Flintstone/50 cent wheel removal tutorial

[ossie]

Thanks heaps all and great to see some progress there Damian, good stuff! Enjoy guys! 😊

[qballbandit]

Pete,
Major contribution, and I (we) thank you!. I know of a small handful of GE's I'd sure like to try this on.

Very much appreciated!

Neil

[ossie]

You're totally welcome Neil! 😊😊

[Erick_Cantu]

Note to self: grab my old HT-C and Flexicoil truck models and export them with common 40-series wheelbases.

[SD40-2]

Does this mean at some point, you'd release a giant pack of truck models for us to put new bodies on? If so, thank you in advance.

[DuctTapeGuru]

It's a good tutorial, especially since I was able to do it. It's always good to learn something new. But, having said that, it seems to me to be a lot of work for very little return. I would have liked a tutorial on how to add glass to the cab windows of come of those same early locomotives. Or some new freeware Alco's. (please don't tell me to learn Blender and do it myself. I've already tried that.)

[Erick_Cantu]

Does this mean at some point, you'd release a giant pack of truck models for us to put new bodies on? If so, thank you in advance.

I wouldn't count on a giant pack, but I could see digging into my current and older models and exporting a few truck/coupler sets with common wheelbases. The 40-series were all built on a common frame, as were the Dash-2 series, so I don't see any reason why I can't dig up my old HT-C and Flexicoil-C trucks from the GNR SD40 and SD40-2 packs and use them this way. There are also only 2 wheelbases for most GP models, since everything before the 40-series was built on a common frame, and most of the 40-series and later were also built on a common frame. Some models would need to be rescaled, but I think that people are used to this by now. The caveat would be that some of those truck models are a little old, but they should do.

As to adding glass to cab windows on old models, if they were "cut" with an alpha channel, all you have to do is lighten the window cutouts (black is full transparency, white is full opacity) and export with an 8-bit alpha. You may want to colour in the window areas on the main texture with a blue-ish colour. OR renders alpha channels without decreasing bit depth in the colour channel, so there's really no need to use a 1-bit alpha for anything these days.

[SD40-2]

Erick,

I'd be good with that. The trucks on the GNR SD40s and SD40-2s look pretty good for their age, and if they include templates to do quick recolors, they'd make an excellent drop-in option for older models.

[EldoradoRailroad]

I have looked at the gymnastics of doing this and shake my head. There is a much simpler way of doing this. But requires courage to push the envelope and the downside is that what you have created can neither be shown in public nor the method you used to achieve it. Such is the state of our hobby.

[pwillard]

I have looked at the gymnastics of doing this and shake my head. There is a much simpler way of doing this. But requires courage to push the envelope and the downside is that what you have created can neither be shown in public nor the method you used to achieve it. Such is the state of our hobby

I honestly was thinking that if you go through that much effort, you might was well open Blender and make a model from scratch. That's how we get new/updated content creators.

[ossie]

Issues of gymnastics and courage aside, as much as it looks like a lot of text, those steps are pretty straightforward and probably take about 10 minutes when you've done them a few times. I'd imagine the learning curve on creating a loco from scratch in blender would be a bit more substantial than that Pete? That's why I was suggesting some "dip your toe in the water" ORTS-centric introductory stuff like create a load of pipes for a flatcar. Even making a set of tie down chains or adding a broom to a loco. Does anything like that exist Pete?

[pwillard]

Does anything like that exist Pete?

Honestly, I'm at the point where I'm forgetting the difficulties starting with Blender and mostly remembering how easy it was to get what I wanted out of it.

Probably something we should collectively try to solve.

I sort of wish ORTS creators (me included) could adopt a FA standard plan of attack (attach)... we could make it so things like trucks could be swapped out as simple as changing the *model* s file being referenced in the eng or wag file. I think only NAVS is doing that currently.

I realize that FA's were intended for changing *loads* but it offers a lot of options that NAVS is taking advantage of with the way ORTS handles FA now..

NAVS items start with defining the trucks used and then ADDS Freight Anims for carbody and then car numbering using a alpha texture option for applied numbering and all of the adjustable text and markings on each car.

It's a good plan and changing key options for the car becomes pretty simple. You could easily replace the trucks from 70 ton to 100 ton or from A3 to S2 types with this solution.


It does mean, however, the models need to be built that way... IE; with separate LOADS, DECALS, TRUCKS etc. hence, why we need new content creators.

And yes, I'm a bad example... I get 95% done with something and then struggle with the last 5% like forever...

[ossie]

Thanks Pete and as a non-modeller anything that simplifies or standardises the process sounds like a good idea to me. I have to admit that I haven’t dived into the NAVS format yet. It’s one of the many things on my to-do list but any process that makes use of the fantastic ORTS FA is a step in the right direction in my opinion.

I’m normally pretty good at picking things up but the couple of looks I’ve had a Blender made my head spin a bit. I’ve looked at a couple of pretty basic tutorials but still get the impression that it is a program that will have a massive trial & error and/or muscle memory component to it, and that’s without factoring in the ORTS .s file aspect of it which if I understand it correctly is another step again?

The problem with being time poor with hobbies is that if I have 2 hours to spare one night and the choice is spending it jumping into TSRE or Blender to try to learn them (and maybe not having much to show for it at the end of the night) or doing a bunch of reskins, I keep going with what I’ll get the best bang for my buck with in the short term at least.

I think most of us have probably found our niche(s) in the hobby and working away in it/them without giving much/any thought to the broader aspects of the sim and its future. I know I'd been quite happy in my zone for a lot of years until S4M closing came as a bit of a shock to the system and got me thinking about what we are losing from the hobby. From a knowledge point of view, I’m pretty comfortable with doing reskins (for instance) but I’m sure most of us that went that way started out renumbering a loco or adding a bit of weathering to an existing model and then built on that knowledge base rather than trying a full reskin first time around and again, what's around now to help any beginner that comes along and wants to play "catch up"?

Again, from my own point of view I’m sure I’d be more likely to put my 2 hours into an “entry level” tutorial like the pipes/broom etc I mentioned for Blender or a "how to replace/add a building in TSRE" one but (apart from getting off my own backside and trying something new) that also requires people with the knowledge of how to do it giving up their time to create it and that’s a big ask. Even time and motivation aside, stripping back what you know to a beginner level to teach someone with no knowledge can be a challenge in itself.

The solution would be an easy one if we all thought the same, wanted the same and had to the time to do it in.😊

[pwillard]

This is partly why I tried to wrap my head around what an ORTS content creator would want to know... and came up with http://railsimstuff.com/files/pdf/ORTS-CC-Notebook.pdf ( a long term work in progress). I'm not writing from an expert position, just a regular guy like the rest of us so I make no guarantees about accuracy but I suppose it's better than nothing at all.

I do plan to document how to do rolling stock and engines... but I actually need to make those "the preferred way" first.

[R. Steele]

I get 95% done with something and then struggle with the last 5% like forever...

That's life for ya .... point being .... enjoy the last 5% as much as the previous 95%.