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Tag: Digital Art

  • 25000 polygons later… (Blender)

    25000 polygons later… (Blender)

    That was a bit unexpected, I got some serious optimisation to do!

    While trying to learn blender, I almost bar a few small things before it goes to the next stage, completed my tank wagon.



    It was an interesting project and the modelling took a week longer than I wanted, most of it is because I am trying to undo the way Max works as this is now muscle memory (GMAX which got me into modelling works way differently than Blender) and the unique ways that blender works. For example, the way you start an object in Blender requires working from primitives, I work mostly with splines in *max these days which is massively different. When I completed a spline, I can add a surface modifier or an extrude modifier. Blender so far, from what I noticed unless someone wants to leave a comment, you have to convert the spline to a mesh (curve in Blender) which means you can’t edit the spline once its a mesh without undoing everything, whereas in max, you have a modifier stack and you can go back several iterations to make a minor change

    Blender has more advantages though, it works on anything, I have it on my tablet, phone (as I am avoiding the iPhone at the moment), in fact, anything that includes OpenGL – that isn’t my remote desktop annoyingly. Plus Blender 5.0 completely changes the file format, making it incompatible with earlier versions apart from 4.5 LTS. Which means the version on my tablets is Version 3.6.22. Yeah, annoying. The version on Ubuntu ARM from what I tried is 3.0.1 from memory, which is even older!

    Getting it to work on my Windows On ARM laptop – the Lenovo Thinkbook X13s is a royal pain in the arse and requires some hackery and I’ve not tried the Mac yet.

    Max? If it runs Windows, it works. If it runs Wine, it doesn’t, even more frustrating as I have had 3D Studio Max 5 working for a demo in Wine – once. That’s it. Otherwise, Virtual Machine time for Windows. More space needed, more overheads for limited resources and more hopes and dreams needed. It does work without Open GL on the 2 old versions I’ve tried – and they work in a virtual machine.

    If you want to play with the source files, download below.
    (Download here – Google Drive)

    3 file formats included, blend (original), glb (used on this site) and FBX (if you fancy a different program as well as the blender iterations I went through. (3 of them)

  • More tank wagon progress!

    More tank wagon progress!

    I didn’t think I’ll get this far with Blender, but I am making progress.

    The “spur of the moment and I want to learn a new skill” thing is actually getting somewhere, once I got the hang of Blender.


    However, some bits have made it in that shouldn’t on export like the sky box, hence why there are a couple of things that most certainly shouldn’t be there. The polycount is also rather high for my liking. Now I am getting on with Blender, my next challenge is to buy an ARM based laptop for Linux and for a big reason, battery life as I spend more time away from a plug that actually on it. (Anyone like to help? Theres a donation button available)

    Hopefully, I’ll have this out in the next month when/if I finish it. There is already a space for it on the page.

  • Developing in Blender

    Developing in Blender

    This object is a tank full of trouble! Literally.

    It should be no secret that I am a MAX developer, I’m trained in it, I worked with it for years and well, it makes sense. So, I tried Blender, like I’ve been doing for years, I did have previous experience, but as in the future , I’d like to go over to Linux and therefore Blender, it would make sense for me to try it. I just wish I could get hold of a PineBook Pro (they look interesting), I would go for the MNT Reform, but the prices are quite “Galactic” for what they are. They have some nice features and nice Right To Repair ideas, but still. Or even Framework would be a choice, despite my laptop of choice is actually a Toughbook.

    So I started my first object as a test, this used splines, just splines, this is how it looked.


    It was meant to be a Wickham Railbus, downsized to 25% of the screenshot size, which was built out of lines, or spline modelling, using diagrams as a start, then using a surface modifier or Blenders equivalent of, to form the shape. It wouldn’t be out of my comfort zone if it was max as I now do this almost all the time. But as the UI on Blender and the naming of tools is vastly different, its a lot harder. So I left it, wanted another go for something simpler to get the basics of it, so I built this thing.

    Now I spent about 3 hours on it, the screenshot is what I started with, however, its not how it looks. I noticed a lot of mistakes and I keep finding them, so I had another go and the model below is how it looks.

    Yeah, not much, but there is one bigger twist! So I tried it on my Hyper-V virtual machine which I use in and outside the house. Then found that Hyper-V doesn’t support a feature that Blender requires, meaning it won’t start Oh well, back to the drawing board. Hopefully, this will look more like a 10T or 12T wagon, its slow, but I’m learning how Blender works and my god, the amount of tutorials (and Google) I needed to even get this far.

  • (Yet more) DEMU development

    (Yet more) DEMU development

    … and something else!

    This is sort of how the Class 205 is looking at the moment, unfortunately, progress is crawling as it is stuck in development hell. The other problem is how the scaling has affected the model data in GLB and I’ve also removed the textures for the time being, but yes, it appeared in Connex colours (remember them?). Model is a bit of a mess at the moment, but it is just to show you the progress. The bogie however or the trailer one, has been shown on another entry.

    However, I also spent a few hours, note not a lot of time on this too:

    This is one of these older models I based it on and improved on – well I had some railbuses as in previous posts (here, here and here) and naturally, what would come up? The Class 141 railbus. Its slightly shorter than the original model, which was slightly out of shape. The scale was wrong.
    In this model however, its not 100% there as believe it or not, there is no textures, its all self coloured materials (And as a result as it has been optimised in 3DS max, exported to FBX and imported into Blender to exported to a GLB file), so because it has been optimized to take up less space and keeping hold of my precious 5GB of web space, its not the final version and some bits of detail have got lost because of the compression and optimisation, like the rubber on the doors, or the way I built them. As it is also one “final model”, it also got optimised as one. Also, you may of noticed it has something at the front.

    For those that know a little history about these units, 13 of them went to Iran, as a result, some of the changes they made, one got painted into an interesting livery, a silver, gold and green livery from memory, although most stayed in WYPTE, they gained mirrors, buffers, screw link coupling (which lost their multiple working), an obstacle deflector and mirrors either side. I don’t think as reported elsewhere they got converted to left hand drive (which would have been difficult),

    One day, I’ll look through the history and track what is left, all I can say, of the 13 that went to Iran, their history or whereabouts is unknown as Iran is difficult to get photos or even information from at the best of times. 2 went to the Netherlands and I believe they never got used, last known to be still there rusting away. One got scrapped while in the UK before entering preservation, however, 2 more have been scrapped since preservation, which means there is 2 left, 141 113 (which my model was heavily based on) and 141 108. It would be also interesting to track the other pre production and post production units, Lev 1 still exists, Lev 2 sadly bit the dust in 2020, Lev 3 (also known as R3) was in Northern Ireland, its now in the UK in Wales, RB002 is still in (the republic of) Ireland, in its resting place, there is a movement in trying to bring it back to the UK, but last I heard or understood, no one knows the owner. RB004 is happily preserved, but has been around many railways, the 2 car demonstrator which I don’t have a designation for, but I’ve called it RB005 (basically a 2 car version of RB002), the whereabouts is unknown. As it was used on metre gauge railways in the far east, it may of long departed or even rusting somewhere.

    The Class 142, 143 and 144s in one way, more difficult to track (there were 96 Class 142s, 14 Class 143’s and about 23 Class 144s, 10 with MS coaches that have a different history to the rest of the unit – I.e. not owned by the ROSCOs) as they are larger fleets, but also easier because there is a LOT of history on them and some even went abroad to try and gain orders from international customers, which is well documented.


    I would love to hear of any information about these oddities, if you do, please send me a message.



    Edit (a little later):


    You may notice at the moment, my work is fluctuating a lot with time I can commit. We are mostly getting ready for Christmas and the London Waterloo block, which as I write this, London Waterloo station is closed from the 25th December to the 29th December. Then the slow lines are open which is 2 out of 8 lines. This is to allow Network Rail to replace the points around Queenstowns Road (Battersea) – see here (navigates away from the site) and a lot of planning went into it. If I am honest, so far, it’s the biggest project I’ve been involved in since I came into my current job. No, I cannot talk a lot about it as there is a social media policy, which I may of fallen foul of.

  • Bugs (Trainz work this time)

    Bugs (Trainz work this time)

    This is why I never consider anything finished.

    So latest thing is, I uploaded my EPB unit to my site which if you looked, you’d notice its a pretty old model. In preparing it for Trainz 2019+, which required a lot of changes (I mean a lot!) and plenty of dependency and bug fixing, I noticed a big problem with the cab that I completely forgot about, I took this screenshot in TS2010 as I didn’t think ahead… again! It was build for the JET engine anyway. It works in the E2 engine as well, which suprised me.

    The biggest glaringly obvious problem is the brake handle and the power handle, both rotate the wrong way. A few hours of tweaking and it works properly. 4 notch controller doing a 180 degree spin and the brake handle now rotates 90 degrees. At this point, it still has 4 notches and the real thing has between lap and apply, an infinitive amount of notches on the brakes, its EP self lapping. Driving it on “Auto-brake” in Trainz is honest to god – hell (at least to me)! Unpredictable and either you slam on the brakes too much or too little. So I added a ton of notches, the brake handle hated it, test, test, test. Still hates it until I realise I got a tag wrong. If I remove the word “lap”, it functions like a normal EP brake handle.

    Then clean up the rest of the controls, some work ok now, some don’t, the AWS button doesn’t work yet properly, but its on the list and I plan to make that a push button anyway.

    Then it was the turn of the DTS in the Class 416. The way I done it is that 415 DMBS does both units (in reality, there is little difference between the 2.). Getting them to function like Driving Trailers wasn’t hard, it was easy infact, one tag.

    Then the physics, I used TEE (Trainz Engine Editor) which I still have a copy somewhere, installed it, dumbed down the power as 500hp per DMBS and it STILL shoots off like a rocket. But its more playable. Its tempting to then mess with the body, I figured out how to show blanks and tail lamps in TS2019 plus, just model a red square and redo the headcode box. If you look at the flying brick, I’ve employed this method for the tail lamp which paves the way for mesh attachments.

    At least the Class 416 DTSO (Semi Compartment) has its passenger view back, but I really need to remove the Monkey Bars, which I don’t think they were fitted to BR Designed units, or at least not 3 of them as some may of been fitted for the Oxted Tunnel (that was 2 of them).

  • Past work..

    I probably should talk more about my past and present work, yet these days, I generally don’t tend to.

    PiggiesSWT

    Here is an item that took me around about a month and a half to draw using Microsoft Visio, way back in I think 2008, I vaguely remember being either at college or uni at the time and it was meant to be a avatar for the Trainz forum, it was! So was it’s off springs (livery).

    If you want to use it, you have all right to do so, I’m not looking for money for it, unless you want to give me a donation which will be appreciated and I would say “you don’t have to give me credit”, it should be, its nice if you could give me credit, but you don’t have to.

    Just Right Click or Apple Click and save as.. depending on your OS (I use a variety, so its upto you).

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