Carz In Trainz

[MrScott1964]

The first car that I'm converting into Trainz is the 1965 GTO I found on the internet. To keep the polys down I'm removing the interior and any other extra part that are not needed.

I do have a question. Does anybody know who the original creator of the 65 GTO was? I want to make sure he/she get credit for the model.

I was also wander this... If I was able to get blue prints, could I talk somebody into making the model?
I'm looking to make the 1965 and a 1966 Chevy Impala. Keep in mind I would only need the outer shell of the car. No interior.

[CLR-AMG]

First of all I assume you're doing a scenery object, not a drivable car? If you want a drivable thing I could help out with that a bit since I once made a drivable convertable with as panto-option a metal foldroof like the SLK one. But ye you only need a lowpoly bodyshell for trafficcars or parked scenery. Shouldn't be too hard...


I think you need to give more info, maybe 500 people once made a 3d model of a GTO. Maybe a link, or a source where you got it from will help to determine the author.

[Johnas]

Only GTO '65 model I've seen is from game Juiced and is converted to GTA SA by Repoman. So original author would be in this case THQ

[The IC]

it could also be from nfs prostreet...which means its EAs property...

[Johnas]

Ah could be that I remember wrong

[MrScott1964]

Originally Posted by CLR-AMG First of all I assume you're doing a scenery object, not a drivable car? If you want a drivable thing I could help out with that a bit since I once made a drivable convertable with as panto-option a metal foldroof like the SLK one. But ye you only need a lowpoly bodyshell for trafficcars or parked scenery. Shouldn't be too hard... I think you need to give more info, maybe 500 people once made a 3d model of a GTO. Maybe a link, or a source where you got it from will help to determine the author.

I would like it to be drivable, but so far I haven't found any written info on how to make a drivable car. I also posted this same question at the Trainz site. One option I'm looking at is to make the car a scenery object with optional night lights.

I spent about 3 days going from site to site looking for 3d car models. I never thought to get the original creators name. So I dont have the creators name or the site that I downloaded at. I may have to do some research to find the answers.

[CLR-AMG]

I could tell what I still know... I remember there was ''Trainz Content Creation Guide'', explaining how to make addons. I used that to add working levers, a working gearstick, working lightlever and working dials.

On the drivable car I made, I managed to get correct steering frontwheels. For this, each front wheel needs his own bogey attachment point (in bodymeshfile) and in the config.txt you tell the bodymesh to look for the frontwheel mesh, and use it on those two points.

If you are modding for TRS2004 or higher you could add passenger attachmentpoints for the passenger industries, and maybe even animate the doors of the car. I don't know how, but there was also a way of making more interiorviews, like one behind the controls, one on the extra seat, one in the centre of the cab etc. I dunno how, but that was pure by adding coordinates in the configfile if I'm right. You could check this with some addon trains or in the Content Creation Guide

Basically, the car would consist of bodymesh, cab (interior) and bogeys, which are the wheels. You'll need 3, maybe for better result 4, bogeypoints, one for each wheel.


EDIT: damn, the website where I hosted the movie of my drivable convertible is unreachable... seems the footage doesn't exist anymore

[MrScott1964]

Thanks for the info...there's more to it then I thought. I'll look into all this when the time comes. Right now I'm still in the "learning about Blender phase".

[MrScott1964]

I've got my first car into Trainz. It's in as a scenery object and it's unpainted. As it sits, there are less polys then some of the cars on the Download Station. I shall move on.

Now I'm moving into an area that I'm not sure of...Painting!

My first few questions has always been...
1.Can the car be painted in Blender that will show in the export?

2.Should the car be painted with UV mapping?

[CLR-AMG]

Congrats on getting the car ingame

You need textures or Trainz will display a full white mesh. Textures need to be in sizes which are a power of 2, so 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 etc etc, you can make textures perfectly square like 16x16, but also rectangle like 128x512. You need UV Mapping since the texture needs to be displayed properly.


I dunno if it's still like it was in 2004 but I always had to include the texture images in the same map as where you put your meshfile, otherwise trainz could not find it.

[MrScott1964]

Originally Posted by CLR-AMG Congrats on getting the car ingame I dunno if it's still like it was in 2004 but I always had to include the texture images in the same map as where you put your meshfile, otherwise trainz could not find it.

I'm using 2006 so I guess I'll find out soon.

I did some UV mapping before. I don't remember much about it, but I do remember it gave me a headache!

Any tips on painting will be welcome.

[CLR-AMG]

I think it depends on the mesh how you want to texture it.

I always used many textures, a few for interior, a few for the outside, setting specularity high for chrome and 0 for rubber etc, giving an environmentmap in the specularity or reflection slot (can't remember which one). You can see it here. Every object had its own material with its own diffuse texture, which was usually a simple 32x32 plain color.



But if your car is very lowpoly, if it's just one single mesh, no seperate wheelmodels built etc, you could try to put photo's as textures. Or if you want a very little bit of detail, you could make seperate objects in your mainmesh for wheels or rearwings, like on the pictures below. The bodies are one object, each wheel is one object and exhaustpipes/rearwing were objects. I modeled the meshes after printscreens of the NFS Underground 2 cars, instantly those printscreens provided the textures





Note that the Audi, Evo and silver RSH are shown in the actual state Trainz showed them. These cars were scenery/traffic objects. There's a parameter in the config file of a scenery where you can define custom traffic vehicles.

[MrScott1964]

I'm inching ever so close to the end of this project. All I have left is to texture the bumpers and wheels/tires.
I'm finding that there is a system on the way a model has to be done in Blender.

1. Start by deleting any parts you know you won't want or need. Or for Trainz, won't be seen.

2. Start seperating the parts by color. Keep them in line with the model.

3. Join the meshes by color. This way you can set up the UV mapping of the colors.

4. Add the color by making the UV maps of the meshes.

5. Put the model back together.

6. Export to Trainz.

It took me about 7 or 8 tries to figure all this out...but I did it!

If your the creator of this 65 GTO, please make yourself known. So I can give the proper credit to the finished product. I can't remember a name linked to the model or where I got it at.

[MrScott1964]

Here is the first finished product. I had a ball working with this but I sure hope the next car dosen't take as long. I'm making the car in five colors then sending them to the Trainz DL station.

[CLR-AMG]

That looks very very nice, a lot better than anything I ever made

[MrScott1964]

Remember, I didn't build the model. I just textured it, resized it and formated it for Trainz...Boy, that sure does make it sound so simple! I'm still tweeking to get the files size down a bit.

[CLR-AMG]

But would that take away it looks good?

Maybe you can use an environment map in the reflection slot, with reflection maybe to 10 or 20. That way the body won't look that flat. Chrome would be ok with 50 or so.

[MrScott1964]

You can set the reflections in Blender?

I am having a small problem. Once I exported the car and loaded in Trainz, some of the textures went missing. I had the windows set as one mesh with one texture. After exporting only the back left window is textured, there rest are untextured.

The same thing happend with the chassie...the bottom of the car is black but the wheel wells went white. Both parts are in the same mesh.

So far nobody been able to figure out where the problem is coming from.