Frist Time Making content for Trainz 12 in Blender

[AppleDash22]

Hello everyone. I recently got Blender 2.70a (because there is a great video tutorial on it) and was planning to make some content for Trainz 12 and Trainz: A New Era with it. I have a few ideas for Passenger Cars and Locomotives as well as a few scenery items, but I just don't know how the measurements work out or how to export to Trainz 12. Can anyone help me?

 

[captainkman]

If you mean the exporting size, it is really just a matter of experimentation as far as my experiences go.

Export it. If it's too large, scale it down. Just keep playing with the model until it's the correct size.

For locomotives and rolling stock I tend to make the whole thing and export it as a scenery asset for scale testing. Only when it matches the intended track gauge do I then split the asset up, animate the bogies, add attachments and make it a proper traincar asset.

I hope that helps a little.

Perhaps somebody has a better method than I?

Kieran.

 

[pcas1986]

Exporting from Blender to Trainz is covered here. Blender has it's own measurement units but they are the same as metric. You can change the display to imperial if you wish and you can do that in the Properties -> Scene panel.

There is also a Blender scaling tutorial that might be useful.

Start with simple scenery objects such as houses before getting into traincars. Ask your questions in the content creation forum.

 

[AppleDash22]

Thanks Paul. Funny thing is that I asked about this before and I think you have answered with the same thing. I'm sorry if I've posted something that doesn't belong on this forum but I didn't want to post on my older forum because I had made that nearly a year ago. There are a lot of buildings for my Missouri Mega Route that I want to make so starting with scenery objects won't be a problem. The real problem however is not exporting it but the programs needed to export it. I have Blender 2.70a, Trainz 12 and Trainz: A New Era and that's about it. I just need the program to export it.

 

[pcas1986]

The programs you need are identified in the first link. But, just to reiterate, you need Torsten's Blender exporter which is a Blender script that has to be enabled within Blender. That script can be found here. You need to put that script in the addons section of Blender. This is the addons section in your user space.

You also need the TrainzMeshImporter program which is provided by N3V and can be found here.

The exporter create an XML file and calls TrainzMeshImporter which converts the XML file into the IM file and the texture files.

I use the AssetX program to manage my projects. I put all my source files, including blender files, into a folder and set up an AssetX project to point to that folder. When I'm ready to test a project, which I do a lot, I simply drag the project onto Content Manager and Content Manager installs the asset or overwrites any existing copy. It works the same for TS12 and T:ANE.

If I am misunderstanding your question then just try asking another way. As I said before you should ask such questions in the content creator's forum. We respond to questions like this all the time.

 

[prr325]

Appledash22,

This link has an excellent series of tutorials for Blender newbies, and best of all it is Trainz-oriented. The first one or two have advice on useful tools, as well as guidance on installing and using the export/import tools.
http://www.doug56.net/Blender/

Good luck!