Battling the exporter

I managed to get an early draft of the 86 Class into Trainz for testing, and so that I could see what needed to be done to tweak the textures. This picture has a very rough texture on it for the moment.

So I started tweaking and moving things around, re-exported the model, and now it wont show up in any of Surveyor, Railyard, or Driver, in TS2009, despite showing up fine in Asset-X, Pev's Mesh Viewer, and even in CCP. There are no errors in CCP or even in the export process, and this has me stumped. All I can do is keep tweaking the textures and hope that the exporter begins to co-operate. I was even able to drive the one pictured here, but now - nothing.

Each time I've exported a model I've found the exporter to be very picky, especially about materials. At one stage it would just crash Max to the desktop if I renamed one particular texture to the standard .m.onetex naming convention. It exported just fine without that extension. Other times, it has crashed to desktop for no apparent reason, but every time it has been related to the materials.

These exporters have been around for over three years. One would think that Auran (N3V) would, from time to time, update the exporters - patching bugs such as these, but unfortunately Auran seem to be of the impression that you can release a piece of software once, then just forget about it. Not so with their flagship product though - they've released 3 or 4 versions of Trainz since the exporters were last updated. They seem to understand the concept of software development only when its directly connected to making them money, but without the exporters, where do they think the content would come from? Without content, JET is just an engine. It does nothing on its own.

Still, I press on. I keep tweaking the textures on the 86 Class, hoping that I'll hit that elusive magical combination that will cause the exported model to show up in Trainz - after all that's what its all about. In the mean-time, Im fiddling with a few side projects that are still in the modelling phase. I don't need to export them just yet so I can model happily without any problems.

Here is a shot from inside the cab. This is the low-res cab that is a part of the body mesh. You will see it through the windows in DCC mode. I tricked the camera to place it inside the cab on a multiple unit set. I've been trying to get the shiny stainless steel effect the way I want it, and I think its getting pretty close. The first thing that struck me about the real cab was how shiny it was. As you can see, there are still parts of the cab, and body that are untextured at this stage.

I've put the 86 Class aside for now and as I mentioned have been working on other things.  One of those things is a route. I want a route that is a) Unmistakably NSW, and b) appropriate for the 86 Class and the Tangara, so I've started putting something together. Ive always been impressed by the detail in the Wadalbavale line, and the sheer size of Pine Ridge, and Razorback, and I'm hoping to eventually come up with something inspired by all three.

I've started with the mountains - inspired by Lithgow being the former home of the 86 Class locomotives. At the highest point the rail is 600m above sea level, and Im gradually working my way down to sea level with some 2 and 3% grades to give a bit of a challenge, and to make good use of the dynamic regenerative braking in the 86 Class. This will be a coal run, down to the port at sea level.   I havnt started on any other sections but there will be other areas to explore as well, and of course commuter trains, which is where the Tangara comes in.

One major thing Im missing is decent Cityrail stations, so Im currently building one that I can throw in there for the time being. I'd like to expand on that and make a series of stations, but that is for the future.  I'd like to build something generic and have options available through scripting, similar to Andi06's station kit.

The Tangara is waiting to be converted to Max. I figure since TRS2006 is no longer supported there is no reason to keep it in Gmax.  The conversion process is a bit bumpy so I've been putting it off, but I hope to have an update on the Tangara in the next post (and some pics).

I'm not going to bother right now with the poly counts that I used to add to my posts, suffice to say the 86 Class in the pictures is about 18,000 polys and will use LOD by the time its ready for the final export.

Trainz 2009. Decisions Decisions!

I finally managed to get myself a copy of the new version of Trainz! The focus of this version is on high quality models, and the old polygon limits that I was so worried about, are gone! That isn't to say that I can add as many as I like - Im still keeping count, but it allows me to do things like add a few poly's here and there to improve the sharpness of the texture :)

I wasn't aware, until yesterday, that Auran have dropped support for Gmax, and have released new exporters for 3DS Max. I know that you can still use Gmax, but the old exporters do not support a lot of the new features that allow you to increase the resolution (quality) of the model without decreasing the perfomance of Trainz. I have always intended for my models to be high quality, so I have been wrestling with the decision to either leave things the way they are and release the items that Im currenly working on as TRS2006 assets, or to convert them to 3DS Max and take advantage of the new exporters to make them look even better in the game.

Converting to Max would take time, as there is no direct conversion process, and every conversion tool I have tried always seems to corrupt the model in some way. Fixing the corruption is time consuming, for example, in one model that I converted recently, several vertices (just a few here and there) were out by 16mm and had to be nudged back into place - it took about 2 hours find and fix them all, and that was just a simple building.

I know a lot of you have been waiting for my models to be finished and available for Trainz, so I don't want to delay them even further by putting them through a long and tedious conversion (and repairing) process this late in the day, but at the same time, I want to take advantage of the latest features in TS2009.

I'm already using the old 3DS Max exporters in Gmax, so there was originally no advantage to using Max - I can do normal maps and specular lighting in Gmax just the same. The only real difference was not being able to render a high quality image of the model in Gmax. No big deal, and certainly not required for Trainz! Now, with the extra features of TS2009 being enabled by the way the new exporters work, it's a much bigger deal.

After thinking about it for some time, and having converted the building mentioned above, Im leaning towards conversion. The Tangara is more complex than the 86 class, and already has a lot of textures in place, as well as several areas where the mesh is very fine. It would easily be corrupted and require a lot of time to fix before I could finish it off, so I have decided to continue working on the Tangara in Gmax, and release it as a TRS2006 asset.

The 86 Class on the other hand, is close to my heart. Its sad to see these locomotives go into forced retirement, and in a way, Im trying to do my part to preserve what made them special. There are some parts of the 86 Class that I had always planned to make in 3DS Max from the start, but at the time, there didn't seem to be any reason to build the rest of it there too. The model is almost complete but the mesh is simpler and it only has a few textures applied so far, so I'm going to take the risk to convert it, and export it as a TS2009 asset.

I may release an update to the Tangara in the future, making it a native TS2009 model, but for the moment, at least I will have one item that I can finish off, while I am rebuilding the other.

Leave me a comment and tell me what you think.