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Tag: Work In Progress

  • 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.

  • Bogies! (MK3A? )

    Bogies! (MK3A? )

    With the DEMU project, I decided to take on a massive undertaking. Massive isn’t the word, but we will go with it anyway. Rebuilding the bogies. If you seen the previous model in this post, you will see the old bogies. These were built slightly differently. I exported them out of Max 2009, into FBX exporter, into Blender to do the rest. Also, this is my first render in Blender, I’m learning it slowly, its taken me a long time to get this far though.

    As for the GLB file?

    Although not finished (spring planks and a few minor corrections), it stands at a colossal 20,000 polys. Oh and it was built in 3DS Max 5. Either way, enjoy. Please add comments if you like it.

    I did show it in Facebook and I was told “We need this for Train Sim World”, I developed this for Trainz, but if anyone wants the mesh, well, my inbox is always open and I don’t mind handing over an incomplete mesh for a donation (or wait until it magically appears in my Cloud Files section)

  • Another item!

    Another item!

    Ok, I had a bit of a random thought with this one, hence why I had a change of project for the time being. You probably can guess what it will be, but I started as a believe it or not, a Class 416 DTSO model. Unusually, I also spent most of my time developing it in a Virtual Machine – as the item of software I used is soo old, it doesn’t work on my desktop at all. On my laptop, it crashes if it goes to sleep, so a Virtual Machine was seen as a solution – which is running Windows 11. I might stick it in either a Windows 7 Virtual Machine or Windows 10, I’ve not decided, but it will take a while to set up.

    Virtual machines also have other uses, but that is not for this blog. And do bear in mind, I’ve only spent a few hours on this model, so it won’t be right straight away. (As mentioned, I built the base in 2006 too!). Theres also a few errors that have appeared in the mesh for some reason, from MAX > FBX > GLB, so you can inspect the model

    What was interesting, when I was developing this item, I had a look at a lot of other vehicles (I.e. Class 207, NIR Class 450 – which is tempting to make, NIR Class 80) that have the same engine, which is the English Electric 4SRKT, have a similar layout, but not the Class 73 locos.

  • 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).

  • Nice and short this time.

    Just a quick one if you are interested..

    (more…)

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