msgsapper undecorated gp40 skinning help

[thomasstewart]

I found msgsapper's undecorated locos on the dls, and have being working on a Susie-Q most of the day.

But I can't find the hand rails to color them, so all 4 corners have these light grey/white hand rails.



Does anyone know where the handrails might be located?

I'm an idiot! It's called droprail.tga...

 

[davesnow]

The Inside ones are here, I colored them in PURPLE:



The outsides are a separate file called "Droprail."



Hope this helps.

Dave

 

[thomasstewart]

lol,thanks Dave! I remembered seeing the droprail.tga when I was looking through the files. For some reason I didn't connect the dots until after I posted my question.

Looking at your sample skin I think I should have resized mine before adding the lettering!

 

[davesnow]

Looking at your sample skin I think I should have resized mine before adding the lettering!

Yep, I always resize Roger's locos when I go to do a reskin. I also re-work all the line work on the doors, hatches, &c. in Illustrator... then use Photoshop to lay in my new art over the old.

 

[slabay]

Two things-

1) get PEV's Mesh viewer. Load the mesh using the IM, not the traincar using the config. Right click and use "locate textures" (or show or whatever.... I'm in MacOS right now & can't check) and you can scroll through ALL the textures and see what is where.

2) If I can't find something on a map, I usually throw a rainbow gradient across the entire map and use Mesh Viewer to look at it. I get an insane rainbow colored loco, and the grab iron (or whatever) will be blue. Then I throw the gradient across the opposite direction, and the grab iron will be magenta. I look and see where the blue on one gradient and magenta on the other gradient cross and that tells me where to look for the grab iron.

I'm working on my CSX heritage units, and the model I am using has 5 main maps and several smaller detail maps. I have to use mesh viewer to find what map it is even on, then use the gradients to find them on the specific map. Hope this helps you on future projects.

 

[thomasstewart]

yup, got it.

I actually use bright green or pink and paint brush an area to find out whats what.

Took me about an hour to realize I had to paint the gp38 skin in order to color the section of body on the gp40! lol sorry I don't know what parts are what on the locos.


Does anyone know what font the susquehanna lettering on the side of the locos are?
Right now I just lifted the lettering off a picture, but it's not ideal.

 

[slabay]

I actually use bright green or pink and paint brush an area to find out whats what.

Works good if you have neat and tidy boxes and you can fill in the box. I've reskinned things that were all a uniform color and had nothing to indicate handles and such. That's where the gradient thing comes in.

 

[davesnow]

Two things-

1) get PEV's Mesh viewer. Load the mesh using the IM, not the traincar using the config. Right click and use "locate textures" (or show or whatever.... I'm in MacOS right now & can't check) and you can scroll through ALL the textures and see what is where.

Holy crap! I've been using PEV's viewer for --what YEARS??--- and didn't know about that! Thanks Scott!!!

Dave

 

[slabay]

Holy crap! I've been using PEV's viewer for --what YEARS??--- and didn't know about that! Thanks Scott!!!

Dave

You're quite welcome! Glad I could help!! IMHO, this is one of the BEST tools available for reskinning. The first thing I ever tried to reskin, I was still using Photoshop on the Mac, Trainz in Win7, and took forever to reboot between OS's to check my work. I sooooo wish that it was available for the Mac people.

Just as an aside, I've been doing all of my Trainz stuff for so long in Win7 that I was using MacOS the other day and had a hell of a time using it. (Windows uses the alt- combinations, and on the Mac, it is cmd- combinations. The different key REALLY messed with me)