what do you use to make your own trainz content????????

[marcus1777]

i tried gmax but it just starts downloading fraps

 

[johnwhelan]

Blender

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Trainz/Tutorial_for_Blender#Newcomers_start_here

Stay with 2.49b for the moment.

Cheerio John

 

[leeferr]

John's probably right here. If you can't afford (which most of us can't) 3ds, then Blender is probably the way to go although I don't use it myself. I find the UI very foreign and opposed to anything that I've learned in 3d CAD programs that I'm used to. I still use Gmax for my texturing, animations and exporting into trainz, but the exporter for it doesn't support bump mapping or normal mapping which is becoming more of a must in the future as I see it. If I had absolutely no experience at 3d design, then I'd probably start out with Blender, but it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks although he's probably going to have to try.

Mike

 

[marcus1777]

thanks

thanks for help:wave::hehe::udrool::mop::clap::Y:

 

[Retro00064]

John's probably right here. If you can't afford (which most of us can't) 3ds, then Blender is probably the way to go although I don't use it myself. I find the UI very foreign and opposed to anything that I've learned in 3d CAD programs that I'm used to. I still use Gmax for my texturing, animations and exporting into trainz, but the exporter for it doesn't support bump mapping or normal mapping which is becoming more of a must in the future as I see it. If I had absolutely no experience at 3d design, then I'd probably start out with Blender, but it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks although he's probably going to have to try.

Mike

You can replace the DLL files in the gmax exporter with the ones from the 3ds max 4 exporter (which is free), and then you can export normal mapping, etc., from gmax. I made a scenery object with normal mapping and exported it from gmax using the 3ds max 4 exporter DLLs, and it worked fine in Trainz. One user posted about weird problems with locomotives that had been exported like this becoming translucent in Trainz when the headlights were turned on, but I have not tried this out myself yet. It at least works fine for scenery.

Regards.

 

[leeferr]

Thanks for the info. I'll have to give it a try.
Mike

 

[Retro00064]

Here is the thread where I found out about this: http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=34335.

Regards.

 

[martinvk]

I can validate that scenery and splines export just fine from GMax using the 3ds exporters to get the bump mapping effect in Trainz. Have not tried it with a locomotive yet. The actual bump maps are made using PhotoShop Elements and the free NVidia filter.

 

[Retro00064]

PEV's Images2TGA program can generate a normal map from a bump map. That is what I use.

Regards.