How do you create your own Trainz?

[SuperSpeedMaglev]

It sounds intresting and I'd like to know. (I Know theres CCP btw, just not really anything about it)

 

[Davide318]

You can find useful tutorials here: http://www.worldoftrainz.com/Pages/Tutorials.htm
And the online auran official documentation: http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/Main_Page

 

[BLACKWATCH]

http://44090digitalmodels.co.uk/tutorials/index.html

 

[johnwhelan]

and of course http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Trainz/Tutorial_for_Blender#Newcomers_start_here which is more geared to the new comer especially the moving house tutorial.

Cheerio John

 

[oknotsen]

My advise:
Start with creating a simple house and move up to more complex structures from there.

Start with a serious modelling tool. I have my own preference (Blender) but different people here have had great experiences and results with different tools. Whatever you decide, please don't bother with Sketchup for the sake of performance of the end result.

 

[Zeldaboy14]

If you are going to use Sketchup like I did for the Faceless Lady model I built and released, try and keep the error's down. I had to go through many issues to make my model, but it came out succesfully in the very end (with a little help from CaptainKman, Dragonharh, and GDennish).

 

[oknotsen]

If you are going to use Sketchup

... then you clearly do not bother about performance in the long run. So don't bother with Sketchup. Learning another tool might take a bit longer in the beginning but the end result will be worth it.

 

[Zeldaboy14]

I ran the model through blender, and made darn sure to bring the poly count down as low as it would go. Do you need the poly count of my model?

 

[AntonyVW]

Why not just do it in blender to start with? My own preference is for 3d max but its not the cheapest on the block.

 

[Zeldaboy14]

I watched GDennishes tutorial on how to creat a train for Trainz in sketchup and blender. You create the train in sketchup, and export it with textures over to Blender for finalising. It's easy for me to do it, and it get's the job done.

 

[johnwhelan]

I ran the model through blender, and made darn sure to bring the poly count down as low as it would go. Do you need the poly count of my model?

Looking at what you have on the DLS I note that with a pure Blender creation it is normal to have a single texture file, most Sketchup created assets have more than one. Each texture file adds the equivalent load of 200 polys, of your assets I looked at all of them seemed to have multiple small texture files. There are figures an the DLS that use 6,000+ poly counts, there are others that use 600-800 polys, yours seem to be in the range of 1,600 to 3,600 so not as bad as some but certainly much higher than they need to be. Also none of your assets I looked at have LOD there would be performance gains if they had.

Does it matter, well if you have shares in Intel and nVidia no it doesn't but considering the number of people who complain about frame rates especially on laptops it might be nice to create content that was a little more machine friendly. If someone is starting content creation fresh then using Blender is free, its powerful and can add attachment points etc and doesn't give the very high poly counts that sketchup does for the same model.

I understand 3d MAX is nice as well but given the price in ought to be and which ever route you go there is a learning curve, if you have the money there are some excellent courses based on 3D MAX but for the rest of us Blender does quite well. GMAX these days is getting a little long in the tooth but if you have the right exporters it can still produce reasonable assets but my experience is the more complex the asset the more difficult GMAX becomes compared to Blender.

Cheerio John

 

[Zeldaboy14]

Kman already tried to bring down the Poly Counts on the Code Lyoko models. There was not a single poly that went down. And the poly count for my faceless Lady model is 1527 poly's. It was about 4500 poly's when I first imported it into Blender. And how would I be able to change the meshes to lod meshes?

 

[edh6]

Kman already tried to bring down the Poly Counts on the Code Lyoko models. There was not a single poly that went down. And the poly count for my faceless Lady model is 1527 poly's. It was about 4500 poly's when I first imported it into Blender. And how would I be able to change the meshes to lod meshes?

That's very few polys for a steam loco, mine normally come in at just shy of 20,000, are you sure your counting them correctly?

As regards content creating I started by downloading Blender and just trying things out, anything I couldn't work out I just googled, there are a lot of Blender tutorials out there on the internet.
For Trainz specific information I'd recommend Paul Hobbs Blender tutorial as linked by Blackwatch as a good place to start.

 

[Zeldaboy14]

My model was a simple model. I didn't go too fancy with it, as it was my first Engine I made.

 

[johnwhelan]

Kman already tried to bring down the Poly Counts on the Code Lyoko models. There was not a single poly that went down. And the poly count for my faceless Lady model is 1527 poly's. It was about 4500 poly's when I first imported it into Blender. And how would I be able to change the meshes to lod meshes?

Basically you build multiple meshes of different poly counts and connect them using xyz.lm.txt ie level of detail if you can't see a bolt at 500 metres why bother to render it. The other way to reduce the poly count is look for unseen faces and delete them. Working in native Blender I can usually drive down the poly count by 10-20% this way.

Cheerio John

 

[martinvk]

By now the OP must be wondering what he walked into. Blender - Sketchup - Blender - etc.

How about a word for textures. The best, most economical object will still look pretty bad unless you dress it up with a good texture.

All to say creating for Trainz is not something that is done quickly. Don't get me wrong, it is great fun and the satisfaction level is very high but don't run before you can walk. Nothing will kill the enthusiasm quicker than starting a large complex object and getting bogged down early with seemingly endless problems.

 

[Zeldaboy14]

Yes. Keep it simple. And at some points, you may get bored of doing it. That is normal with content creating. It takes time.