3D Cab Project

[Railfanner87]

As a side project and a break from the Wisconsin Southern route, I've decided to take up modeling a 3D cab for WSOR 4223. Functional cab radio and EOT device with night time views. The doors are unfortunately not animated. I've been quite enjoying myself that I'm considering making cabs for the F45s and SD60Ms that are also on the WSOR roster before moving to make customizable kits for some of the locomotive models by Danny Beck. Most of the control stand and gauge textures were provided by someone named Toastur on Discord. It's currently being finalized before uploading on the Trainsim Library. Right now the current issues Im looking to fix is that upon loading into the sim, the cab radio plays even though it starts in the off state. Im also looking into adding some sounds for the EOT/Odometer functions.

Open Rails 2026-06-23 06-30-53.png Open Rails 2026-06-23 06-31-11.png

[eric]

That's just beautiful. Should make TrainSimJack happy....

[pschlik]

Nitpick time.

Your ammeter is wrong, the -900 to +1650 ammeter is for something like an SD50. Your SD45 there should have the -800 to +1500 ammeter; the second-generation units had lower dynamic brake and motoring amperage limits than everything afterward.

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[Railfanner87]

Nitpick time.

Your ammeter is wrong, the -900 to +1650 ammeter is for something like an SD50. Your SD45 there should have the -800 to +1500 ammeter; the second-generation units had lower dynamic brake and motoring amperage limits than everything afterward.

9085182__13398.1517380386.1280.1280.jpg

Not sure if it still applies but 4223 was rebuilt to be an SD40-2 with an SD45 carbody.

[pschlik]

Not sure if it still applies but 4223 was rebuilt to be an SD40-2 with an SD45 carbody.

Nah that wouldn't change the amperages used, 38s to 45s all got the same motors.

[ngc427]

Fantastic work. I would love the option to put these cabs onto more units as well, particularly stuff like the SD45T-2s from the Shasta route, maybe a template .blend file that can be used to put custom exteriors on? Open Rails definitely needs some 3D cabs for the "mainstream" payware content.

[stewy]

That is one fantastic piece of work,😁 STEWY

[LuFeDuTi]

That looks fantastic. I saw a poll on trainsimulations.net Facebook asking how people wanted the locomotive cabs to look, and I remember select 3D cab.

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

WOW - beautiful work - excellent attention to detail. Working in Blender? Much further along than my Alco cab - need to get motivated for another effort.

I found I needed a 4096 sheet for the cab interior and a second 2048 sheet for gauges because you're so close to the textures. I also went with seamless repeating textures on the parts I didn't plan on using Ambient Occlusion on- like the window frames. Honestly - I found upgrading to larger textures had no real performance impact.

Monumental effort on your part - sorely needed - keep up the great work!!!





Regards,
Scott

[pwillard]

I still love what you have so far Scott.

I'm hoping they do a HOW-TO so I can update that section of the "notebook"

[Railfanner87]

Hi Folks,

WOW - beautiful work - excellent attention to detail. Working in Blender? Much further along than my Alco cab - need to get motivated for another effort.

I found I needed a 4096 sheet for the cab interior and a second 2048 sheet for gauges because you're so close to the textures. I also went with seamless repeating textures on the parts I didn't plan on using Ambient Occlusion on- like the window frames. Honestly - I found upgrading to larger textures had no real performance impact.

Monumental effort on your part - sorely needed - keep up the great work!!!





Regards,
Scott

Using Blender, yes! Mainly trying to keep the style similar to the Danny Beck locomotives in a way. I gotta see about baking in the ambient occlusion lighting as well.

[scottb613]

Hi Pete,

Hah - I'm sure I'll get my second wind again soon - fingers crossed - I miss modeling. I also like putting tutorials together - it just seemed as if there were only a couple of people interested - and it's a great deal of work to make them.

Thanks for the comment...


Regards,
Scott

[scottb613]

Using Blender, yes! Mainly trying to keep the style similar to the Danny Beck locomotives in a way. I gotta see about baking in the ambient occlusion lighting as well.

Hi - what's your first name?

Here is a mapping tutorial I started - you may find something useful: Blender - Mapping and Baking - Primer - Trainsim.Com

There are two addons you want to load into blender to MASSIVELY help your mapping and baking operations.

TexTools (Blender)
------------------
A compact UV/baking toolkit that speeds up common texture tasks.

- One‑click AO bake:
• Pick your mesh → press AO → TexTools auto‑creates the image, sets bake
settings, and runs the bake.
• Removes the usual Blender bake‑panel setup steps.

- Other essentials:
• Quick UV align/straighten/pack tools
• Color‑ID baking
• Small workflow helpers for fast game‑asset texturing


Texel Density Checker (Blender)
-------------------------------
A utility for keeping consistent texel density across all your assets.

- Retrieve density:
• Select mesh → choose texture size → addon shows exact px/unit density.

- Set density:
• Enter a target density → UV islands auto‑scale to match.
• Can copy density from one object to others for uniform sharpness.

- Visual tools:
• Checker/heatmap overlays to spot inconsistent UV scaling.

I noticed the scale on some of the dots on your insulation seem to vary quite a bit - Texel Density Checker - makes it super easy to ensure your scale and density remain perfectly consistent on every surface.

The links are in my tutorial. Texel Density Checker - is now available from within Blender - via adding extensions.

If I can be of any help - just post and I will help as much as I can.

Regards,
Scott

[Railfanner87]

Nathan by the way. Thanks for the information you sent. I'll mess around with this whenever I can!

[scottb613]

Hi Nathan,

Sounds good - best of luck...

Regards,
Scott