New Shape View Program Coming ..

[EldoradoRailroad]

Updates as we draw nearer to a release, or beta who knows.
inc files.jpg

Great news, hard to imagine how all of this is happening so fast, but I "ain't complainin"!

The reason why I included the second screen shot is the light editor pop up screen. Will the user also have the facility to edit the position of any light?

Also, is it a stretch to ask for the possibility to insert new lights? There are several techniques that I use to enhance the effect from "lightglows" which would be greatly accelerated by not having to manually edit the .eng file then run Openrails, then rinse and repeat until I get it "right". Being able to do this interactively would be a great addition and time saver for this tedious job.

Thanks,
Steve

[Snowman]

Just finished users request to change program colors to suit their needs as seen here. User can now adjust program colors to their liking including wireframe colors and of course background colors. Maybe set the colors to your favorite railroad's paint scheme.

program colors.jpg wireframe.jpg Image6.jpg Image9.jpg Image10.jpg

[Snowman]

1. The reason why I included the second screen shot is the light editor pop up screen. Will the user also have the facility to edit the position of any light?

2. Also, is it a stretch to ask for the possibility to insert new lights?

1. Yes, this already exists. It's the only function of the "editor" mode as of now. If you remember back to earlier posts of the gizmo, scale and move functions, they're to move and resize lights.

2. Insert new light's if I recall correctly would happen at this point through cloning, which as the name implies allows for cloning a light which will insert it into the eng/wag upon saving updating. Editing and inserting additional lines in the light section is also handled. It's covered somewhere in previous posts.

P.S see my previous post.

[pschlik]

I have another thought for ya-there are some situations where I'd like to know the exact position of a vertex (for things like aligning lights/particles/freight animations, measuring the length of a part, and so on) and right now that means going through an annoying multi-step process to get a shape into something like Blender, which does have a way to measure vertices (and edges, and faces).

It would be helpful, and hopefully not too difficult, to have a 'measure' tool that would allow selecting one vertex in the model to get the properties of that vertex (position, normal, uv values?), or select two vertices to get a measurement of the distance between them (could be expanded to include other data like the location of the midpoint between multiple points). That alone would let me throw out a bunch of jank from my workflow.

[SD40-2]

Snowman,

Sorry to add on to your trouble, but is there a way to project the wireframe onto the 2D texture to see where parts are mapped? It'd be super-helpful for those of us who are repainters.

[cuontv]

Snowman,

Sorry to add on to your trouble, but is there a way to project the wireframe onto the 2D texture to see where parts are mapped? It'd be super-helpful for those of us who are repainters.

That truly would be a wonderful thing if it were possible!
-Tom

[StormerDSR]

Is this program still in development or abandoned?

[Train-a-Mania]

Would it be possible to have some method of clicking on part of the model and seeing where on the texture map the shape is drawing from? That could be useful for reskinning and going "Where is that yellow handrail coming from?".

[pwillard]

Is this program still in development or abandoned?

We received an update from the developer that it would be a while before it was released. Why would you make that assumption?

[Snowman]

Would it be possible to have some method of clicking on part of the model and seeing where on the texture map the shape is drawing from? That could be useful for reskinning and going "Where is that yellow handrail coming from?".

Hi, Nick. I will see what I can do.

Also, I want to add that freight animations using FreightAnimStatic (Flip(1) will now flip the model and display correctly inside the program. I also, want to announce that I will soon release the program as-is, meaning it's not a polished v1.0 BUT it does have a lot of useful features. I almost let this project die, so the fact anything is released I think is better than nothing.

What will the program include?

Everything that has been mentioned in previous posts up until now. No more no less. I am continuing development at this time, so once released feel free to chime in with your ideas and suggestions. Once again, use this software at your own risk. I'm just a guy doing this in my limited spare time. This isn't commercial software. If you like it, fine if not that's fine.

Personally, I wanted this to move in a more encompassing direction with reading and displaying shapes as the start. I would like to button up a few things and move on to that part of the program soon. That being said, the shape viewer itself should be as encompassing as possible and many good ideas remain. I will release the program on this site and my website within a day, or so. Not in an official capacity! As I consider this a public beta. If well received I may upload to the file library. If at any time I feel the need ot move on form this project, I will upload the source for those who may want to continue it.

ShapeView_Screenshot_20260912_204726_911.jpg

[Snowman]

Would it be possible to have some method of clicking on part of the model and seeing where on the texture map the shape is drawing from? That could be useful for reskinning and going "Where is that yellow handrail coming from?".

Done. Inside of texture inspector which can be accessed by clicking on any texture file name in the texture window of the info bar. Inside of the texture inspector window there is a button called "Inspect" after clicking, when the user clicks anywhere on the model a window will update with a yellow cross hair of where on the texture that part of the model receives its texture from. This will be included in the newest version of Shape View, or whatever you wanna call it.

Image1.png Image2.png

[Snowman]

I’m pleased to announce the release of ShapeView v0.6.1.

This release includes all of the features that have been discussed throughout this thread, along with a new manual that covers the basics of using the program. If there is something you can’t find in the manual, chances are it has already been discussed somewhere in this thread.

This release should be considered a beta. I plan to upload ShapeView to the file library at a later date, once the community has had some time to test it and any remaining issues have been identified and addressed.

ShapeView is still under active development, and I’m always open to new ideas, suggestions, bug reports, and feature requests for future versions.

One thing to note: this release does not include the additional files required for glTF viewing. Including them would considerably increase the size of the download, so I decided to leave them out of this release. I plan to add glTF support back in at a later date.

ShapeView v0.6.1 Download:

https://bit.ly/4isG2wU

[Whatever2006]

I'm probably the first testing user, so far I got it installed and had some hiccups in getting it to open up the shapes as it relies on FFEdit, I did test out on Danny's model and it loads fine, but on Nash's model, not so much, it loads partially and resulted in a jagged mess. I suspect that FFEdit has trouble trying to decompress the shape that's been decompressed and compressed once combine with how Nash models his models.
image-23.png

Edit: mishtahshneaks loaded up Nash's model and it seems to work fine on his end. Not sure why it didn't load properly on my end...
image-42.png
(Image from mishtahshneaks.)

[Snowman]

I'm probably the first testing user, so far I got it installed and had some hiccups in getting it to open up the shapes as it relies on FFEdit, I did test out on Danny's model and it loads fine, but on Nash's model, not so much, it loads partially and resulted in a jagged mess. I suspect that FFEdit has trouble trying to decompress the shape that's been decompressed and compressed once combine with how Nash models his models.


Edit: mishtahshneaks loaded up Nash's model and it seems to work fine on his end. Not sure why it didn't load properly on my end...

(Image from mishtahshneaks.)

Hmm you are right. FFEDIT if not installed in the program directory which can be done by copying FFEDIT from Train Simulator directory. It should be located automatically by the program depending on where you have MSTS installed (if you have MSTS installed) by registry. I will update the release to include FFEDIT and a link to it.

EDIT: I found two folders that were missing from the zip as well I apologize. Bear with me on this while we sort this out but if youve already downloaded the program I would suggest you download with this link: https://bit.ly/4isG2wU This should be the complete program V0.6.2 which includes a grid system in editor mode and the ability to move models by pressing M in either standard mode (viewing mode) or editor mode.

FFEDIT should be used as a fallback in case JGR does not open the files. In this case these files were missing!

[pwillard]

You know, I've been working on a replacement for FFEDITC_UNICODE.EXE called ORZIP, right? I was sort of having sympathy for people who don't actually have MSTS installed, only ORTS.