Tender-Engine Coupling Gap

[dkightley]

The hilight on the edge of textured faces is caused by picking an area off a texture too close to a colour change. Either pick up a slightly smaller area off the texture, or add some more colour down the edge where you're getting the bleed of lighter colour.

[ianmacmillan]

MSTS maps a texture by percentage of the size. That allows it to read 512 and 1024 textures.
So an edge 1 tenth of the way from the edge of a 512 ace would be 51.2 pixels.

The .2 of a pixel is what causes the white edges.
I call it fringing.

Its like dividing a chess board onto 10x10 squares.
You will always get a bit of the other colour.

Extend the texture by cutting and pasting a row if pixels to cure it.

[mickrik]

HI Ian,

That is a very useful piece of information on texture mapping you have shared with us there.

My texture map is very simple at the moment, made on a 1024 x 1024 template. I hope I am doing it right only I am new to texturing as well as modeling.

I think I have grasped the model making part ok. It is just when I look at some textures which have been lined out like what Dee4141 has done with his N15X, I can make a plain texture with noise but I need to add things like rivits and core plugs into the texture to make the model user friendly.

I can model rivits very easily but think of all the extra polys. I know shapefixer can streamline the shapefile so MSTS reads it better, but there has to be a limit as to how many polys you can add before the model becomes unplayable in the sim.

I will spend this evening experimenting further

mickrik

[ianmacmillan]

Rivits are best done with shading on the texture.
Modelling them is a sure frame rate killer.

I prefer to lay out my textures like a drawing with sides, ends and top and each part placed like a plastic kit .

That way you can apply rivits as well as lettering and lining and weathering.
It also makes it easy to repaint.

I noticed that your saddle tank used the same area of texture for the cab sides and tank making it impossible for lining or rivits.

[mickrik]

Hi Ian

I think I am being a bit too simplistic with the texture map.

It seems I am relying too much on texturing components rather than painting a picture of the components and applying the picture if that is what you mean.

This could take a while to learn

I will start by trying to map out the smokebox with rivits. I guess I must effectively roll out the smokebox flat and paint the rivits on

mickrik

[mickrik]

Hi there,

It is about time I posted the result and current status of this little problem.

I have been messing around with the figures in the SD file and the sizing lines in the eng file. I could close the gap between the engine and tender ok but I could not front couple.

I had the pleasure of a brief discussion with Decapod, he suggested I shift the axis in 3DC using the "ShiftGroup and Animations" script by half the length of the buffers on both the engine and tender which was approx 25cm on each.

The loco now couples both ends with no problems though I do still have a tender/loco gap bigger than I would like. I have tried to alter the SD file figures and the loco dimensions but not with a satisfactory result as the couplings are affected.





I think I shall work on some finer details of the model.

mickrik

[decapod]

Hi Mick,

The Size parameters in the ENG/WAG files are the ones you need to change now.
If the gap is still too big but the front couples OK then you probably need to shift the centres a bit more and reduce the size slightly.

Basically - work out the exact position of the front of the buffers on the loco and the rear position of the footplate - then make sure the centre is exactly half way between and the size is exactly the right length (front buffer to back of footplate)
Repeat for the tender.

[mickrik]

Hi All

We Have...................

Progress

I made a mistake with the final exports. I forgot to export the corrected axis tender shape file from 3DC to MSTS. Once the correct tender S file was installed there was a small gap to the rear coupling and first wagon which I have closed up with the dimension sizes in the eng file.

Many thanks to you all, Ian, Rick, Decapod and Jon for your useful suggestions and advice.

The final result



Now back to work on the textures and corrections.......and about the cab.

Doug................that is a mighty impressive coal tower. Would it be the one at 40E?

cheers
mickrik

[jbilton]

That is looking excellent.

Cheers
Jon