Well, the model is coming along just fine. I'm using Blender 2.49b. I have pretty much completed the main body, roof, and diaphrams. This will be the basic car. I havn't added windows yet, as the prototype came in a several flavors; which included a 'day coach' and a 'delux coach' version, with 11 and 10 windows, respectively. A 6 window 'cafe' car was also built for the New Haven. The cars very widely in the various skirting arrangements, also; none, some, or all, depending on railroad and car age. I'm planning on modeling all window arrangements and partial or no skirts. (New Haven discarded the bogey skirts almost immediately, for maintenence reasons.) I'm still awaiting reprint copies of Shoreliner magizine from the NH historical site, for underbody details.
Modelig has gone reasonably well, so far, except for the rounded roof ends, which took sever hours to complete, as Blender has no 'easy' way to accomplish this while holding to prototype detail. Much of it had to be 'freehanded' but very much resembles the original when rendered. So far i've generated about 275 faces, with about 260 verts. I think this is reasonable for the car body, considering its curvature and interior surfaces. I estmate another 700 faces for the 11 (24 faces each with extruded sides) window versions, as well as another 150 faces for underbody details. But it seems the chars, at abot 40 faces each is going to be monster load, since there are 46 of them in the 'day coach'. That's about 1850 faces just for chairs! They will all be duplicates of the one original chair, but it still comes out to a lot of faces. Anyone know of a way to lessen the load? (Besides painting chairs on the windows!) I still have to add fairly detailed bogeys and couplers, as well as grab irons, which will drive the poly count even higher. I hope I'm not gonna end up with a nicely detailed monster that will stutter even the most stout computers. What do you think?
