RailSimStuff MOW GONDOLA

[pwillard]

Not forgotten. (Well, maybe it was... but I'm tired of seeing it in my unfinished folder.) Been way too long. So I'm working on it again. Ambient Occlusion has beaten me and I give up trying to get it right.

MOW-gon.png

[pwillard]

In all fairness though... it needs a Lucky-Loader crane, so I started one. Not so great on available details so a lot of guessing and ignoring of finer details has been done.

CRANE1.png

[superheatedsteam]

Pete, AO hasn't beaten you, you're just having a well earned rest.

I have added my AO workflow to Scott's thread on baking and hopefully this helps you and others.

https://www.trainsim.com/forums/foru...e2#post2334776

When you're ready, put the mouth guard back in and get back into the ring for a bit of Blender biffo. If you still have problems then let us know and we can work it out. Your excellent models deserve it.

Cheers,

Marek.

[pwillard]

withcrane.png A few hours of stretching my muscles... and we have a texture-mapped Lucky Loader. And yeah, thanks for the encouragement.

Completely winging it here... but it seems ok.

CRANE2.png

[geepster775]

Is the tie load a separate shape?

[pwillard]

Yes, it is, these can run empty or with an FA tie Load. Only one car will have Tie's and the Lucky-Loader Crane.

[pwillard]

Okay, so I've finally got Ambient Occlusion behaving a bit. Thanks to Marek and Scott. Only a couple "nits" to fix.

cRANE1.png cRANE2.png

[jbtower]

WOW Pete that turned out well

[eric]

That does look awesome. If only it could be operated...

[pwillard]

If only it could be operated...

Oh, that will probably never happen.

It's been a journey. I'd been meaning to work on this crane, though, for over 15 years. I only really tried working on it starting October 2. Details on the web are sketchy and pictures are even more scarce.

They also had 2 different grippers, the big claw and the single tie grabber.

Since I plan to make the crosstie load a Freight Anim, I'll probably make one car with the crane permanently attached and the rest without.

Now to tackle the Ambient Occlusion on the Gondola again. For the keen-eyed, Norfolk Southern made the Gondolas by cutting down Bulkhead Flatcars and attaching permanent sides.

And, just like that, I broke it. The moment I added the MSTS Materials assignment to the model... the texture is wiped out. Well, it's always something, I guess.

[superheatedsteam]

Looking good. Also good to see that AO is now behaving for you.

I don't know if your materials changing problem is the same as mine, but I experienced unintended issues with materials changing when the 'Update Shader' check box in the 'MSTS Materials' area was checked. I normally now have it unchecked and assign materials using Blenders 'Browse material to be linked' drop down below the 'Assign' button in the Material Properties tab.

[pwillard]

Yeah, this seems to be a new behavior, and I only recently upgraded to Blender 4.53. To be honest, it's likely an issue with the .s exporter. Blender.org subtly changes things that can impact ADD-ons. I'll need to look into it. I'm not sure when this started happening. I might check back to the previous LTS release (Blender 4.2) and if I can recreate the issue or not.

Likely the Exporter needs some tweakage, though.

I believe the “Update Shader” option triggers RecreateShaderNodes(), but due to Principled BSDF socket updates in Blender 4.5, the links fail, leaving the nodes unconnected or blank. Yuck. So I'll need to develop a fix for that.

Interesting observation about *initially* needing to select *more than one* object to get the first bake to behave. Not knowing this led to frustration on my part, no doubt.

---- Time elapsed ---

Ok, yup, that was the problem... I can now 'Set BASECOLOR Filepath' with the proper texture file (with UPDATE SHADER selected), and I don't get wiped-out materials; instead, I now once again get the expected result. So Version 4.8 of the exporter is being created... hang in there...

Honestly, I'm surprised nobody mentioned this to me before now.

https://github.com/pwillard/Blender_MSTS_ORTS_Exporter

[pwillard]

mow.png Messing with rust effects. I'm not really convinced.

[SD40-2]

I think they're just a bit too light to work well, and a bit too isolated. Usually, when big rust patches appear, it's in concert with plenty of scratches, dirt, and smaller patches.

You really need to pair that with a layer of regular weathering to look convincing.

[EldoradoRailroad]

Pete,

First, seems like you were able to do something with AO, so that is a plus right there!

Second, rust doesn't just happen. The paint job looks too fresh for rust to seem possible. I would use "noise" in the paint job, different colors, etc to weather the paint on another layer.

Third, by the time rust does appear, more often than not, those logos and text are going to look not freshly applied, as they do now. So another layer to mangle the logos and text.

Forth, rust starts, but then drips onto the paint below, so a little well placed rust streaks/smudges might also help.

Fifth, by the time it gets to look that bad, that wagon has been on the road for awhile. Those trucks have been throwing their own metallic mess around on the body. I have found that is the trickiest part to do right. Both dirt and rust from the rail heads and ballast find their way onto the body.

Sixth, you can always mangle the polygons a bit, might need to so some subdivision, to bash up those sides. But you can try some highlight trickery to make it look that way, but it will not look right in all lighting conditions.

Seventh, GREAT WORK! So if all fails, just ignore First to Sixth.

Steve