Attention Content Creators

[Lendorf]

Yup. Bit longer then I expected though :hehe: and I obviously overlooked one or more topics of your hand about splines.
And I agree with pcas1986; let us know when you figured those tunnel splines out.

.

A few hours after posting above:

One new tunnel spline finished. Onwards to creating some more of different splines :hehe:. It helped immensely to study a working example of the new tunnel spline for TS12. Thank you Rob for providing one :wave:.

Lennard

 

[dragonharh]

How did you make it I can't get a simple track spline to work in trainz I used a mesh to make mine ?

 

[Lendorf]

I studied the example mesh file, I studied Rob's d/loaded CDP and its configuration in it and exported out of Max the right meshes with the correct file names required, after applying these with my own textures.

Lennard

 

[PARAILFAN]

I'm glad someone decided to bring this up in a post because it could not be more true. It seems like the content creators who are most offended by this are the ones who were not doing the proper procedures anyways. I almost always pass on downloading something that has no description or thumbnail. I'd like to know what I'm downloading first.

 

[domsarto]

I'm glad someone decided to bring this up in a post because it could not be more true. It seems like the content creators who are most offended by this are the ones who were not doing the proper procedures anyways. I almost always pass on downloading something that has no description or thumbnail. I'd like to know what I'm downloading first.

Try creating and uploading something before you start to pontificate to others.

 

[PARAILFAN]

Try creating and uploading something before you start to pontificate to others.

Are you going to start with your harassment again? As I said above if you are offended by people stating facts there must be a reason.

 

[JCitron]

I came upon this in a book I've been reading: The Musician's Way: A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness by Gerald Klickstein. www.themusiciansway.com . It's as appropriate to music as it is to content creation, and it's something that everyone here should think about whether they are creating routes or other assets. This particular section I am reading, is located in a chapter relating to problem solving which is very much part of what we do here as well.

Recognize a problem

If problem recognition strikes you as an easy step, think again. "Creativity can be as much a process of finding problems as solving them," wrote creativity consultant Ken Robinson....

To recognize problems, musicians need keen perceptual skills. (Substitute content creator here). Yet perceptions are fallible. Anyone is likely to conclude that no problems exist when in fact various defects circling beneath the radar. Worse still, if musicians. believe that their perceptions are impeccable, they may turn away from noticing faults to avoid upsetting their glorified self-images.

Now this paragraph hit home...Problem recognition begins with humility, with acceptance of the fact that you might be missing something. Assuming that flagrant flaws already set off your alarms, you now need ways to detect less-obvious weaknesses in your music (content creating process), ones that you could overlook if you weren't attuned to the fine details...

(Klickstein, 2009, pgs. 70-72).

In other words, listen to the critics of your work as they will point what's wrong and will assist you in making the stuff better. Without someone pointing out the faults, we will generate the same errors all the time.

John

 

[Barry]

John I think to make critical observations of work you have to have made content yourself and be aware of all the problems entailed in making it.
I think in most cases the creator of the content is well aware of how it could be improved..but that is also assuming he.she has all the knowledge at his/her fingertips to enable him to do that. Of course a thumbnail and short description goes without saying if making it for others to use a. With Trainz it is not only knowing how to make the content but also how to set up changing configuration files that makes the object function. I never could make animations in gmax and trying to set up configurations is another story and that is why so many were copied originally from other people work. So can't agree with your observations...but at three score and ten plus that's my excuse anyway

Barry

 

[johnwhelan]

I came upon this in a book I've been reading: The Musician's Way: A Guide to Practice, Performance, and Wellness by Gerald Klickstein. www.themusiciansway.com . It's as appropriate to music as it is to content creation, and it's something that everyone here should think about whether they are creating routes or other assets. This particular section I am reading, is located in a chapter relating to problem solving which is very much part of what we do here as well.

Recognize a problem

If problem recognition strikes you as an easy step, think again. "Creativity can be as much a process of finding problems as solving them," wrote creativity consultant Ken Robinson....

To recognize problems, musicians need keen perceptual skills. (Substitute content creator here). Yet perceptions are fallible. Anyone is likely to conclude that no problems exist when in fact various defects circling beneath the radar. Worse still, if musicians. believe that their perceptions are impeccable, they may turn away from noticing faults to avoid upsetting their glorified self-images.

Now this paragraph hit home...Problem recognition begins with humility, with acceptance of the fact that you might be missing something. Assuming that flagrant flaws already set off your alarms, you now need ways to detect less-obvious weaknesses in your music (content creating process), ones that you could overlook if you weren't attuned to the fine details...

(Klickstein, 2009, pgs. 70-72).

In other words, listen to the critics of your work as they will point what's wrong and will assist you in making the stuff better. Without someone pointing out the faults, we will generate the same errors all the time.

John

But I think you have to think about the audience. Professional musicians probably wish to improve, they get more work. Professional 3D modellers are the same but many Trainz content creators are not professional even though N3V sell their products as payware they just do it for the fun, and if it ain't fun they won't do it. I know of one content creator who no longer creates for the DLS, he finds it too complicated to get things exactly right and frustrating when the next hot fix comes out and he finds all his content has yet another set of warnings. Another who created some very nice top quality UK wagons appears to have decided its no longer fun so bye.

I think I read somewhere that Train Simulator 2014 cost around $5,000 if you buy all the routes and rolling stock and that's the professional route. Most of it looks very good but that's your choice free stuff and try to persuade the content creators to make it the way you'd like or pay the professionals and demand.

Cheerio John

 

[JCitron]

John I think to make critical observations of work you have to have made content yourself and be aware of all the problems entailed in making it.
I think in most cases the creator of the content is well aware of how it could be improved..but that is also assuming he.she has all the knowledge at his/her fingertips to enable him to do that. Of course a thumbnail and short description goes without saying if making it for others to use a. With Trainz it is not only knowing how to make the content but also how to set up changing configuration files that makes the object function. I never could make animations in gmax and trying to set up configurations is another story and that is why so many were copied originally from other people work. So can't agree with your observations...but at three score and ten plus that's my excuse anyway

Barry

Good excuse.

At least you admit that you can't do the animations. To be honest, neither can I so I stay out of the whole shebang. The thing is we all seem to get our feathers out of whack when someone points out our errors here. If we were to accept them and go on to do things better next time. This is pretty much what Gerald pointed out in his book I've been reading. There's a lot more there that I didn't quote, only because of the length and it really goes into deep analysis of errors and problem solving. (YIKES!!)

As far as the config files. Well, that boils down to another ball of string to be unraveled. People copied because of the lack of documentation. The old CCGs came out after the fact rather than before the product was released. Remember the TRS2004 CCG? The problem too is the people who shouldn't have made the errors did and then the error checking didn't find them. This too caused more issues which have finally been ironed out quite a bit.

John

 

[amigacooke]

When dealing with people who are volunteering to do you a favour, I'd suggest asking politely rather than demanding.

No-one has to create the content you use, so some gratitude would be nice to go with constructive criticism.

 

[SantaFebuff]

As far as I see it, it's should be a standard and implied. There shouldn't have to be a post asking for people to include a thumbnail and description.

Thumbnails are easy, screen cap and resize at minimum. I like a little text overlay and even a nice logo for good measure. When I do routes I try to include a gallery of images, at least on my website.

I find it hard to judge what is worth downloading if it doesn't tell me much, because a lot of thing sound nicer than they are, or sound worse then they are... a good honest description and a thumbnail really can carry an asset that has tons of hard work put into it into the view and surveyor of those who will truly appreciate it.

Cheers,
Joshua

 

[PARAILFAN]

When dealing with people who are volunteering to do you a favour, I'd suggest asking politely rather than demanding.

No-one has to create the content you use, so some gratitude would be nice to go with constructive criticism.

Fair enough. I respect that. There are some people here making a big deal of the fact I have no content made for the DLS. Do I know how to use GMAX or Sketchup? No not very well. I appreciate those who have mastered using those programs. What I do have is real world experience, photographing and making videos of trains. I have grown up around them. Sometimes you have to step back and realize everything you are creating, is supposed to resemble what is out there in real life. Otherwise the game loses it's realism and credibility. That is the big deal about engine sounds and such. The difference between a GE and EMD sound is like night and day. Like JCitron said it just takes a bit of humility to want to try and fix problems and make something right. The trouble is many here will not even acknowledge there is a problem. To them, anyone who points out anything is the problem.

 

[NSWGR_46Class]

Funny first time I have heard of this problem, last time someone accused my of having a spelling error they never took the time to do the research and find out it was just error caused by the instance of not having the latest patches installed and I always use CCP its the only way to setup config in TS12 http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?189-Australian-screenshots/page870
Interesting comment from someone who only has one item on the DLS to their name compares to someone who has over 750 items with some of them having over 50,000 downloads not bad for a dyslexic person.

I just find that funny because almost all of your assets have missing dependencies or typos in the config that could be fixed easily by CCP, yet here you are talking about other creators overlooking things.

 

[johnwhelan]

Fair enough. I respect that. There are some people here making a big deal of the fact I have no content made for the DLS. Do I know how to use GMAX or Sketchup? No not very well. I appreciate those who have mastered using those programs. What I do have is real world experience, photographing and making videos of trains. I have grown up around them. Sometimes you have to step back and realize everything you are creating, is supposed to resemble what is out there in real life. Otherwise the game loses it's realism and credibility. That is the big deal about engine sounds and such. The difference between a GE and EMD sound is like night and day. Like JCitron said it just takes a bit of humility to want to try and fix problems and make something right. The trouble is many here will not even acknowledge there is a problem. To them, anyone who points out anything is the problem.

There is a huge frustration factor in creating content, I'd estimate 90% of the people who start out give up. These days I work more in a team environment and we are better at catching problems as they come up but very few people know all there is to know about content creation. It takes a team to have the people who are knowledgeable about various aspects of the content, one specialises in engine specs, another in Private Owner reskins, someone else in textures, ever tried bump or normal mapping I use someone who sets it up for me, I wouldn't recognise a GE or EMD loco sound, its not in my area of interest. I've spent two years making one bit of content now imagine how grateful I feel when some one comes along and says the buffer height is half an inch too high or the whistle can't be used when stationary and if only I'd included the following in the config.txt file, and don't even start on scripts.

Probably for me the most difficult part is research, if you have good side on photographs of box cars then do a few reskins, if you're worried about N3V selling your work if you upload to the DLS put it up on TPR. One question that came up was the size of a wheel in the UK. some modellers use 3 feet 3 inches, the only documentation I can find say 3 feet 1.5 inches, but over time they are lathed down to 2 feet 11 inches as they turn them down to remove flats spots etc. To some people having the correct size wheels is as important to them as the loco sounds are to you. Sometimes I know something is not correct but I'll make it a certain way to keep the poly count down. I don't go out and make my own recordings of a loco then incorporate them in the finished model, sorry but if you want that level of detail then commission someone to make it with a very clear understanding up front of what you require. Sometimes people's comments saying this is wrong is incorrect, they have looked at an inaccurate model and assumed it is right not back at the original.

Maybe we need to examine how credible the person making the criticism is.

Cheerio John

 

[Zeldaboy14]

I, for one, have taken all the necessary steps for whatever content i create. I make sure of thumbnails and such, and try and keep the poly count down as much as i can.

 

[H222]

If I was a content creator, I wouldn't mind that one grumpy, useless, non-creating nitpicker from the forum isn't downloading my stuff. In fact, when I finally finish the route I'm building, I might not even give a proper description. What will happen? I dont know, some people won't be downloading it. OH NO

 

[Lots_Trains]

H222 you crack me up, good one, never a truer word spoken, well done.

Cheers

Lots

 

[Lendorf]

I concur with H222.

Lennard

 

[H222]

Interesting comment from someone who only has one item on the DLS to their name compares to someone who has over 750 items with some of them having over 50,000 downloads not bad for a dyslexic person.

You should not need to be a creator to have your opinion respected.

I concur with Deane.