really!, and will try to get it moving again as soon as I can - I just have a lot of other things on my todo list at the moment.

I'll keep you posted.

Dont be evil Google

Last week I found a funny rail related article on a news site and thought readers of this blog might also appreciate it. It was about 5km of disused rail track being stolen, somewhere in Germany. It would have appeared just below the previous post. Yesterday, I realised it was missing.

Have Google censored my blog? What other explanation is there for the missing article. It has clearly been removed, yet I got no notification, or even a courtesy email, despite having registered my email address with this account.

Admitedly I posted the full text of the news article, but it was very short - it would have been hard not to. I fully credited Reuters, and linked to the original article on their web site. I consider this fair use, since it is a tiny part of what Reuters publish on a daily basis. Its not like I scrape every single news story from hundreds of news services using an automated process and then database all of the stories and post them all over my own home page, while at the same time offering my own RSS or ATOM feeds to further distribute the articles, and rewriting the original article links in order to redirect all clicks through my own site for tracking purposes, or anything... Oh wait... that would be Google News.

Let me get this straight... Its ok for Google to aggregate news from all over the place, redistribute it, and track your clicks, but its not ok for me to post ONE article, properly linked and credited?

Google you should listen to your own words: "Dont be evil"!

The worst part is that Google are not accountable for anything. As a Google user, there is no support desk that you can email with a problem, and get a response. (If there is, please let me know because I certainly cant find it). All you have is their help pages, with a list of pre-defined newbie problems, like a FAQ. If your question is a little more technical, you have to click on the link at the bottom, saying "My problem is not listed here". You click on that, and get a form where you can describe the problem, but they never respond. I have sent them specific issues and specific questions about my Google account - some of them more policy related than technical, and nothing... no response. There is no way, that I am aware of, to ask them about my missing article, and get an answer from them.

I used to be Google's biggest fan. They have certainly revolutionised the web by being innovative, but the shine is beginning to come off, and they have grown to become a huge monolithic corporation that is no different from any other large corporate entity... Cold, impersonal, and according to the criteria normally applied to humans, psychopathic.

You're beginning to lose it Google. Pay attention before it too late.

PS: The missing post was MUCH smaller than this one. Personally, I saw more value in the earlier post.

No time for Trainz anymore

Now that I've committed myself to building the Tangara, I dont have time to actually play with Trainz or build a route anymore :( Gmax sure is a time consumer, but it will be worth it in the end.

I've cut out the doors and side windows for the drivers cabin and connected a few places that needed a surface. Most of this is being built with planes, which are one-way, meaning if you look at them from the back, you can't see them, so when you build a wall, you have to build both sides and fill the top and bottom gaps. Thats a basic example. Yes, I am using boxes where they are appropriate. The lower deck is a box with the top cut off, making it into five planes - see what I mean?

I also built a basic two-seater Tangara seat as an experiment. It turned out ok, but might be a bit small. I can scale it later.

You might have noticed that I changed the template for this page. I spent a bit of time tweaking it, and you will see a list of projects on the right. More needs to be done to finish the template, and that will happen over time. I also reorganised the forum banner, as I found that it wasn't showing up half of the time. Its now on my own web server, and seems to be working. While I was working on the new template, I also changed the name and URL of this site. The banner points to the new URL - you seem to have found it ok.

Mikkk asked me if I could do some South Coast style overhead wire, so that was added to the list. I'll start on that when I get some photos - either from Mikkk, or if I happen to be out and in the right place. I'll start on the single pole, and probably also do a double. Any others will be by request. I joined the AusTrainz mailing list and had a look at their wish list. I'll see what I can do.

I will probably do a little more work on the S Set cab soon, I'll post updates as it progresses. I should really do some more on the Train Stop, as that is the simplest of all, and would probably get me a DLS Contributor flag faster... that is if CMP will let me upload it... Im in no rush.

Current Poly count on the Tangara: About 570