Atomic Systems

And now for the millionth time in a row, I've planed on paper and slowly constructed a highly detailed model in 3DS max exported it to Gmax Gamepack and Exported it to MSTS to find.... Its too small!

They look perfectly in proportion on paper and on screen, until you compare them to other stock, then they are far to short, wide enough, but too short, how can they still look in proportion?

Just a few bullet point things I need to find out and note down, so..

1. How high/wide are standard steam locomotives on the British loading gauge.

and 2, a separate problem, no matter what LOD distance I put in the Gmax exporter I always get zero and then have to chnage it with shape file manager.. why?

Thanx in advance,
Myles

myles wrote: How high/wide are standard steam locomotives on the British loading gauge.

There were many variances but height was generally about 12' 6" to 13' and width about 8' to 8'6".

What loco are you modelling?

John

Im not modeling any locos in particular as yet, I'm just making freelance ones for practice and custom ones for the route I'm making. But they allways turn out wrong.

How about taking dimensions from plans anyway....
...if it is freelance, you can always change any bits you don't like....

I might be able to send you some plans for some locos...

...is it just little tank engines that you want?

Plans would be great, would be nice to build something real for once, anythings fine but I'd like to start small with the real stuff, thanks.

For the moment I'm struggling with the Gmax exporter again. The whole thing is backwards, the wheels say they are turning forwards, and they're defiantly spinning on the wrong axis and to top it all off, it's still got a LOD of zero!

EDIT: Ok, so now its packed up totally, I've always had the problem that after importing parts into Gmax from 3DS Max some would just refuse to export and crash the program. I used to remedy this by just making it a part of another object (attach it, it works, but I don't understand why) I've never understood why some objects do this, weather its naming or a certain polly (why should either of those be fixed by attaching it to something else?) but Gmax has now decided it wants no more and wont export anything brought in from 3DS Max, any ideas on this either... why is it always me........

No thoughts on that one.
I have mostly worked in TSM...
...started some models of coaches in G-max, but stopped, because it seems the whole thing has passed its sell by date (anyone want to take over constructing some LYR non corridor lavatory coaches you are welcome to what i have so far!)

I am doing some buildings at present in Sketch up...

...next trick to learn 3DC as that will be the tool of the future for the new sims....

Myles,

>They look perfectly in proportion on paper and on screen, until you compare them to other stock, then they are far to short, wide enough, but too short, how can they still look in proportion?<

Are you scaling the primitives when you are building your model? If so I suspect this could be the issue. I don’t recall the exact reasons for this but the internal representation of the object in max/gmax after scaling may not be the same as what you visually see in the modelling program.

If you are scaling objects you should only do it at a sub-object level. That is, only perform scale operations on faces/vertices after you have converted the original primitive into an editable mesh.

Not sure about your LOD distance level issue. All the models I have exported over three years have always had the correct LOD distances I have entered into the LOD Distance Field.

>The whole thing is backwards, the wheels say they are turning forwards, and they're defiantly spinning on the wrong axis<

Ensure your pivot points are ‘Aligned to World’

To do this select an object, go to the Hierarchy Tab, select ‘Affect Pivot Only’ then select ‘Align to World’. For the wheels you would normally also want to ‘Centre to Object’ as well. In the case of the ‘MAIN’ object part you would want the pivot point at 0,0,0.

Also note that the font and rear views in gmax are back to front in MSTS.

As for you file importation issues the causes of this may be many and varied. File importation (especially in the 3D world) is not an exact science. If possible try and build your models in gmax to minimise the need to import.

I have successfully imported quite complex objects into gmax without issue but not 100% of the time. If you do have to import meshes from max then try breaking the model down into smaller/simpler geometry.

I have read of people having problems with the LOD export tool with geometry with a lot of faces in single objects, isolated vertices, and lots of small details (faces) confined in a small area.

To try and find the problem geometry keep deleting parts and trying to export till successful. Once you know which parts are causing the problem examine them closely. I once had a problem where the model would not export after making a modification to bogie. In the end I had to reimport an earlier (simpler) copy of the bogie and redo my work as I could not resolve the problem with the original modified geometry. Go figure.

Taken into consideration, the model now exports fine from Gmax, and all the bits import fine from 3DS MAX, I still have to create a shape, attach the import to it, then delete the part that I created, leaving what I started with under a different name, rename it, it will export fine now.... weird...

Still getting the LOD problem on occasion, but a new problem has appeared, the model exports fine, it even shows up in shape viewer, but MSTS crashes on loading, sying it cant add the car to the world. If I take the boiler and fittings off, back a step essentially, it works fine... this could be, something funny with the shape?, number of pollys?....

I would build the models in GMAX but I much prefer 3DS because I can then do scenes and renders, plus I like the 3DS UI much more.

There are a few standard measurements you need to get right when starting a model.

To get the proportions right I always start with a few guide boxes.

The buffers are 3ft 5 and a half in hight and 5ft 8in apart so make a box 5.67 wide and 3.46 high and position temporary tubes as buffers.
This will also help position the frames which are usually 8ft wide.

Make other boxes to position the wheels and maximum hight and delete them when they are no longer needed.

Start the actual model with a small box in the centre and call it MAIN to get the parenting right. You can change it later.