Mike's space: Blog

Back from the National Train Show

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 02:01:32 GMT

I recently got back from the National Train Show where we finally had a public hands on demo of Microsoft Train Simulator 2.

I must say I am completely jazzed by the turnout and the feedback. Below are a couple of shots from the show taken by Keith Thompson. He is one of the guys on the team. You may or may not know him. He used to be the editor of Model Railroader Magazine.

In the top picture my back is to the camera and the bottom picture I am the one facing the camera talking up a storm.

The pictures were taken during a setup of the booth. Vendors were coming over because we had the bass speakers cranked and the diesel engines were rumbling. You could feel the vibration of the engine noise all the way across the hall.

Soon I should be able to get back to more posts and responding to people in a much more timely manner. Getting ready for a show is always stressful and busy and we have one more big one coming up. Hopefully I can get back to doing tutorials and demos soon.

Private art

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 02:46:41 GMT

Every once in a great while I get to do my own art. Being a lead is sometimes frustrating because you spend more time critiquing and less time doing. I decided to learn ZBrush. I have always puttered around with sculpting, but I spend so much time at the computer I really didn't have the time or the space in my house to devote to sculpting. Zbrush is great because it allows you to sculpt digitally and takes up no more room than the computer you already have.

Here are a couple of celebs I decided to sculpt. See if you can guess who they are.

I had a great time doing these and I think I will be doing more really soon.. when I have spare time.

Thanks for looking

National Train Show

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:06:51 GMT

Hope everyone is doing well. It's been crazy here at work. I have been crunching to get as much done as possible for the show. If you are at the show in Anaheim be sure to stop by the Microsoft booth and say hi!

I found this link and wanted to share

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/05/extravagant-designs-by-luigi-colani.html

Take a look at the model of a futuristic coal dust powered steam locomotive. I wish that thing had been made. it's a great piece of art.

Still Alive

Thu, 29 May 2008 18:19:50 GMT

Hello All,

We are quietly working away at getting ready for some upcoming events. Sorry for the long delay in posts. I am sure you would rather see cool stuff than hearing me drone on and on about work. So here goes.

Here are some pictures from our travels to various locations.

The picture below is from a cab ride on the Horseshoe Curve route in Pennsylvania. Here we are just turning the curve. As you can see it was a foggy day. The day before this we walked a portion of this area to get a picture of the greaser units used to keep the wheels rolling smooth. There is an observation area just to the left of the track and you can see a large black thing near the track. That's a locomotive on display in the railfan observation area.

Next up is the Stevens Pass route. This picture is looking down from the hillside into one of the yards in Wenatchee. One side of the Cascades is a nice lush green, with pines and ferns and the other side is high desert with scrub and small trees. As you can see from the picture below, it's a busy place. Lots of produce is grown in the Wenatchee area so this place is always bustling.

Here's a picture from Switzerland. This picture was taken from the road next to the station in Spiez. The BLS facility where we were able to crawl around and on the locomotives is a short distance from this idyllic scenery. I wouldn't mind working there if I got to see this view all the time.

And the final place we went...

Well you will learn that soon enough. Back to the grindstone!

Just kidding!

And the women...

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 18:05:45 GMT

For obvious reasons I couldn't show her face, but trust me, not only was she very pretty.. she was very nice to talk to. She happened to be at one of the stations that I was photographing, and I asked her about a nearby building. She gave me a little information, I thanked her and went about my business.

This wasn't a unique experience, everyone I talked to were very pleasant and helpful and made my time there so much more enjoyable.

When people hear that you are going to do research someplace, they automatically think "they are so lucky, they are going to have a great time" It's true, usually it is an awesome time, but the reality is that you are walking for 12 to 14 hours a day. You are also carrying around somewhere between 20 and 100lbs of gear and cases to make sure you have what you need.

Below is an image of part of the Horseshoe Curve route in Pennsylvania. Keep in mind that the team that goes to these things usually sits behind a computer for 12 hours a day. Rick and I are not what you would call petite. We started off in the parking lot there, then climbed all these stairs and then walked around a mile along the ballast to take a picture of a mechanism that slings grease up under the train to keep it running smoothly. Walking on ballast is like running on loose sand, except it bruises the bottoms of your feet. Oh, that greasing unit, yeah, we found another one on a flat piece of land, right next to a tower we had to photograph anyway.

Sure, that's not a huge hike, but for fat boys like us, it might as well have been Mt. Everest. Each time I do one of these things I lose about 10lbs, then swear to myself that I will go to the gym immediately in order to capitalize on the progress.. then I get back to work and sit my butt down for another 12 hours of talking to my square headed girlfriend. That's what my wife calls my computer.

There ya go, I have shown the good beer and the beautiful women ( at least one ) and now all you have to do is wait for the announcement to see the fast trains.

I was asked to post a picture from our European trip

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:55:43 GMT

Good Beer!!

Later, I will post the beautiful women!

Then eventually you will see the fast trains!

-Porter

A small update

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:06:29 GMT

Man have I been busy.

I knew that once I got back from the research trip I would have lots of work to do, but I didn't think it would be this much.

It appears that I am not going to get the space I need for the video tutorials, and I haven't been working on them past 3 or 4 I haven't released. I am formulating another plan, which I hope will be agreeable to everyone. It will probably take me a while to do what I am wanting to do, but you will be getting the information as soon as I can cement the idea and get the buy off from "upstairs".

In the mean time I am busy getting stuff ready for the sim and making sure everything looks great!

We should be putting more renders up soon, I hope anyway. I have a few more renders to do so that they have many images to pull from.

The other thing I have been doing is helping out with the scenery assets while my counterpart in the scenery area is out on vacation. I have to say, the scenery is going to be amazing. I am surprised by the detail that we are able to accomplish for the high detail routes.

Once we get this bad boy in the can, I plan on completing what I set out to accomplish, the 3 locs in 3 separate modeling packages.

I will have more updates soon.

Thanks for sticking with me!

-Porter

Greetings from *******

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:07:40 GMT

So we are off on a research trip. Holy smokes my feet hurt. HOURS of walking. We start our days around 6 am and get done around midnight. We actually got off a little early today. I am writing this at 10pm ******* time.

So until we announce this route.. it will have to remain hidden. It's an awesome route though. The people are friendly.. the food is amazing. Everything is great, next week we will be in Switzerland for more research. This week has been a blast, but the walking and carrying of heavy bags gets a little old. Like me ;-)

Soon I will be able to upload pictures and talk more about our trip. Just to show you how serious we are, we brought laptops and extra external drives, thinking this will be more than enough for the trip.. we need more external drive.. we have already filled 280gb of space and we haven't finished the first week out.

Talk to everyone later!

Porter

This is cool

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:51:42 GMT

One of my co-workers pointed out this new feature in Photoshop CS3. There are two new tools called Auto-Align images and Auto-Blend images. These functions lie in the Edit menu.

These two tools take images that are placed in a .PSD as separate layers and does some sort of voodoo to get them to align together.. Then if that wasn't enough, it does some other sort of voodoo to blend them together.. The result??

MathMagic!

Ok, here are the images I used:

Here is the result of Auto_Align:

Here is the result of Auto_Blend after I used the Auto_Align function:

That's it. I put all of these pictures into one .PSD file with each picture became a layer in the file. Select all the layers, hit the Auto_Align button and it will have several options. I picked the first option which was Auto.

Once I hit this button it takes care of the calculations and repositioning of the layers into a stitched picture. The blend function doesn't have any menu for previews, however I don't think it really needs it.

This is really helping me out right now.

I swear I'm not slacking

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 23:22:53 GMT

Hey all,

I have been super busy with getting content into the simulation. Everything is looking really good and coming together nicely. Except for server space. Here is what I think is going on, but I am still in the dark about.

I think they are getting ready to do a be push on the TS Insider and want to make sure they all their attention is devoted to that. If that is the case, then my stuff can wait. We want to make sure you guys get the best information in the quickest time frame. That being said, I am frustrated, but I think now that I have figured out the problem, I am less frustrated than before.

I have several other tutorials that I could possibly add to the site. Currently they are in One Note which is a great Microsoft product by the way. It allows me to quickly put together visual documents, much easier than word. Think of it as a scratch pad with pictures.

Once I get these files converted over into a format that is web friendly I will put them here.

Again my apologies but now you know what I know.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Still no word

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:33:35 GMT

Hello all,

Still no word on when we are going to post the video. I am a little frustrated, I don't like leaving people hanging. The minute I can get this resolved I will make sure and post the videos.

My task list has grown quite a bit. Previously I had help working on the vehicle assets. There is so much stuff to check and look into and resolve, the vehicle lead position was being handled by two people. Well, my help has taken a different job within the Aces group, so I am going at it alone.

I am not going to complain, this gives me more control over what is released, and that's fine by me. Recently I have been creating more renders so that we will have more to post on the TSInsider soon. The work on the vehicles is just outstanding and I feel honored to be part of the process. I have no doubt that people will be amazed at the visuals we are creating for TS.

At home I have been playing around with the source engine quite a bit. I used to be a level designer at a previous company and I feel like I need to keep my hand in there for some reason. I would really like to spend some time with the Sandbox editor for Crysis. This would be loads of fun. They have done some amazing work in their tools department and I want to create some levels if I ever have time.

I just started trying to sculpt again. I haven't done this for a few years. Once I have something worth showing I will put a photo up here.

Well, I need to get back to work.. as I said I am doing renders and they allow me a little time to type some stuff up.

I have been trying to think of other small tips to write up. I either have medium or long tutorials to get out, but the little tricks seem to have dried up.. If anyone is having difficulty with something, send me a message and maybe I will answer it here. At the very least I will find the answer and point you in the right direction.

Have a good rest of the week.

Happy New Year

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:12:26 GMT

Well here it is, the start of another new year. I still don't have any idea how long it will take to get my videos posted. We are planning some activities on TSInsider, so maybe they are waiting to get that going before I get the videos posted. I apologize for the delays.

We recently had another research trip and will probably have a couple more in the next month or two. I am excited to finally get some of the research done, and once we finish up the rest of the trips we will have everything we need to keep the wheels rolling.

While on break I found a new art forum called Game Artisans here http://www.gameartisans.org/

Lots of really great artists and discussions about game art. One of the things I see all the time is people asking the best way to render stuff out to make it look as good as possible. I usually use Mental Ray in max. I use Skylights and sometimes Omni lights to get the look I want. Here's how I went about setting up this render.

The fist thing I did was to build a virtual set for my object to sit in. I wanted it to be a very simple space that didn't have edges. I used the top of a cylinder and I deleted the rest of the faces.

I used a cylinder that had 30 sides and 12 cap segments. I remove the bottom and the sides as I am only going to use the top.

I convert to an editable poly and then I select the side and bottom quads and delete those. Then I get edge mode and grab the outside edge loop. After I have those selected I use soft selection to get a good portion of the quads toward the inner ring.

Once I have these selected I move the edges up in the Z direction. This will give me a bowl shape in which to use as my virtual set. I don't assign a texture to this, however I make the diffuse color white.

This is the result of my soft selection move.

As you can see from this image I have a bowl with two sky lights and an omni light way down in the bowl. The skylights give me the nice soft lighting and the omni supplies a kicker color, in this case a slight yellow tint.

Here are the settings for my skylights and my omni.

Now I have mental ray set as my renderer. This is under the common tab under rendering options.

The other options I want to set are under Indirect Illumination. You want to set Enable Final Gather and Global Illumination. Once you have these set up, there are numerous settings to play with, but I went with the default settings and had good results.

That's it. Hit render and take a look at the results. The best part of this is you will get some of the benefits of radiosity without the extremely long render times. In the render below I have my omni fairly far away and I turned off Shadows on my omni. Here are the results on a box with default diffuse color on a white diffuse set that I showed above.

Hope every has a happy year ahead.

Rolling Stock Renders

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:44:14 GMT

http://www.tsinsider.com/en-US/product/Pages/Renders.aspx

Here are some renders of a small sample of the rolling stock that we are working on.

Soon we will have some EU stuff to show and that will be posted at http://www.tsinsider.com as soon as we can get it in a presentable position.

We are SLOWLY working through the server issue. I will absolutely be hosted through TSInsider, but like any giant beast, it takes a while to turn it.. no matter how hard you pull on the reigns.

I hope everyone feels it was worth the wait once I am able to get this video series posted.

Thanks again for the patience.

-Porter

Still waiting for server space.

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 02:00:55 GMT

I am trying to be patient and wait for space, because I want to be able to give you people a great tutorial. I appear to be in terminal holding pattern until something can be done about server space. Until that time I am working on getting the rest of the tutorials together. The holidays are coming up and service will be just as spotty as it has been recently and I have a huge trip coming up soon that I will probably be gone for a few weeks.

Here's a little tip on getting max to be a little more easy on the eyes.

If you go to Customize on the top row of menu items you can find Customize User Interface. This dialog has a few tabs, these tabs hold information that you can customize. The last tab is Colors. The top portion says elements and has a drop down menu. This allows you to pick specific portions of the viewport or tools colors or whatever. The bottom part has Scheme and allows you to pick some pre-defined schemes. Once you have all your colors the way you want them, you can save them as a new preset custom color.

Hope that helps

Sorry about lack of updates

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:43:22 GMT

Things have been pretty hectic here. Thanksgiving is coming up and many people are out of town or busy trying to get things done before taking a holiday.

Once I get back on Monday I am going to try and resolve the server issue. I hate leaving people hanging, however there are some things that have to be done that are beyond my control.

Hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

-Porter

Working out the issues

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 19:53:01 GMT

Hello all,

Still trying to work out the issue of server space for hosting my video tutorials. I should be able to get my content hosted on TSInsider, just have to go through some setting up and permissions and things of that nature. Once that is done I will be able to update a little more regularly.

I went on a photoshoot yesterday gathering content for the game. I was lucky enough to actually get into an SW1500 and get some cab shots. This was the one area that I was lacking the most detail on.

I am excited!

The thing that really surprised me was how tiny those interiors are. I am a pretty big guy, but I really had to suck in the gut and squeeze past some of the levers to take my shots. I am hoping that I was able to get enough coverage to really do a good job on that interior.

I had some difficulty getting everything that I needed because of the space in the cab and the fact that I was using a point an shoot, I wasn't able to get a flat enough lens to get some information in the frame.

I have lots of little detail pieces which I think will add tons of character to this piece.

Here's one of the cab shots.

Tip

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:26:52 GMT

If you are like me and 99.9% of the rest of America and aren't up to snuff on your metric conversions or if you are someone from the rest of the globe and wonder what us crazy Yankees are on about when we say 50 yards away.. then this is the tool for you.

http://joshmadison.com/software/convert/

Not only does it convert obvious things like distance it also converts units of mass, power, pressure, speed.. etc.

It may save me hours of converting feet to metric.

Get it now!!!

This is great!

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:30:17 GMT

I wanted to point everyone to two different blogs. The cool thing about these blogs is that they are following my tutorials. This isn't the great news, the great news is that they are doing it in a different package other than Max.

In this blog the user (I don't know his/her name yet) Is making an engine in XSI Mod tool.

http://adventuresinmodelling.spaces.live.com

In the blog below Paul Gausden, whom I met at DevCon, is following the tutorial in 3D Canvas!

http://decapod-3d.spaces.live.com

Thanks to both of them for helping others in the community that don't have access to Max!

Tip of the day (hoping to get back on track)

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:31:01 GMT

Ok, I am still looking into a host for the video tutorials. Once I figure that out I will be submitting those fairly frequently. In the hopes of getting back into the tip of the day habit, I am submitting this post.

Everyone should get their hands on CrazyBump!.

http://www.crazybump.com/

This is an amazing tool that allows you to take images and make normal, displacement and occlusion maps.

I don't recommend just using photographs when making normals, instead you need gray scale heightmaps. This tool will allow you to take that grayscale image and make it into a normal.

Usually when creating normals I work in grayscale and my images usually end up more like the displacement map than the source image they show on the front page at the CrazyBump site.

Building your height information using black as the lowest point in your image and white as the highest, you will get better normals.

Use CrazyBump, you will be glad you did.

Embedded video

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 03:07:57 GMT

Well, I am not too happy with the results. I will see if there is another way of getting this done.

I saved it out in size and format that was easy to see and it was fairly low memory size. I will have to investigate other options.

Giving the video tutorial a try

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 01:46:31 GMT

Going to see if this video tutorial works. Here goes nothing.

Video: SW1500 Switcher tutorial

Coverage may be spotty

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 03:08:08 GMT

Well, Devcon is here and I will be attending. Not sure what days I will be going, but I am looking forward to meeting people in the community.

This week I doubt I will be able to add to the switcher tutorial, but more is coming soon. Let me give a little tip of the day instead.

http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/

This is a cool program that allows you to take your 3d models and turn them into paper models.

It takes a little getting used to, but it's fun and intuitive.

See ya'll at Devcon!

Tip of the Day (Textures)

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 05:35:18 GMT

I tried looking back through my posts and see if I had posted anything about some really cool texture places. For some reason the October archive is not working. I guess I will send a report in tomorrow about that.

Here are some really nice texture places, sorry if these were posted before.

http://www.spectralogue.com/

http://mayang.com/textures/

http://www.cgtextures.com/

I should be able to work a little more on the switcher this week coming up. Pretty soon I will also post a picture of the shed I built based on the 3d model I did. I found a few flaws in how I was approaching everything, but I think it's turning out ok.

I have some cool ideas about other trains using the various 3d packages I was speaking of. Once I get that going I will add that information as well.

Sorry about the lack of daily tips, things have been a bit hectic between work and home life. I will try to be more diligent and make sure I make an effort every day.

SW1500 tutorial: Part 1b - Setting up your project

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:18:01 GMT

Today I am still setting up my space to work on my model. If possible I try to get line drawings that allow me to see all different sides. Top, front, back and sides if possible. Sometimes it's not possible to have that information and another tutorial in a different package will discuss how that will be done.

I will be using very small images for my drawings because I don't want there to be any problems with copyrights and things of that nature.

Below are the images that I am using for reference.

I will place these images in the correct location inside the inside out box that represents the size of the switcher.

While in Max I hit M to bring up the Material Editor. See below.

Next to the 01-Default drop down menu is a button that says Standard. You will want to hit the Standard button. This brings up your Material/Map Browser

I want to select the Multi/Sub Object material type. When the prompt comes up disregard the old material. This will give you a dialog that has 10 spaces for materials.

I am only going to use 5 of these spaces so where it says Set Number at the top you will want to select that and when the dialog opens up, set the number to 5.

As you can see the new amount of slots is 5. Next to the sphere on each of these lines are numbers. These represent material ID's, basically a number associated with a face on your box.

The first thing I want to do is to add my image to one of these slots.

Where it says Material #2 in the first slot, hit that button. It will take you to your standard material window. Next you hit the button next to the gray box that says Diffuse: It looks like this.

Standard Window:

The blank box is to the right in this image.

When you hit this button it will bring up the Material/Map Browser dialog again. This time you want to select Bitmap at the top of the list.

This should bring up a standard windows open dialog. Browse to your image and hit OK.

This should fill up your first slot. Make sure that the checkered box above Bitmap is highlighted. This allows the image to show up in the window that you are working in.

If you hit the Sphere to Box button located to the left of the X you will assign the material to your inverted box. Because of the material ID that is already assigned to the box it will probably only show like this:

Under the Modifier tab there is a section called Selection. You want to hit the Square button, this selects the face only. See image below for the selection icons.

I select the face that I want to apply the side texture to and it should be highlighted red like this.

Under the Polygon Properties portion of the Modifier tab there is a place to Set the Material ID.

You will want to set this to your first material ID slot or Material ID #1.

As you can see below, if I set my material ID to 1 it puts the correct texture in that place.

Make sure you follow all the steps above and place the textures in separate material ID slots.

When I am setting up my images I want to be able to see the side I am working on through the actual side of the box. For instance, if I am working on the back of the car, I want to place the image of the back on the front portion of the box.. It sounds odd, but since you are looking in through the box instead of at the outside you have to place the corresponding image on the opposite side.

I assign each face with the correct material ID and I get a box that has the images I want place in the correct location. The one snag I had, which you may have as well, is that when I put my top view in the proper location, it was mapped incorrectly. See image below.

To resolve this, I need to select this face and use a UVW Map modifier to correct the problem. As you can see from the below image, there is an orange box with an arm that sticks out from one side. There is also a green edge that can't be seen here because of the selected face. I want to rotate this box so that the green edge is to the right and the arm is facing the X axis.

To do this you want to expand the UVW Mapping dialog. You do this by hitting the plus sign next to the UVW Mapping text.

The Gizmo is how you interact with the UVW map. Select the Gizmo and the orange box should turn yellow. See the image below.

In order to rotate my gizmo I hit the E key which is the shortcut for rotate. There is also a button at the top of the screen that you can press to rotate. I want to rotate my gizmo 90 degrees. I can hit the A key, which turns on angle snap or I can hold down the J key while I rotate. Holding the J key while rotating only turns on the angle snap while you are holding the key down. The A key actually is a toggle that will keep angle snap on until you untoggle it by hitting A again. Below, you can see that I have rotated my gizmo, however it doesn't fit the box I have. To make the gizmo fit, use the Fit button in the alignment segment of the UVW Map modifier roll out.

Now that I have hit the Fit button, my map is correctly aligned, but facing the wrong direction. I just rotate the image until it is correct.

Incorrect:

Correct:

In order for me to see all my sides, without rotating my box around, I set my ambient light to white. To do this, go to the Rendering menu at the top of the screen.

Hit the button that says Environment or use the 8 key. Where it says Ambient, click the button below it and it will bring up a color picker. Set that to white and you should be able to see all the sides of your box without rotating your box.

That's all for this segment. Next up is actually modeling a portion of the switcher.

SW1500 Reference Materials

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:30:04 GMT

I was asked if I could provide plan drawings for the tutorial I am working on. Sadly, I cannot.

I will point you to a great reference book that does have plan drawings and also remind everyone that the Internet is an invaluable tool for finding these sorts of things.

Hard work and a browser is all that is really needed. Somewhere out there is a link to a plan drawing.

The book I am going to recommend not only has the plan drawings for the SW1500, but many other pieces as well.

On the right hand side bar I will put a book link for the tutorials. This will showcase some of the books that I will be using and have a link to them so that you may buy them if you wish.

-Porter

SW1500 tutorial: Part 1 - Setting up your project

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:36:19 GMT

Today I am going to talk about setting up your project. When building a vehicle from scratch, you will want to make sure that you have a much reference as possible. We discussed this in a previous post.

Setting up your environment in Max you want to make sure that you are working in the correct measurement unit for the reference that you have found. When working on U.S. rolling stock and vehicles, most reference that is found comes in Feet and Inches. The rest of the world uses Metric so if you are working with other reference you would set up your units in Metric.

I make sure that I set my units accordingly in Max. Here's how.

On the menu bar, look for Customize then Units Setup.

This will open a dialog box below that has radial buttons.

When working in Metric, I usually work in Millimeters and when working with US Standard I work in Feet w/Fractional Inches

For the SW1500 I will be working in US Standard because my reference shows all it's measurements in that format. Once you set what unit of measurement you are using you will want to set your System Unit Setup that is located at the top of the Units Setup dialog box.

I usually set my System Unit Scale to equal one of whatever unit I am working in. So in the case of US Standard I would make ( 1 Unit = 1 Foot ).

The next thing I would want to do is to make sure that my Grid and Snap Settings were consistent with my System Unit Scale. Go back to the Customize menu and this time pick Grid and Snap Settings.

In the Home Grid tab of the Grid and Snap Settings dialog, you would change your Grid Spacing to reflect one unit of your choice.

1' or 1m or 1mm, whatever you choose to work in. As long as your Grid Spacing is 1 to 1 ratio.

After I have set the units I am using, I can begin with the process of making sure my model is to scale. To do this I block everything in with boxes. This is a quick way to make sure the proportions stay correct. You will need to know how to make a primitive, if you don't there are plenty of tutorials for beginners that will bring you up to speed.

The first box you will want to make is the overall dimensions of the object. In the case of the SW1500 switcher, the overall sizes are 44' 8" long , 15" high and 10' wide. I create my primitive box and type these numbers into the Parameters box.

Make sure that in the top down view your box is in the North/South orientation.

The next box I am going to make is to make sure that my Trucks, or as they say elsewhere Bogies have their center positions.

The measurement from bogie center to bogie center is 22' I make another box to represent that distance. The height of that box isn't really important right now, but if you know how tall the bogies are, this would be a good height for that box. Also another thing to make sure of is that your boxes should be centered at 0,0,0. The best way to do this is to right click in any window and hit the move button. This will bring up the transform tool.

This tool represents the ways you can move the object. Green is Y, Red is X and Blue is Z. You could try to line everything up visually, but that would be difficult, so I use the dialogs at the bottom of the screen to type in my transform (movement)

If your object isn't at 0,0,0 just highlight the numbers in the below boxes and type 0 (zero). You can use tab to go between the dialogs and it will automatically highlight the number for you.

The next thing I do, is create a box that is roughly the size of the bogies. In this case I know the axle centers, which is 8', and I know I have a 40" wheel diameter. Using this information I am able to approximate the correct size of the bogies. So using this information I make my box, 8' long to indicate the centers of the axles and 20" high, which is the radius of each wheel. I then make a cylinder that is 40" in diameter and place these at the ends of my axle distances.

My setup looks like this.

Keeping these objects in my scene throughout the build allows me to refer back to make sure that I am creating a proportionally accurate model.

The last thing I want to do is to set up my base box with images of the plan drawings. This allows me to build inside the box and to use the images as a template. To do this, I convert my box to an editable poly, select all the faces and then use the flip command. This will allow me to see into the box from the outside. When you do this make sure that backface cull is selected under the Display / Display Properties tab

This is the resulting model.

Next time:

UV mapping your setup box.

Working with MS Tech Support

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:57:47 GMT

Doing a test to see if my blogs are posting without images.

Still working on getting the SW1500 part 1 tutorial up.

Difficulty loading post today.

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:59:10 GMT

I was working on the tutorial for the SW1500 and was going to make a post today, but I am getting an error with Live Writer. I will see if there are alternatives and get this post done today.

Thanks

-Porter

Tip of the day

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 22:45:28 GMT

Soon I will begin on the first project (SW1500). Currently I am investigating reference materials, poly counts and techniques I want to discuss for this tutorial.

When working on a larger, multi-part tutorial, it makes sense to make a roadmap of what you are discussing and when. I want to make sure that I am making sense and not just typing a stream of mental blathering type of post.

In the mean time, here's a tip to keep you guys interested.

Acme Brick has a brick design software that allows you to make textures out of their bricks. Usually this is used to design masonry, however it's great for building out levels in Hammer, Doom3 Editor or UnrealEd.

Here's the link to their free downloadable product.

http://www.brick.com/md/index.htm

3D Packages

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:03:28 GMT

I have downloaded Blender, XSI Mod tool and 3D Canvas. Taking a cursory glance through the applications I am noticing that I am really going to need to watch some video tutorials to become proficient in them.

XSI Mod Tool:

After opening the package, I am able to make a primitive fairly easily, but I am unable to figure out how to do a face extrusion.

Blender:

Same problem with blender. I am able to create a primitive really easily, but after that I am a little stumped how to get into face mode or do an extrusion.

3D Canvas:

Here I am very quickly able to create a primitive and do a face extrusion without too much trouble.

I am sure that I will have better success after I read some tutorials or watch a video or two. I am going to (attempt) building a different piece of rolling stock in every package listed below.

Max

Maya

3D Canvas

XSI Mod Tool

Blender

Getting started on the Max version soon, then will follow with the Maya version. The things I will post will be about the differences between the packages and how I overcame those differences. The Max version will be more like a build log, while the rest will be more tips to make your train work using that package.

Keep watching.

Well, we have our demo done

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 17:33:08 GMT

As you can see from Rick's post here..http://yardlimits.spaces.live.com/default.aspx

We have the workings of a demo that we are showing to senior management. These images are a few days old and already we are looking better than that.

I hope that the tip of the day stuff has been useful and I want to continue with it, however I would like to start working in ways that will help benefit the community. To that end I am going to try to work on a piece of rolling stock that isn't going to ship, but it will show you the process that we go through to make a train for the game. I will be using Max and Photoshop to get this done, however it will be on my own time and therefore coverage may be spotty. Working full time and having a family isn't conducive to working on the computer at night, but I will try to make some sort of progress every day. On days that I am too swamped, or if I didn't make much progress I will try and give a tip on something.

So I think what I am going to do as my tip today is to discuss how we get started on building a train.

First and foremost is reference! In order to create our trains, we go take pictures on location, with the help of one of our partners. Recently we went to Pennsylvania and took tons of photos as part of the Horseshoe Curve route. Our partners in this were the folks at Norfolk Southern. They were very accommodating in allowing us access to the facilities and equipment we needed to see. This is the best sort of research. I do not recommend trying to get into one of these vehicles without approval and supervision. In lieu of getting into a piece of rolling stock to take pictures, there are many resources on the Internet to model from. Just a couple of links to show what a search found for me. Ideally you would want a 3 view drawing. Front, side and top. It's difficult to find that on the Internet, so if all else fails, get a side shot and work from that and the 3/4 view photos that are easily found.

http://www.the-blueprints.com/index.php?blueprints/trains/

http://crcaboose.railfan.net/drawings.htm

There are also books out there with very detailed drawings and photos. These can be useful as well.

I am going to model an EMD SW1500 switcher, luckily I have some very good reference material to work from. I am going to make a blank livery and have three LOD's for the vehicle. When I am done, I am hopeful that we can give this to the community and see what sort of liveries we get back from them.

Stay tuned to this spot...

Possibly no tip today

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:09:36 GMT

Hello All,

There probably won't be a tip today as we have a huge milestone coming up.

Hopefully you will get to see the fruits of this labor very soon. If I can, I will get a tip up later tonight.

Thanks for your patience.

-porter

Tip of the day

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:34:52 GMT

When working in Max there are several ways to select objects. One is to just draw a marquee around whatever it is that you are working on. Another is to select something individually. You can also select something using the name, as discussed yesterday.

After you have selected these objects, you can make them a selection set. That way all you have to do is go pick that selection set from a list and it will select those objects quickly.

Here's how you do it.

Here I am trying to make sure I can quickly select objects without grabbing each on individually every time. It does require that I do this process at least once.

Here I am just selecting spheres, I then go to the top of the window and use the selection set naming dialog highlighted in yellow.

I went through and selected the like items and named them appropriately. Now I just scroll through the items and pick what I want from there.

Hope this helps

Tip of the day- Weekend edition

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 18:30:35 GMT

Well, I am trying to build a shed. I haven't done a lot of construction projects so I am really unfamiliar with how to calculate the amount of wood I need.

Here's the way I worked it out-

I knew basically how a shed was supposed to go together, and I went to the local lumber yard and looked at the ones there, just to figure out the construction process. I came back home and built out the shed in Max.

I named the first piece of each size of lumber I would need. (example: 2x4x8_01) Using this system I built the shed out and color coded it. See the picture below.

Now that it is build I use the select object by name dialog (hotkey is H). I can then select the like pieces and it will display how many pieces of that particular board I need. I removed the peak pieces so that you could see the structure inside. Now I just take my list to the lumberyard and see what the damage to my wallet is. The things this doesn't cover is all the nails, hinges and brackets I will need, but it gives me a good overall view of what kind of work is involved.

Bonus Tip:

There is a tool under the utility tab that is called measure. The best part of this tool.. it gives surface area. I selected the roof of my shed to figure out how many bundles of shingles I am going to need.