Playing Catch up

ColGibbon

New member
Hi Guys.

I'm an oldie retuning with a few questions.

I have just bought a 2011 version of Trainz, Is there much in the way of addons available for 2011 and earlier?

Is there a Mid-Hants mod, other than the Just Trains pile of crap?

Sorry, I worked on the line from 73 to 86, and was heavily involved in relaying the line, and I'd like to do a mod for the whole line pre 73 to Winchester and Southampton, including Black motors and Boat train diversions, M7's and Thunpers with the Alton brewery spur, Trelores spur, Meon Valley, and Medstead, Ropley, Alresford, and Itchen Abbas.

This will be my first project, so I'll need pointers to tools, and I'd be grateful if anyone could point me too any good content for this project.
 
Doing well so far. Locos and basic stock found.

What do I need to make 3D models. I'll meed to scratch build station buildings.
 
Boy that Blender program is a beast. I've been 3D modeling for 10 years, and I've never seen a program like it. Is there an entry level program? I've read all the Trainz / Blender video guides are out of date, so just how do you get going?

This is the sort of thing I have been building.

b24ddImage1_zpsolsshfjj.jpg
 
The doug56 tutorials are current. Learning the to get around the interface is half the battle, and stick with basic, *.m.onetex materials for now. I watched some videos twice before even installing Blender, then watched them a third time. It was only four hours from no Blender experience to exporting a basic model into Trainz. I'm sure you have more artistic skill than I do, so just set aside a little time and get to know the interface.
 
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Hi RRSignal.

Can you import 3DS models into Blender. I can convert my 3dz format to 3DS, which would make building models easy for me.
 
Hi RRSignal.

Can you import 3DS models into Blender. I can convert my 3dz format to 3DS, which would make building models easy for me.

Blender has very flexible import capabilities. However if you're just interested in building scenery objects such as buildings I'd stick with Blender and the learning curve.

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Trainz/Tutorial_for_Blender and have a look at the moving house tutorial. Basically you take a cube add a second one, bring the corners together to form the roof and that's the basic mesh done. Next you need to add texture so just unwrap a texture file on the two cubes. Export and you're done.

The most complicated part is setting Blender and the exporter up the first time.

Other software is available but most have drawbacks in that they need more than one texture file for the model which gets you a performance hit or they create poly heavy models and creating lod versions is not easy.

The Blender environment is very rich so you won't run out of options but you only need about 5% of Blender to create models with and its the 95% that you don't need that can be intimidating.

Cheerio John
 
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