(Big Pix Warning) Hardly Workin': My Attempts to be a Contributing Member of Society

I think I am almost done with the building phase of the Amfleet Is. The trucks, couplers, and hoses will be modeled separately so I can (hopefully) animate them.
The side doors and steps are already animated. Here is one last look before I begin mapping:


Also, if you have anything to say about these projects, positive or negative, speak your mind :D
 
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Ahhh, that is just lovely. You have fantastic skills to be able to do that in such a short amount of time. Just a thought or suggestion perhaps, the flanges on the wheels seem abit large. Here's a related photo:

ensco_fig01_wheel_rail_contact_forces.jpg


So after shrinking it a little, instead of square corners (I'm assuming you used splines to create the profile then lathed it around the axle), just a simple triangle where the bottom is pointed maybe, deleting the outside spline point? Something like this (where the thin gray line is the old shape)



Also, the doors appear they should be quite abit more recessed. However, if this is too much trouble to go back and modify then it's alright, not a biggie.

Amfleet_1.jpg


At any rate, you're making fantastic progress so keep it up and good luck. :)

Cheerio,
Nicholas
 
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I'm still working out the kinks on the trucks. They're waaaaay too high-poly right now. So I was going to basically redo them anyways. Thanks for helping me get them right as it seems no one ever takes detail photos of trucks. The diagram I am using to make them is separate from the one I am using for the carbody so I was just kind of eyeballin' it when attaching them together. What is actually that triangle shape looked more square on the diagram I have.

The doors have given me trouble since, I guess it's the shadows in photos causing it, the doors appear at different 'depths'. But yeah, I see what you're getting at and it's not a big deal to move them in.

I found this close up and, you are right, they do need to be pushed back. Way back.

am1.jpg


Thanks again.
 
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Great work and sorely needed. Phase III on are my favorites for the most part, but the early Heritage stuff is fun to have too. Anything Amtrak is OK by me. looking forward to seeing them finished.
 
Your work is amazing! Keep it up. And also I find it amazing how humble you are about making each car, your going to model each car but taking it slow.
 
I think I would normally be more inclined to build Superliners, but all of my Amtrak trips to date have been on the NEC or near it. I've only been on a long distance train once - the Silver Meteor which uses the Amfleet IIs, Viewliners, and Heritage Fleet Diners. Well, I road the Adirondack from NYC to Albany once, but that doesn't count. I'm just going with what I am more familiar with. The only times I ever see Superliners is at a distance in DC, the Cardinal I think is the train, so I can't go off my own memory and experiences to make those. I'm tempted to book a short leg on the Cardinal later this summer just to take a peak around them on the inside. Rest assured though Superliners are probably going to be the next thing I'll attempt if the current cars come out alright. They're just not on my mind at the moment.
 
Hey guys I need some help real quick. It's nothing major just something fun. A few Amfleets, around 40 coaches and 20 or so cafe cars, were rebuilt or converted using ARRA Tiger grants. The cars that received them have this label on the side:


I can't for the life of me remember where that decal goes though. I want to say it looks like this:


But I can't find any reference photos. It's not a big deal I was just mapping and remembered those logos so I got side tracked and traced one out. Might be cool to stick in there with a random skin changer rather than its own vehicle.

Thanks!
 
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opus722 said:
Might be cool to stick in there with a random skin changer rather than its own vehicle.
Click to expand...

That's what I think Chameleon is great for. Lets face it, an AmFleet coach is an AmFleet coach, regardless of what phase paint it is in. Set coaches, diners, and whatever to a single scheme so they always come up under that scheme for consistency's sake, then if you want a Phase IV car (or train) change the skins instead of having 20 different cars in the car selector.

Not to drag the conversation away from these excellent Amfleets (and certainly not being a gimme pig!), but any chance we'll get to see the coal hoppers you showed on the gMax thread released too?
 
Unfortunately most of my models are going to be a "Last In, First Out" deal because I'm still learning stuff. The earliest things I worked on don't reflect some of the stuff I've picked up through trial and error. Those hoppers, for example, have 50% more polys than the Amfleet, trucks and all, despite being a much simpler design. I've been going back and trimming down the fat on them and rebuilding some parts to get what I want out of them. Also, I was doing those to go along with a 1960s themed Appalachian route, I never settled on the Interstate or a N&W one on the KY/WV/VA borderlands, and I've since learned that I can't do much more with Surveyor than make a DEM and lay some track on it. So without the route I kind of got bored with them and looked towards my other interests - US passenger rail.

Since you brought it up I'll post those pictures here too. I'm pretty sure they've been shown around in various threads before, but here they are all in one place.
 
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opus722 said:
Unfortunately most of my models are going to be a "Last In, First Out" deal because I'm still learning stuff. The earliest things I worked on don't reflect some of the stuff I've picked up through trial and error. Those hoppers, for example, have 50% more polys than the Amfleet, trucks and all, despite being a much simpler design. I've been going back and trimming down the fat on them and rebuilding some parts to get what I want out of them. Also, I was doing those to go along with a 1960s themed Appalachian route, I never settled on the Interstate or a N&W one on the KY/WV/VA borderlands, and I've since learned that I can't do much more with Surveyor than make a DEM and lay some track on it. So without the route I kind of got bored with them and looked towards my other interests - US passenger rail.

Since you brought it up I'll post those pictures here too. I'm pretty sure they've been shown around in various threads before, but here they are all in one place.
Click to expand...

I've never seen the silversides before.... looks good! I got a request to use my 125T rotary dump coal gondola as a silverside.

I know the feeling: I've found myself going back and tweaking old stuff that I wasn't 100% happy with as I learned new things. I also find myself wandering from project to project because I'll get tired of working on something (coil cars come to mind) and revisit something else (updated the corrugated gondolas because I learned new stuff), then learned new mapping techniques while working on the coil cars (went back and updated the coal gons) and applied it to older stuff (back to the corrugated gons), learned ARN (back to the corrugated gons and the rotary coal gons). I've got a couple of other "started" projects I want to do, a few "logical next step" projects to follow some stuff I've already done, and a special project I want to do but am waiting until I feel more comfortable with stuff I'm doing now.

My modus operandi has been more of "out whenever I feel like I've refined it enough"
 
Really? I thought I was the only person who cared about beat up Southern coal gons around here.

I meant to show this before with the TIGER logo. Starting to give her the first coat of paint:


Improvements to the trucks are also visible there.
 
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The Amfleet cars looks great! You have one awesome looking model. Keep it up. Also I was wondering how much scripting do you have to do, to get the cars to work in trainz?
 
I don't know. I plan on using free to use script libraries that are already out there and fill in what they can't cover. I don't expect to need to do much since those preexisting scripts cover pretty much everything. No need to reinvent the wheel just to have something proprietary.

At a minimum it should have

- Marker Lights
- ARN

I'd be highly dissapointed if it didn't have

- Skin Changer
- Opening Doors & Stairs

Extra Stuff, while highly desirable, is not critical

-Animated Diaphragms, Hoses, & Couplers
 
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Hmm. I know I said Superliners were not my top priority, but they keep popping up everywhere. It's like they're calling out "BUILD ME BUILD ME". This is all tentative, since I work with reaching benchmarks rather than dates, but hear me out. I am toying with bumping the Superliners up in my production schedule to replace the Heritage Diner and Viewliners. The Amfleet would still be my #1 project, but the Diner and Viewliner would be pushed backed considerably. The biggest pro to this is that Superliners are used all over the nation while the Viewliners and Heritage Diners are limited to a few routes originating in NYC. The biggest con is that there is already a million Superliners out there and I don't know if I could do a better job that those. Added on to that is the fact that there are almost no diners to speak of out there. So that's my dilemma. What do you guys think?
 
Wonderful work, opus! May I suggest you try applying Andi06's AJS Superscript? There are some Gresley articulated coaches that are a great example of quality application of the Superscript to passenger cars in Trainz, and they do everything you [ideally] want. This includes changing the skin textures, door animations, animated diaphragms & hoses, etc.
 
opus722 said:
Hmm. I know I said Superliners were not my top priority, but they keep popping up everywhere. It's like they're calling out "BUILD ME BUILD ME". This is all tentative, since I work with reaching benchmarks rather than dates, but hear me out. I am toying with bumping the Superliners up in my production schedule to replace the Heritage Diner and Viewliners. The Amfleet would still be my #1 project, but the Diner and Viewliner would be pushed backed considerably. The biggest pro to this is that Superliners are used all over the nation while the Viewliners and Heritage Diners are limited to a few routes originating in NYC. The biggest con is that there is already a million Superliners out there and I don't know if I could do a better job that those. Added on to that is the fact that there are almost no diners to speak of out there. So that's my dilemma. What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

Like you said, Superliners are a dime a dozen. At the very least I'd love to see the diners out there as they are needed.
 
I'll check that script out. Regarding those coaches - someone else brought up Ocemy's Chinese coaches earlier and, combined with those UK ones, you get a sense of how underrepresented US passenger equipment is in Trainz. I can understand the lack of modern stuff, since I guess the US is really lacking in prototypical passenger rail now haha, but there is a wealth of stuff pre-1960s US that is just begging to be modeled. As Elvis once said, "How I wish that there were more than the twenty-four hours in the day, cause even if there were forty more I wouldn't sleep a minute away." So, Viva Las Amtrak!
 
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