P40, P42, P32AC-DM for Open Rails - Lessons Learned & New Progress

[Strawberry Yogurt]

Hi all - I am feeling healthy once again and will be resuming work this week. My cat also had a nasty paw infection while I was out on a work trip, so when I was back home it was lots of visits to the vet alongside myself getting better. It has been a tough couple of weeks but my cat and I are doing much better and I'm ready to resume work.

Some cab and texture work picking back up this week and I'll update everyone when I have something to show. Appreciate everyone's patience.

[Strawberry Yogurt]

The underbody piping was redone and I modeled new gladhands. The cab is still being worked on, but the exterior models are exported and are just getting versioned out for paint at this point.

Lots of things have happened behind the scenes, also:

Models are configured with animated roof fans (that are not tied to rotation of the wheels!)
Models are set up with freight animations for a steel bell or an e-bell, configurable per locomotive
5 different antenna arrays, configurable per locomotive as a freight animation.
8 different model variants across 3 locomotive types, so people can faithfully recreate any livery from any time period with these engines from every railroad they operated on.

-P40DC - As delivered
-P40DC (Rebuilt) / P42DC - Old Nose
-P40DC / P42DC - Bolt-on Nose
-P42DC - VIA Rail nose configuration.

-P32AC-DM - As delivered
-P32AC-DM - Old Nose w/ Nose Hatch
-P32AC-DM - Bolt-on Nose w/ Nose Hatch
-P32AC-DM - Bolt on Nose

These models are just waiting on the cab to be completed and for paint to finish.

[qballbandit]

Real nice work, again! What is your long game with regards to weathering? I just can't imagine an Amtrak P without some good old "continental grime" on it

[Strawberry Yogurt]

Real nice work, again! What is your long game with regards to weathering? I just can't imagine an Amtrak P without some good old "continental grime" on it

There's planned to be a bit of variety in the liveries as far as dirt/grime is concerned, but if it's not up to your taste, the layered template will be included so folks can dirty them up to their liking. It's effectively the same template for all the models, there's some slight differences because of the vent differences in the P32 versions but for the most part you can take stripes/logos from one and drop them onto any other model and it will all line up. That was a big focus for me on this project was to make sure skins were transferrable across variants. P40/42 is the same template exactly, minus some details on the P40 as delivered version which has the rear window and strobes.

[TrainSimJack]

Looks fantastic!

[tarrant75]

I would love to know the poly count on this one

[Strawberry Yogurt]

I would love to know the poly count on this one

About 95k on each version. Certainly could have been more efficient in places but the wheels are round and there's lots of small details. In my testing, it doesn't perform really any worse than any other piece of stock I have on a few different machines, so I was pleasantly surprised about that. The cab should be less than that, and that's probably where more time will be spent

[tarrant75]

Hey, if it works and YOU are happy with it, that's the most important part. Looks great to me!

Now to get the 3D cab to work

[LuFeDuTi]

It is important to take care of pets, they are part of the family. I had already been scared thinking that you had left your job but it wasn't like that, nice screenshot about his work on the Locomotives

[CSRX]

I'm completely blown away at how great these locomotives looks!

[metrarailboy1]

Ah for some reason I can not see the photos.

[Strawberry Yogurt]

Ah for some reason I can not see the photos.

I just found out that Discord no longer allows external embeds, annoying but for the most recent post I've updated it.

[Whatever2006]

The underbody piping was redone and I modeled new gladhands. The cab is still being worked on, but the exterior models are exported and are just getting versioned out for paint at this point.

Lots of things have happened behind the scenes, also:

Models are configured with animated roof fans (that are not tied to rotation of the wheels!)
Models are set up with freight animations for a steel bell or an e-bell, configurable per locomotive
5 different antenna arrays, configurable per locomotive as a freight animation.
8 different model variants across 3 locomotive types, so people can faithfully recreate any livery from any time period with these engines from every railroad they operated on.

-P40DC - As delivered
-P40DC (Rebuilt) / P42DC - Old Nose
-P40DC / P42DC - Bolt-on Nose
-P42DC - VIA Rail nose configuration.

-P32AC-DM - As delivered
-P32AC-DM - Old Nose w/ Nose Hatch
-P32AC-DM - Bolt-on Nose w/ Nose Hatch
-P32AC-DM - Bolt on Nose

These models are just waiting on the cab to be completed and for paint to finish.

That's some great stuff there.

[SD40-2]

Update:

Been a bit busy and crazy on both of our ends recently. Kyle is gearing up for yet another big event, so we're going to try and get a 0.95, possibly 0.99 release out middle of next week.

A lot of small things need to be tied up, so Kyle and I will get those done this week.

[geepster775]

95k polys probably works because there are only 1 or 2 units per train. And in many places, P42 trains are one-a-day-in-each-direction affairs.