3D Cab Project

[TrainSimJack]

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

+1 interested party Scott, you're modeling work is awesome and OpenRails definitely needs more 3D cabs.

[scottb613]

+1 interested party Scott, you're modeling work is awesome and OpenRails definitely needs more 3D cabs.

Hi Jack,

Thanks for the comment. Yeah - I am a bit overdue to get back into Blender.

While my cab is far from finished - I do have it running in the sim and 3D cabs make all the difference. Last I looked there were only a couple to choose from.

Regards,
Scott

[=FI=Ghost]

This looks fantastic.

[Railfanner87]

Attempting to do some automatic AO havent turned out too well since Im using a 2048 size texture atlas for the whole cab and theres hardly any space left. Opted to do some manual shading and some UV tweaks to get something good looking.

Im also doing a chair rework. Started with the alternate option of the early toadstool seats. Now I need to find dimensions of a modern style of seat, namely the USSC model 9010 seat or something similar with diamond stitching...

blendin.jpg

[kennyeaton]

Good work Nathan.

Looking forward to you uploading this to the library. I sure hope that you don't stop here when finished. Be nice to see you do a high nose as well as a long hood lead high nose with the dual control stands. That would be a game changer on all of the SD and GP units.

Kenny

[Railfanner87]

Hopefully once I get the modern seats put in, I can release. Then I can do the standard short hood GP and SD packs afterward. Might be a bit before the high/long hoods and dual stands are thrown out. Im planning on doing cabs for the F45 and SD60M afterwards. 70ACE if Im really motivated enough.

[Railfanner87]

Modern seats modeled in. However some personal tests have revealed another bug. The cab radio plays despite starting in the OFF state. And when pressed on and back off, it does turn off the chatter mid playback. But some time after it would still play another random snippet of chatter while OFF again...

image_2026-07-03_194943873.png

[cuontv]

Really nice work Nathan, been enjoying this very much! Looking forward to the other cabs release and hope you're able to share more. Thanks for all the hard work!
-Tom

[Railfanner87]

Got another thing in the works.

blendin2.jpg

[TrainGuy6550]

Hello Railfanner87,
I'd like to ask you ask you something. Do you use procedural materials for all the metal knobs / switches in your image? Or do you manually UV map them to metal textures?
Because they look too good to be UV mapped and not as good to be procedural...I'm genuinely curious how you pulled that off.

image.png

[chase4]

a bit off topic but,i installed everything, tested it and ran it, no horn, no bell and no interior sounds besides the engine

[Railfanner87]

Hello Railfanner87,
I'd like to ask you ask you something. Do you use procedural materials for all the metal knobs / switches in your image? Or do you manually UV map them to metal textures?
Because they look too good to be UV mapped and not as good to be procedural...I'm genuinely curious how you pulled that off.

All the switches and knobs were manually UV mapped to photo textures .

a bit off topic but,i installed everything, tested it and ran it, no horn, no bell and no interior sounds besides the engine

Odd, did you put the BVS_COMMON folder in the TRAINSET folder?

[TrainGuy6550]

manually UV mapped

just phenomenal

[Erick_Cantu]

Looks pretty good to me so far. Let me know if you need any advice on integrating the cab to a model - I have the process pretty much down. The 70-tonner and 25-tonner probably make for good reference models in terms of integration.

[Railfanner87]

Looks pretty good to me so far. Let me know if you need any advice on integrating the cab to a model - I have the process pretty much down. The 70-tonner and 25-tonner probably make for good reference models in terms of integration.

Thanks! What sorta integration are you referring to? I've gotten it inline with the SD45 carbody so far and I plan to align it with the SD40-2 and GP38-2s Danny also made. The 3D cab project is primarily with his stuff in mind.

The only advice I can ask of is how can the power selector be integrated? Unless its not possible with current Open Rails functionality.