Prairie Cab

[Schmalspur]

Nice work! I look forward to seeing the finished article!

Regards, Jack

[Acorncomputer]

Superb work Pete. Truly amazing.

I can already smell the burning coal, the hot steam and oil and feel the heat from the boiler.

[RSderek]

Coming along great!

best regards

Derek

[karma99]

Thanks chaps, much appreciated.
Lots more unwrapping over the weekend and the backhead and all attached parts are now flat as a pancake and ready for some colour.

Unfortunately work are shipping me off to a developers week in London from tomorrow meaning very long days, add to that family stuff next weekend and not much spare time until late Sunday really
I'll try and add another shot tonight if I get anything "pretty" done

[kirkheath]

Just being at WSR's SSG all weekend and having seen 6695 I must say that your cab is looking very real like and super quality keep up the excellent work and perhaps next you could edit the model to cut away the tanks, fit a screw reverser and model a general loco cab

[DuchessofSutherland]

The best part is it can work with so many GWR Tank Engines. 45xx, 4575, 5101, 4200, 5205, 7200 and 56xx Classes.

[karma99]

Despite my time being stolen from me I'm surprised that I've got quite a lot done since the last update. I'm indebted to Keith (lemberg) who works at the NYMR and sent me a whole bunch of photos of the cab from 6619 which gave me a lot of reference and I was able to correct a bunch of things and add some controls that I didn't have any other pictures of from trawling the web.

I'll be honest and say, if I'd had all the pictures from the start it would be 100% acccurate but receiving them with, in my mind, the model completed and 75% of the texturing done I was loathed to tear down too much and start over. I'm probably past 8 weeks in the project that really was a HUGE thing to decide to do when all I've made before was a very simple water tower(!) and it's only my desire to have a GWR tank engine cab that's kept me going during numerous "tricky" sections (by "tricky" I mean, awkward!). So I decided that my sanity and desire to use my own creation and not be sick of the sight of it (and RS) rated higher than starting too much of it again, something I just couldn't face
However it will be quite servicable, I'm pretty pleased with how it looks and if nobody likes it, well don't use it. The joy of freeware

So, the texturing is complete (including remaking 3 gauge faces from scratch as I couldn't find clear enough pictures of them) as are all the animations that I plan to do including some gauge needles - something that was "tricky" (see above!) to do and I'd rather not talk about!
The main thing left is... the shadow model. Currently it looks fragmented and very ugly so I'm going to assess it and decide whether I can fix what's there, or whether to rebuild it. Either way, after 2 months I think we're getting close

And in case you made it through my tirade, you can be rewarded with a picture


Edit to resize pic, sorry mods

[emrhd01]

Hi Pete,

That is looking better and better every time you Post a picture of it, you are doing a great job and should be very proud of your achievements, very well done.

[DuchessofSutherland]

I don't think I've ever been more excited about a non-RSDL or Derek Siddle model, It looks just perfect. I have got the personality of a perfectionist, who likes to see even the junk on the side of the line in place, something that has got me into abit of trouble with other people, for which I'm sorry.

[almark]

Pete,that is just amazing!

[TheTazman]

AMAZING! How many of the gauges work?

Simon

[karma99]

AMAZING! How many of the gauges work?

Simon

Of the 3 dial gauges, 2 of them work - boiler pressure and the steam brake pressure (with left and right needles both animating). The steam heating gauge is set to the default of 40, but looking at the existing xml's from Kuju I'm not sure it actually works beyond the default value anyway even if you create the animation and wire it up.

As far as controls go: Regulator, Brake, Reverser, Whistle, Cylinder cocks lever and Blower are all operable and animated.
If you run in anything up to Expert mode with Fireman assist on, you've got everything you need. If you fire the loco yourself, you'll have to resort to some keys as well - although personally I tend to use the keys anyway rather than dragging the "live" controls, but it's nice to see them respond as you do it

[davveb]

Outstanding job Pete, commercial quality. I'm amazed how fast you can work, I feel like I've made good progress if I make a few new faces in an evening. I hope the quality of this will inspire more people to "have a go" with Blender, it is free after all.
Good to see you're getting around the Blender animation exporter issues. Still cracking my head against that one. I think you suggested some "findings" sharing in another thread, so here's my latest take (but this tends to evolve over time):

Translation animation is fine.
For rotation animation the Blender x and y axis angles are out by a factor of 10. The CAST sector signing is also in error.

I can work around these for multi-axis rotations up to 180degrees, but I'm still struggling for angles above that. Trouble is I need over 300degrees for my class 86 speedometer.

Dave B

[karma99]

Hi Dave, thanks for the kind words.

Yup that factor of 10 was EXACTLY what I found. I've not done any over about 130 degrees but I'll share my work around for that and maybe it'll help?
I tend to use 160 frames for most of my cab animations, so if I need a lever to move through say 90 degrees, that means I need to move it 900 degrees in Blender to get it to work in RS.
So I just divide down and work out how many chunks of less than 180 degrees (so it rotates the correct direction) I need to break it down to for the key frames. In the case of 900, 8 seems a nice number, so I use key frames every 20 (160 / 8 ) frames and rotate by 112.5 (900 / 8 ) degrees each time - what I actually do in Blender is the first rotation, then extrapolate that in a straight line and just jump X frames at a time and hit I for each
I would think that more than 180 degrees in RS could be achieved by using smaller numbers of frames between the key frames? As long as each key frame is less than 180 degrees then it seems to be ok when it reaches RS as it knows which way to rotate.

I don't actually know what the "CAST sector signing" is

[davveb]

Pete
I do similar things. My controls are on a desk near to horizontal, which means there is little coupling between the axis. So I do a keyframe every 10 degrees, then apply the multiplier. I don't use any intermediate frames as I can't persuade Blender to extrapolate in the object's local rather than global axis. The resulting animation is not quite linear in angle, but it's close enough for levers and I can precisely set the start and end points.
However, my gauges are on a panel which is at 39degrees, about the worst angle for axis coupling. If I use the above technique there is too much needle "fluttering", and the angle changes aren't linear enough. Instead I place a keyframe at each 90degree point, with no intermediate frames, and I let RailSimulator do the extrapolation. This is where I see the CAST problems (Cosine, All, Sine, Tangent - the little diagram that can be used to determine the signs results in each sector), and have been playing around alot with different axis polarities.

Dave B