Ruby TMIX From Sketchup !!!!!!!!

Hello Everyone:

The Sensitive Artiste is over his Tizzy Fit. I do apologize for flipping out yesterday.... :n:

Being overly sensitive to attacks, perceived and otherwise is a character flaw/dis-advantage that I've been dealing with all my life :o
I've been a Chef for years in very emotionally tumultuous kitchen environments, where smack talk flies like pies in the face, and everyone is very sensitive to critical attacks, not constructive criticism, we do that all the time !
I'll try to chill out in the future, maybe .... ;)

@Timberdv > explanation accepted, and intent understood. I reduced tga size by half on main textures, and by 3/4's on smaller files and have managed to bring down total file size by 75% on nearly all of my sketchup assets without compromising quality. The original G3Dwhse model had the chassis, electrical and engine modeled and exported out at about 90megs - I removed all of that, still, my current vehicle assets should be used as showpiece models, and sparingly. My 1st original vehicle model The WW2 Hanomag tractor will be very poly efficient as it will be the 1st to be exported from 3DS max.

I should amend that to the configs I suppose. Btw, I know you didn't use my name in your post , I found the thread and hence your statement from a search of Jwhelan's posts. The exclamation points, curt tone and all BOLD font pretty much gave me the impression you were posting in frustration/anger? and using my kuid as an example -wellllllllll... I felt singled out and I responded in kind.

@Wva-usa and JWhelan - Lack of guiding documentation has caused alot of frustration for many new and aspiring creators indeed ! I've had a hell, of a time finding good ref material and instruction without many months of searching around all over hundreds of Auran forum posts/archives and other Trainzy sites to find enough data to understand how to go about making assets correctly, and I'm still finding new bits everyday - that can be good in that it keeps things interesting - bad in that it takes too long for me (and others) to become competent in creation. The Trainz Contenet Creation wiki needs work too - hard to find stuff there, and my God is it bland !

Still, I will say that using Sketchup, Bryce and messing with other 3D app demos has taught me more than anything I've found through Auran ! Folks like ShaneTurner and Euphod are exceptional in that respect, they CARE and take alot of personal time to put in place needed information and tutorials - Big Thanks to all of you guys :wave:

@JWhelan - Crossing two planks should give you 14 faces if done correctly - you have to go back in and clean up internal geometry after the fact to achieve that goal, but many models on the G3Dwhse aren't optimized that way, from creation to output many sketchy modelers don't take that step. My early models were ridiculous with extra faces !

Personal work flow for me will likely be sketchup for fast realization and modeling > Bryce for texture experiments, the texture editor makes trying out ideas a fast process, whereas 3DS max makes me wait way too long to see renders :eek: I'm working my way through the Autodesk certification process so that workflow will adjust accordingly as I learn more and figure out Vray for renders.
 
There are various sets of documentation and tutorials, N3V / Auran has deleted useful items a couple of times so to provide some independence from this there is the wikibook.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Trainz which is not dependent on N3V.

Look under content creation.

The nice thing is it is a wiki so its fairly easy to add or correct what is there. Some earlier tutorials either were for an earlier version of GMAX or skipped over parts that were critical. Currently Blender is stabilising after an interface change at 2.5.

If you are studying autocad for professional reasons and have access to 3DS then that is probably the way to go though LMS_MAN is having problems with 3DS under win 7 and win 8.

Currently the default viewing distance is 5 km so put a 50 poly blob in as an lod at .5 kms and you won't see the difference but 90% of the time your model will be 50 polys not 100,000.

Cheerio John
 
@JWhelan - Crossing two planks should give you 14 faces if done correctly

Polycount is not faces. Polycount is triangles.

There is no way to get two crossed planks in 14 polys. Each plank has to have at least 12 by itself, so the minimum you can achieve is 24. This leaves two overlapped faces in the middle where the planks penetrate. If you aren't really careful with the texturing, this can cause graphical flickering, so an artist would often choose build an object with 44 polys for two crossed planks to make the texturing easier and guarantee no flickering.
 
Hi All
We don't publish actual poly limits anymore, as these aren't as strict as, say, when TRS2004 or UTC/Trainz1.3 was around. Giving limits can have a negative effect as well (e.g. we give a limit, and then creators see this as a limit before LOD is needed, for example). We do, however, have a guidelines page on our wiki which should help with this :) http://online.ts2009.com/mediaWiki/index.php5/Modeling_Guidelines

Regards

The difficulty with this approach is that a new content creator who takes something from another site and exports a 100,000 poly model without lod into Trainz has no easy reference to indicate whether this is in the "normal" range or not. Something along the lines of a normal range for a scenery object is considered say 20 to 500 polys etc. might help the newcomers here.

A loco or rolling stock might be 500 to 100,000 polys but with the lowest lod being less than 500.

Cheerio John
 
James

If the planks form a co-planar joined cross, then this is equivalent to 5 cubes, 60 triangles, less 16 hidden triangles around the center joins giving a final figure of 44 polys.

If I have this wrong I will retire in shame and conufusion.

Peter

Edited because I thought the original post by James said the polys were 28. I was wrong
 
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@Jmoody - I didn't say polys did I? I was referring to faces > 2 polys per face.

Remove the hidden internal faces and you end up with a cross and that removes 8 polys. You end up with a top and bottom face, 4 end cap faces and 8 side faces = 18 faces = 36 polys.

Treat the crossing point as if they were butted planks when you're texturing if you're using Sketchup and you need 2 top/bottom textures and 3 for the sides/ends, unless you UV map the whole thing right?

@narrowgauge - I think youre doubling the polys on the internal box of the cross - that same box shares its faces/polys with the inner plank ends?
 
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No I am not doubling. I checked my reasoning by contructing a five cube cross, deleting the hidden 16 faces and Gmax tells me I have 44 polys and, after welding vertices 28 verts.

Break it down. The top face of the cross is 5 squares times 2 = 10 polys, then add the same for the under face = 20 polys. Now add up the sides. Each of the four outer cubes has 3 visible sides. 1 side = 2 polys, 3 sides = 6 polys, therefore the sides of 4 cubes = 24 polys . 24 + 20 = 44. Weld the co-incident vertices and you get a vert count of 28.

I think you may be counting verts not polys. It is the centre verts that are shared not the faces. A cube has 8 vertices.

Peter
 
Ric

Reading your post again, I think you are assuming that the back and front faces are each one face. They may seem to be but each square has to be constructed with a minumum of 2 triangles. The fact they are textured as one face does not remove this requirement, they are still 10 squares times 2 polys = 20 polys.

Peter .
 
A stray thought.

Don't confuse 'polys' with 'polygons'. In Gmax 'edit mesh' you can select an 'Edge' or a 'Face' which is really a 'Triangle' or 'Polygon' which is any number of triangles.

Think 'Triangles' not 'Polygons'

Peter
 
Thank you NarrowGauge.... I'm on the same page as you, seems differing terms make us each think the other is in-correct at some level :o

In searching for definitions of Quads, Polys, Polygons, NGons, Tris etc etc., I found this is a very common terminology problem ! Oy!

Rico
 
It took me a while to come to grips with this but after 10 years with Trainz it becomes second nature. I think that we should use a different name for reference to this basic Trainz building block. 'Tris' would do. One thing to remember is that during the export process, everything is converted to 'editable mesh' no matter what you have been working with. Quads, Polys, they all get triangulated.

Peter
 
There are various sets of documentation and tutorials, N3V / Auran has deleted useful items a couple of times so to provide some independence from this there is the wikibook.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Trainz which is not dependent on N3V.

Look under content creation.

The nice thing is it is a wiki so its fairly easy to add or correct what is there. Some earlier tutorials either were for an earlier version of GMAX or skipped over parts that were critical. Currently Blender is stabilising after an interface change at 2.5.

If you are studying autocad for professional reasons and have access to 3DS then that is probably the way to go though LMS_MAN is having problems with 3DS under win 7 and win 8.

Currently the default viewing distance is 5 km so put a 50 poly blob in as an lod at .5 kms and you won't see the difference but 90% of the time your model will be 50 polys not 100,000.

Cheerio John

I've been working through the 'how to texture a basic house' tutorial, and there seems there might be some steps missing. Specifically the mapping the image stage. Could you have a look and see, or do I just misunderstand? Thanks
 
I've been working through the 'how to texture a basic house' tutorial, and there seems there might be some steps missing. Specifically the mapping the image stage. Could you have a look and see, or do I just misunderstand? Thanks

I think the issue is its for 2.49b not 2.65 and hasn't been updated.

Cheerio John
 
I've been working through the 'how to texture a basic house' tutorial, and there seems there might be some steps missing. Specifically the mapping the image stage. Could you have a look and see, or do I just misunderstand? Thanks

Hi,

If doing so with Blender, you might consider this movie helpfull on the topic of image mapping:
For more usefull movies on Blender, follow the quote to the original post.
 
I've been working through the 'how to texture a basic house' tutorial, and there seems there might be some steps missing. Specifically the mapping the image stage. Could you have a look and see, or do I just misunderstand? Thanks

I'm rebuilding the Blender texture tutorial in 2.65 want to beta it for me? I'm afraid I find the you tube tutorials far too complicated to follow they seem to add how to do things you just don't need to know about. jwhelan0112 gmail.com

Thanks

Cheerio John
 
Here is another example of a gigantic load on the game engine and your computer. AS-Joe Mesh Library. 126.98 Mega Bytes. This means if you load a old lady sitting on a bench it will probably bring your computer to it's knees. I do not intend to test this. Good luck if you want to. Again, please warn with a message to the user in your description. Thanks. Dave
 
The huge object cited, a "mesh library" is a special case, being a number of related meshes. The individual meshes in the library are loaded as needed, and should be considered for size of the mesh, not the size of the library.

ns
 
I have been learning Sketchup and have used it with Ruby TMIX to create a few buildings for my own use in Trainz. Nothing put on the DLS, and after reading this I'm sure I won't. I want to thank JCitron particularly for his explanation of the issues, of particular value to me since I have no 3D modeling experience except in Sketchup. And now I can use NURBS in a sentence and thanks to wikipedia have some sense of what it means. But I have several questions/comments:

1. Could Sketchup be modified to eliminate these issues? Or is the intersection of Trainz users and Sketchup users so small there would be no incentive to do so?

2. JCitron seems to hint that the solution might be in the modification of Ruby TMIX. Let's hope this idea (or some new software) could be implemented. I think the Sketchup community is large enough that a lot of good content could potentially be used in Trainz.

3. I have thought about using Sketchup to create very simple simple (no curves, just basic non-detailed structures) and then using screen captures from Google Street View to attach textures to the faces, for use in background buildings (what some call 2D buildings of which there are many on the DLS). Is this somewhat limited use of Sketchup/Ruby TMIX viable for Trainz?
 
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