Older freighter (cross posted)
Friends, I have been somewhat active in the Trainz Forums, but this is the first time I have had reason to post in this thread. I recently had the occasion to come near one of the two surviving airworthy ATL 98's, and since most of my modeling has been linear and angular, I spent a bit of time contemplating how I might proceed to make a model of this bird. I spent a bit more time with Blender, with this result (still a WIP)
a detail shot of the left side wing with engines:
Here's a detail of the nose landing gear:
My present plans are to complete the bird as a stationary model, perhaps with a jack under one of the landing gear, with one or both of the tires being changed out, and upload it in that form in some livery to the DLS. And it won't be too much effort to undo Freddie Laker's conversion, and use this model as the basis for a DC-4, either. The present blender model has just under 7,400 vertices arranged in 12, 863 triangles. Operating window is from 1961 until present, though I'm not much enamored with any of the historical liveries; the model has not yet been skinned. But I thought I'd have it take off and see who saluted.
At the same time, I thought I'd solicit some advice on best practices for exporting such a model into Trainz.
Finally, is there a list of most desired aircraft to create for Trainz, and a list of what projects are being worked on? If I've a mind to try some other bird, and am trying to decide between a Fairchild C-117, and a Boeing 314 Clipper, I'm more likely to want to model the aircraft not being modeled as a current project by someone else .
ns