Ok guys, I'm having problems up to my eyes

[photons66]

Sorry to trouble the community again but I have built my passenger view. Now

1) how do I export it. (Is it a passengar car, electric loco, diesel loco)

2) how do I get my passenger car to recognise the view?

[wmalder]

I think we're still talking MSTS. In that case, just export it as a scenery object I'd expect - I don't think it much matters as all you'll be interested in is the .s file. Then look at other .eng/.wag files that have a passenger view and you should see something like this

Inside (
PassengerCabinFile ( your_shape_file.s )
PassengerCabinHeadPos ( X Y Z ) comment( the observers position in relation to the centre of the car)
RotationLimit ( 180 180 180 ) comment( Play with this if you like but it's pretty standard)
StartDirection ( 0 0 0 )
Sound ( "Whatever_sound_you_want_to_hear.sms" )
)

That should get you headed in the right direction. I might be wrong in some particulars as it's been a while since I did one of these - I do mostly locomotives with a cabview already.

[photons66]

Thats brilliant. Thanks once again wmalder. I will post again if it works/doesn't work.

[photons66]

I'm getting a sunken floor, with sunken chairs and no tables. Any idea why? I've inverted the shape so its hollow so I'm at a loss.

[photons66]

I think its this bug where you can't texture inside faces. The only trouble is, I have no double sided plugin.

[wmalder]

I have to ask, did you invert everything? You only need to invert the box that becomes the walls, ceiling and floor. Everything else is normal. If things are not in the positions that they should be then you should check their centres and their grouping. Everything inside a group has the same centre, adjust one and adjust them all (if you move one you move them all as well so you use the shift object tool on the right of the screen - hold down ctrl to move only the centre). It might help if you could get a screenshot of your object and your hierarchy. I suspect the answer is in there.

[photons66]

OK wmalder here's a screenshot. Basically, the blue floor the walls and ceiling are not displaying correctly thus:



And this is what I'm getting (as you can see, totally and utterly wrong):



The portion of the .wag file is set up thus:

Inside (
PassengerShape(or whatever it is) ("interior.s)
PassengerSetPosition(something like that) (0 0 0)
Rotation (180 180 180)
Sound ("inside.sms")
)

Hope that is a bit more helpful for yourself wmalder or anyone who can help me with this. I realise that my hierarchy naming conventions isn't that good

[photons66]

OK, I've tried to do a bit more but I've come to the hard decision of scrapping the passenger view. Maybe for my next project I'll have another go but its too much aggro.

[wmalder]

I don't think that you're that far away. It's probably the combination of doing a model while trying to learn interior views. The model look okay by itself but for exporting something like this, I think you should move everything into one group - Main. Subgroups here are more for your sorting things out than for any inherent need for exporting.
A couple of things come to mind with what I'm seeing. I'm not sure if it's essential but the origin for your project should be a track-head height (I start with 6" as I work in feet/inches) then your cabin would be several feet above this. Your passenger position would be somewhere other than 0,0,0. Possibly something like 1m to right of centre, 3m above the track and maybe 2m behind the centreline of the carriage - PassengerCabinHeadPos ( 1, 3, -2 ). I also believe you can do this by defining a small cube as PassengerCabinHeadPos, place it at head level in the cabin in the approximate location of a passenger and select for a passenger view in the export. Export as a carriage and when you come to the part that asks you to define various objects, select the small block for the passenger view and also select for a .wag file to be generated. It should then include a section for a passenger view.

[photons66]

Hi wmalder.

Upon following your instructions, I get this:



Any ideas??? Cheers

[wmalder]

It looks to me as if the centre is set much too high. MSTS orients everything to track height so the centre of your interior will be at that height. I don't see any reference to the position of the viewshape in the .wag file so I'm assuming it's inherent in the shape itself as with the actual carriage itself. If that doesn't work you may have to send me the files and I'll see what I can do but it'll be more meaningful if you figure it out yourself.

[photons66]

Centre?

[wmalder]

One thing I noticed in your earlier screen capture was the location of the centre of your work area.



I, personally find it easier to work with a larger grid. Mine is 100'x100' with 1' squares. I set the origin of the grid at X=-50' and Z=-50' so that 0,0,0 is at the centre of the grid and at ground level.
The device I circled is the ambient lighting controller. It is set at 0,0,0 by default and isn't movable. So by that I can see that your model (at that point in time) is not centred over the centre and also appears to be sitting right on the grid which if exported in that form would have the model appear with the floor at least 6" below the top of the rails and displaced some distance to one side of the tracks. This is just an observation, not a criticism, You've picked an ambitious project with many things to learn. It may be about time to set it aside temporarily and work on the fundamentals so you have a better understanding of them. It will make it easier to figure out what's not working in the future.

Just as an addendum, your modeling is fine. You're making good looking shapes and orienting them well. You're still not sure about things like the 'centre' of objects and how they relate to each other. It takes a while to understand how they work and they can be exasperating when working between objects in different groups. for example, two points may occupy the same location in your model but be parts of two different groups. Their location is given in relation to the centre of their groups and therefore will be Different. Understand? No? You're not alone. It takes some time and practice to instill these concepts in your work. It does get easier with practise and thankfully there are quite a few patient people here and at the Amabilis website to help.

[photons66]

I agree. I'm abandoning this passenger view.

[wmalder]

I wouldn't say abandon it but I might suggest a modification. Use what you've built in the actual model you're doing. Then when you export your model you'll have an interior to look at through the windows. Then later you can play with a passenger view just using the existing model as the view. Most of the time that's all that's done anyway. When I've seen a separate model done for an interior it's usually very detailed for a particular reason. My only model for public consumption that uses a passenger view was my United Aircraft Turbo Train where I had many of the same issues as you have here. The interior is just part of the model with the view set inside. You can get it from Train-Sim.com in several flavours, just search for Alder and Turbo, you should find it easily, if you're interested.