New developer

[greg4933]

I am looking to try developing products for Trainz.
I am using Mac OS operating system, and have virtual box with windows xp installed.
Some questions I have are what does im file extension stand for?
Currently I have the Adobe sweet and would like to take a chance at developing products or modifying skins and scripts.
The scripts I am not really having much of a problem with. The content developers guide and also from looking at other kuid script I am figuring out the coding process pretty fast. I have also practiced this by editing current kuids that I have installed.

My current issue currently is figuring out if I can use Adobe products for generating the 3D file, and if not what program could I use on mac to create such skins and export with the im file extension? I have Adobe CS5 but going to buy Adobe CS6 tomorrow which includes Flash, Photoshop, and Illustrator among other software.
Any mac developer out there that know the best way to go about getting started as far as guides and software suggestions?

Thanks
Greg L.

 

[pcas1986]

You might be better posting this question in the Trainz Mac forum.

There is the free Blender 3D program for Mac (http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/) but AFAIK the Blender exporter only works in Windows. The problem is that you need an exporter from your 3D program and an importer to Train. AFAIK there is only a Windows based importer (http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php5/Downloads). You might be better off doing your development in the XP VM.

I think IM stands for Indexed Mesh. Its the binary form of the model and is the successor to the PM (Progressive Mesh) format.