Hi people. This is my first post, but unlikely to be my last
I've been a 2006 Trainz user since 16 January 2007. I have some experience in virtual 3D environments having been a beta-tester for Adobe's Atmosphere project about 4 years ago (the project ran for about 2 years before getting axed just after 1.0 release) and have been very impressed with what Auran has achieved. I have also found the experience extremely frustrating, probably because of what I want the product to do (at this stage to reskin a railcar into my own fictitious colours), and because I don't have a railroad background of any sort.
Any answers to the following questions would be gratefully accepted.
A - In terms of trying to reskin a railcar I used the Y1 provided with the DVD. Firstly, it doesn't show up in PaintShed. A search of this forum shows that paintshed isn't popular with the community, probably because it doesn't give much flexibility and so a lot of locomotives aren't reskinable in this way. Not a problem, although I can see why Auran appears to be trying to persist with this approach for people like me
Q1 - is there a way of finding out if a locomotive can be reskinned in paintshed before downloading from the Download Station?
Q2 - is there a tutorial available on how to create a locomotive that can be reskinned in Paintshed?
B - So Paintshed isn't going to work so I looked at a couple of tutorials, OK so I needed to clone a locomotive, amend its config file and edit its bmp and tga files. Unfortunately the first couple of railcars I downloaded had missing dependencies. OK so back to the Y1. Guess what, no bmp or tga files. Rather a set of .texture files.
Q3 - what is a .texture file, and how do I edit it?
C - And now a simplier question. Using the term 'railcar' as a search in the Download Station has not identified the range of vehicles available (eg I just lucked over the Westrail vehicle I will be using - it uses bmp and tga files
). Generally it appears you need to know the vehicle identifier.
Q4 - Without knowing what a vehicle is called (here's my non-railroading background coming out) what is the best way of searching for a vehicle that meets my needs?
D - I have noted that 2006 Content Manager has improved error checking, as well as flagging problems with Meshes that I have downloaded.
Q5 - Should I be sticking with 2006 content?
Regards
Andrew Harvey
Bassendean Western Australia

I've been a 2006 Trainz user since 16 January 2007. I have some experience in virtual 3D environments having been a beta-tester for Adobe's Atmosphere project about 4 years ago (the project ran for about 2 years before getting axed just after 1.0 release) and have been very impressed with what Auran has achieved. I have also found the experience extremely frustrating, probably because of what I want the product to do (at this stage to reskin a railcar into my own fictitious colours), and because I don't have a railroad background of any sort.
Any answers to the following questions would be gratefully accepted.
A - In terms of trying to reskin a railcar I used the Y1 provided with the DVD. Firstly, it doesn't show up in PaintShed. A search of this forum shows that paintshed isn't popular with the community, probably because it doesn't give much flexibility and so a lot of locomotives aren't reskinable in this way. Not a problem, although I can see why Auran appears to be trying to persist with this approach for people like me

Q1 - is there a way of finding out if a locomotive can be reskinned in paintshed before downloading from the Download Station?
Q2 - is there a tutorial available on how to create a locomotive that can be reskinned in Paintshed?
B - So Paintshed isn't going to work so I looked at a couple of tutorials, OK so I needed to clone a locomotive, amend its config file and edit its bmp and tga files. Unfortunately the first couple of railcars I downloaded had missing dependencies. OK so back to the Y1. Guess what, no bmp or tga files. Rather a set of .texture files.
Q3 - what is a .texture file, and how do I edit it?
C - And now a simplier question. Using the term 'railcar' as a search in the Download Station has not identified the range of vehicles available (eg I just lucked over the Westrail vehicle I will be using - it uses bmp and tga files

Q4 - Without knowing what a vehicle is called (here's my non-railroading background coming out) what is the best way of searching for a vehicle that meets my needs?
D - I have noted that 2006 Content Manager has improved error checking, as well as flagging problems with Meshes that I have downloaded.
Q5 - Should I be sticking with 2006 content?
Regards
Andrew Harvey
Bassendean Western Australia