johnwhelan
Well-known member
My wagons come in five different basic models.
First came the originals with the tops and undercarriages in one mesh. I tried to keep the poly count down so the undercarriages are not as detailed as they could be.
Second came tops mounted on Jack Barber's high detailed steel bogey. Jack (LNERlover5 ) had created a highly detailed bogey for some BR wagons and in 2016 kindly created three for GWR. These were 9 foot wheel base by 16, 9 by 18 and 12 by 21 so a little limiting in what tops could be added but the quality was very good and you could alter some components.
Third in 2017 I had a laptop floating around with intel integrated graphics and wondered if trainz could run on it. I used Jack’s technique and used a standardised length undercarriage from my first original after all I’d spent many hours cutting out unseen faces to cut the poly count down. So that gave way to the 17_5 series of wagons and if you’re running a lower end machine they are useful. Locos were a bit of problem anything over a couple of thousand polys would bring the laptop to it’s knees so it was either a small diesel or a G15 tram with a more powerful engine spec. Visually these are the same as the originals but only available in one length.
Fourth in 2018 Edward Heaps (edh6) created a wooden undercarriage mesh library with a wider range of lengths of wagons, a dumb buffer option etc.
The fifth are the scenery wagons. Scenery wagons have a much lower impact on machine performance but if you're on a lower end machine it might be better to stick with the 17_5 series assets.
The tops use a small range of texture files and you can clone a wagon and switch the texture files if you desire an xyz wagon as a scenery assets or on a steel undercarriage rather than a wooden one etc. For the scenery assets the left side of the texture file is the wagon top so that’s where you’d copy the wagon top texture file. I use Paintshop pro but other graphic editors will work.
Many use normal mapping and you might desire to change the level of normal mapping. If so find the blank version of the wagon and copy out the texture file. Then use nVidia’s normal mapping tool https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-exporter and adjust the level.
Many of my wagons have been reskinned but these have not been updated to correct errors or use later updated dependencies. So if you come across a reskinned wagon the recommendation is to try and work out the original, clone the original then copy in the texture files.
Cheerio John
First came the originals with the tops and undercarriages in one mesh. I tried to keep the poly count down so the undercarriages are not as detailed as they could be.
Second came tops mounted on Jack Barber's high detailed steel bogey. Jack (LNERlover5 ) had created a highly detailed bogey for some BR wagons and in 2016 kindly created three for GWR. These were 9 foot wheel base by 16, 9 by 18 and 12 by 21 so a little limiting in what tops could be added but the quality was very good and you could alter some components.
Third in 2017 I had a laptop floating around with intel integrated graphics and wondered if trainz could run on it. I used Jack’s technique and used a standardised length undercarriage from my first original after all I’d spent many hours cutting out unseen faces to cut the poly count down. So that gave way to the 17_5 series of wagons and if you’re running a lower end machine they are useful. Locos were a bit of problem anything over a couple of thousand polys would bring the laptop to it’s knees so it was either a small diesel or a G15 tram with a more powerful engine spec. Visually these are the same as the originals but only available in one length.
Fourth in 2018 Edward Heaps (edh6) created a wooden undercarriage mesh library with a wider range of lengths of wagons, a dumb buffer option etc.
The fifth are the scenery wagons. Scenery wagons have a much lower impact on machine performance but if you're on a lower end machine it might be better to stick with the 17_5 series assets.
The tops use a small range of texture files and you can clone a wagon and switch the texture files if you desire an xyz wagon as a scenery assets or on a steel undercarriage rather than a wooden one etc. For the scenery assets the left side of the texture file is the wagon top so that’s where you’d copy the wagon top texture file. I use Paintshop pro but other graphic editors will work.
Many use normal mapping and you might desire to change the level of normal mapping. If so find the blank version of the wagon and copy out the texture file. Then use nVidia’s normal mapping tool https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-exporter and adjust the level.
Many of my wagons have been reskinned but these have not been updated to correct errors or use later updated dependencies. So if you come across a reskinned wagon the recommendation is to try and work out the original, clone the original then copy in the texture files.
Cheerio John