Cost of creating about to skyrocket

[martinvk]

Where will the next generation of content creators come from?

Since Auran has said they will only support 3DStudio, I went over to AutoDesk's site to see what this would cost me. They will sell me a copy of 3DStudio Max 2009 for only US$3,503.95

I don't know about the rest of you but that is not only way over my Trainz budget, that is beyond my total hobby budget.

Now the creations produced by this product may be stunning and a visual masterpiece but who can afford the entrance fee to make them?

I imagine there must have been some interesting discussions at Auran before it was decided that higher quality would the deciding factor. I just hope that there will be enough quantity available to make the game interesting to use.

One of the most attractive features of Trainz has always been the ease with which the average user could add objects to the gaming environment, thereby making it a more personal experience. All the objects I have created over the years have done this for me and have sustained my interest in Trainz for over 6 years. Quite a feat for a "game." With the cost of creating soon to be way out of reach, it looks like I will have to continue using and creating for previous versions. Luckily I have not exhausted the possibilities for fun in them nor will they suddenly stop working just because a new version is on the market. This is something everyone should keep in mind. Your older version will not stop working when TS2009 is released.

 

[transitguard]

WHAT!!!

That's ridiculus! Why would they decide to throw all of the cheap methods of quality content creation OUT THE WINDOW!!! Sure, some people will shell out that money, but, as you said, quantity will definitely be an issue. I don't think TRS2009 will be quite as popular as previous versions...

 

[SR6900]

Someone needs to read at TrainzDev more.

Actually the amount of supported programs broadened with the Trainz Mesh Importer. Any program that can export a .xml file will be able to be used. So there's Blender, Truespace, and many many more.

 

[ZapperJet]

Blender is your best choice. Trust me, I use it. It will do anything and more than what 3Ds can, for free.

Cheerio,
John

 

[martinvk]

Someone needs to read at TrainzDev more.

Actually the amount of supported programs broadened with the Trainz Mesh Importer. Any program that can export a .xml file will be able to be used. So there's Blender, Truespace, and many many more.

From the TrainzDev WIKI

Auran uses Autodesk 3DS Max for internal modeling needs. At the current time, this is the only Auran-supported tool for creating models for the Trainz environment.

and

The Trainz Mesh Importer tool is Auran's supported path for importing 3D models and animation from sources other than Autodesk 3DS Max. The tool is not directly useful to content creators- instead it is a building block that third-party programmers may use to safely build .im and .kin binary files.

Perhaps I missed the exact meaning of the word "not directly useful for content creators" but it appears to be saying it's not for me.

Will exporters for Blender, TrueSpace, 3DCanvas etc., have official support or will it be an AS-IS, at your own risk process?

 

[ZapperJet]

I believe if you still wish to use GMAX as a modeling tool, that one can still export from it. The only difference between GMAX and 3DSMAX is purely that the latter can create bump maps, ambient occlusion maps, and specular maps, whereas GMAX requires them to be made by hand or not at all. It's simply a matter of how much detail one puts into the model. The fact of the matter is, that once you import all of the content from previous TRS versions, Trainz will look just like it always has, excluding any graphics engine updates. The only content that will look extravagant will be the content produced by Auran.

Cheerio,
John

 

[johnwhelan]

Where will the next generation of content creators come from?

Since Auran has said they will only support 3DStudio, I went over to AutoDesk's site to see what this would cost me. They will sell me a copy of 3DStudio Max 2009 for only US$3,503.95

I don't know about the rest of you but that is not only way over my Trainz budget, that is beyond my total hobby budget.

Now the creations produced by this product may be stunning and a visual masterpiece but who can afford the entrance fee to make them?

I imagine there must have been some interesting discussions at Auran before it was decided that higher quality would the deciding factor. I just hope that there will be enough quantity available to make the game interesting to use.

One of the most attractive features of Trainz has always been the ease with which the average user could add objects to the gaming environment, thereby making it a more personal experience. All the objects I have created over the years have done this for me and have sustained my interest in Trainz for over 6 years. Quite a feat for a "game." With the cost of creating soon to be way out of reach, it looks like I will have to continue using and creating for previous versions. Luckily I have not exhausted the possibilities for fun in them nor will they suddenly stop working just because a new version is on the market. This is something everyone should keep in mind. Your older version will not stop working when TS2009 is released.

Technically there is an issue with all third party methods such as 3D Canvas that the decompile method that has been used up until now might get something wrong and a badly created bit of content could crash Trainz.

What Auran have done is create a method that accepts specially formatted XML data into their importer. XML is a generic data inter-change standard that is human readable with tags. Anything that the XML importer gets that is not correctly tagged gets ignored which reduces the risk of a malformed .im file. XML has the advantage that you can add functionality to the XML importer but because of the tag system in XML the existing exporters can continue to be used albeit without the new functionality

As far as I'm aware currently only Blender has an XML exporter, built by Torsten this automatically invokes the Auran XML importer when it is run. Auran are saying the XML importer is only beta at the moment, Torsten is slowly adding functionality and documentation to the Blender exporter. I think what Auran mean is it is extremely difficult for content creators to write XML tagged data directly by hand.

Truespace etc. maybe able to write out XML files but creating an exporter that gets the tags correct and the data correctly formatted in an XML file is no small task.

There is a learning curve with Blender but it is much less steep than GMAX. I think Paul Hobb has expressed the view that from a functionality point of view there really isn't much to choose between 3DStudio and Blender.

What I like about it is it seems to be much more reliable and has a very consistant interface. The intelligent UV mapping is much easier to use than GMAX.

Currently what is lacking is Trainz specific Blender tutorials. If you know GMAX then you know the basic steps. I've got a basic tutorial for Blender in the wikibook and basically you have to take it from there.

Cheerio John

 

[paulhobbs]

Since Auran has said they will only support 3DStudio, I went over to AutoDesk's site to see what this would cost me. They will sell me a copy of 3DStudio Max 2009 for only US$3,503.95

No they won't, you can't get it shipped to Europe, you have to buy it here which costs 5000€ (a hell of a lot more than 3500$). IMHO Max is overrated and overpriced - it seems as though Blender will do everything you need although I don't have much experience of it yet. Perhaps when the content for TC3 is acceptable I will get around to doing some tutorials.

Paul

 

[Barry]

I think I will add regarding the basics of Blender it is very easy to use, especially if making simple UV textured items etc, and have used it for about 5 years or so consistently, for buildings, coastal content, sailing ships, barges and canal boats, etc....... Where it may get difficult is using it for the more advanced functions and if using advanced texturing methods, etc.... Specific tutorials related to trainz may eventually be most useful if they can be detailed step by step for the more simpler minds to understand (like mine)....... Barry

 

[whitepass]

I'm going with Blender, it's a better program than gmax, Boolean works the way it should. I made a cube and cut 3 cylinders out of it each at a right angle to one another, gmax could not do that.

 

[ZapperJet]

You don't actually need to use boolean in Blender. Say you wanted to cut a tubular hole in a box. What you would do is create the outline of the box, ie. 4 vertices (or a plane without a face). Create a circle inside the box outline, make sure the circle has no faces. Join the two, if you haven't already, so you can select the verticies of both. Hit A to select all in edit mode. Hit Shift-F. That should fill in the faces between the two. Then, select all faces, and hit E, for extrude. Tada! You have a box with a cutout. This works for any shape. You can also use curves to do this if you know how.

Cheerio,
John

 

[Barry]

You don't actually need to use boolean in Blender. Say you wanted to cut a tubular hole in a box. What you would do is create the outline of the box, ie. 4 vertices (or a plane without a face). Create a circle inside the box outline, make sure the circle has no faces. Join the two, if you haven't already, so you can select the verticies of both. Hit A to select all in edit mode. Hit Shift-F. That should fill in the faces between the two. Then, select all faces, and hit E, for extrude. Tada! You have a box with a cutout. This works for any shape. You can also use curves to do this if you know how.

Cheerio,
John

Thanks John. One thing about Blender however long you have used it there is always something new to learn................ Barry

 

[johnwhelan]

You don't actually need to use boolean in Blender. Say you wanted to cut a tubular hole in a box. What you would do is create the outline of the box, ie. 4 vertices (or a plane without a face). Create a circle inside the box outline, make sure the circle has no faces. Join the two, if you haven't already, so you can select the verticies of both. Hit A to select all in edit mode. Hit Shift-F. That should fill in the faces between the two. Then, select all faces, and hit E, for extrude. Tada! You have a box with a cutout. This works for any shape. You can also use curves to do this if you know how.

Cheerio,
John

That's something that had been puzzling me. To make a passenger coach in GMAX I would basically draw a cross section weld the lines then extrude the length of the coach.

So in Blender I could do something similar?

Cheerio John