Atomic Systems

hi,
I am entertaining myself trying to get an NZR Vulcan Railcar into RW2012.
As you can tell from the heading all is not going smoothly
I have the Railcar sitting on the tracks. I add a driver icon.

so far so good then I run RW and click on the Railcar..... SBHH
Ahhhhh I remember .... add the couplers
Done...
restart RW and try again.... click on the Railcar and it takes off VERTICAL end over end and RW ends due to derailment
suprise suprise
I had 3 railcars sitting on different tracks with only one having a driver icon and yet when I clicked on that one all three went flying.
(might be a clue to something)

Another minor detail.... when I select the Railcar and have the big Orange change direction arrow above it ,

when I click on the orange arrow the Railcar changes direction but pivots around its end and finishes facing the other way ok but a full Railcar length down the track.


I have the centre point of the object in 3DC at track level and at the midpoint of the objects length and width.
I have used the sample engine blueprint and have modified it to suit my Railcars measurements
We shall ignore any attempt to get it to move at this stage.

I have succeeded at this a couple of times in the past but this is the first vertical take off I have achieved so am at a loss as to where to start looking.
Some guidance would be appreciated

Ross
NZ

I suggest double and triple checking your bogie blueprints.

Yes, check all of your measurements, including those in the bogey blueprint, the pivot issue is most likely due to the loco's pivot being set incorrectly and the flying off the rails thing suggests that your collision box is set too large.

Hope this helps...

Kevin

hi,
I have resolved both issues in one go . I checked and rechecked and checked yet again such thing as pivot points and collision boxes in the engine blueprint and made several "adjustments'. even sorted out some object labeling issues but all to no avail.. Eventually I went back to Kevin Martin and Richard Scott's "Getting a loco model from 3DCanvas into RailSimulator" written in May 2008. and the answer was in the chapter called "Things that can go wrong and how to solve them"
"In the engine blueprint the bogie references must be entered in the same order as they appear in the loco"
I changed this significant detail in my engine blueprint and all is well .
No more flying Railcars and it stays in the one place when it is reversed using the orange arrow in the scenario editor.
one small step for mankind
Now to get the wheels to turn.
There is so much enjoyable entertainment to be had from RW.

Ross
NZ

Great to hear! I think the wheels issue is a simple one to solve, how have you set up your hierarchy and named the wheels?

These two done incorrectly can make the game think that the wheels are just static objects so they wont turn.

Let me know...

Kev

hi,
Your right, it was easily fixed by comparing another models bogie hierarchy and naming, I wasn't far wrong .
At one point I had all three axles of the front bogie rotating around a point in front of the Railcar along the Z axis, was hilarious to watch . Solved by re creating the bogies using the Trainsimulator engineer plugin in 3DC and naming things correctly
I am now happy I can roll down the tracks.

Of course I have got no idea of the physics of the original. Now for some more "research"
Oh, and then to get the ends of the roof curved at the corners no idea on that one but such is life.

Ross
NZ

Excellent Again, I think I can help with the ends bit, but I'm using 3ds Max so the process might be different. Select the edges that you want rounded and look for what should be a 'bevel' operator. You can follow the start of this tutorial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdELmid4QAQ
The second part is for 3ds Max so ignore that.

Kev