Rolling Stock skinning ideas

[Just Crazy Jim]

In looking over your DDS files for the Caboose mod, I discovered that you had somehow included mipmaps into the file. To avoid this, you add -nomipmaps at the end of the string inside the TGA_DDS.BAT file. If the DDS file has a mipmap embedded, the game is likely using that in preference to farming up the _B, _C, etc versions =OR= The EXE sees the mipmap, tries to use it, but really doesn't have proper coding to handle it, which is why they probably went with the _A, _B, _C thing. Also, worth noting, in my experience, the auto generated mipmaps made by the nVidia tool and GIMP DXT plugin are generally a lot more grotty looking than manually resized textures and have wrecked alpha channels. Although, whether they are more wrecked or less wrecked than the PopTop Train skinning tool, I can't say.

Code: Select all

nvdxt -file *.tga -dxt3 -nomipmaps

[Gumboots]

Ok. Didn't notice that, but I did check the skins at night and there were no alpha problems, AFAICT. If you've found any problems with the visuals, let me know and I'll re-do the pack.

The nVidia plugin for Photoshop has an option to disable generating mips. I just forgot to select it.

[Gumboots]

Aha! This just reminded me. I bet the problem I was having back here with some boxcar skins was due to the mipmap thing.

viewtopic.php?f=67&t=811&start=170#p42039

I'll do them again and see if it fixes the problem.

[Just Crazy Jim]

Aha! This just reminded me. I bet the problem I was having back here with some boxcar skins was due to the mipmap thing.

viewtopic.php?f=67&t=811&start=170#p42039

I'll do them again and see if it fixes the problem.

Yeps, that's what my comment was aimed at. I should have been more clear ... but here I was already doing three things at once when it occurred to me that the embedded mipmaps might be related to the problem you were having.

Ok. Didn't notice that, but I did check the skins at night and there were no alpha problems, AFAICT. If you've found any problems with the visuals, let me know and I'll re-do the pack.

The nVidia plugin for Photoshop has an option to disable generating mips. I just forgot to select it.

I've never encountered any problems with your Cabooses (I luvs them), but I sometimes wonder if the game's camera based on distance is calling the right mipmap (be it loose or embedded). Even if I completely disable mipmapping in the video preferences, it seems to sometimes call the smallest texture. But this may be related to over-all GPU load when a man has 100+ trains running on a 1024x1024 map.

[Gumboots]

I don't think it's related to load. More likely related to me not selecting the right export options. I'll give them the once over. Thanks for the heads up.

[Gumboots]

Hey I had a crack at those infernal A era pax cars. The dinky little ones we all love to hate.

So the general style is right for the era, but the single coach nicked straight from a horse went out of fashion very fast, and the railway versions were usually three little coaches stuck end to end. I tried bodgeying those up out of the default skins over here, but the results weren't all that great. Apart from anything else it's a comparatively high-poly solution to the problem, due to trying to make the default skin do things it wasn't meant to. Then there's the hassle of trying to get accurate chunks out of the default skin so you can change colours without having raggedy edges all over the place. I was pigging around with that silliness and thought meh, time to upgrade my Photoshop skills again. If the mugs who made the skins originally could do fancy shapes, there must be a way I can do them too. There is. I found it.

Short version is with a little bit of trickery you can treat vectors like ordinary raster layers and do anything you like with them, with the advantage being that the vectors give much smoother results. So know that I know I'm thinking this stuff is quick and easy, and why was I doing it the hard way for so long?

I whipped up new A era pax cars in Blender and skinned them up. Since all the tricky-looking bits are my very own vector layers, these things are infinitely scaleable and easily skinnable in different colour combos. They still need some detailing around the doors, which isn't going to be hard, and I'll probably tone down the default gruesome on the chassis a bit, but they're basically sorted.

So far I've tested five colour schemes. These work much better with the triple compartments than the default skin, and IMO don't look nearly as busy. They're easy on the eye even when you have a full consist of them. They all have yellow/gold curvy bits but that is a no-brainer to change if another colour is wanted.

For the main colours I was trying for plausible 19th century railway colours. Tuscan red is a classic, even well into the 20th century (used over here in Oz too). A rich brown is not bad either. I tried a couple of greens, and am inclined to think the sage is the better of the two. Also did a pale yellow, because that was actually quit popular for pax cars on early railways. Presumably because it's easy to make with yellow ochre and whiting, and looks quite cheerful. A range of other options are obviously possible. It's just a matter of playing with layer styles a bit to find more good combinations.

So these are shaping up well. They're something I'll be actually be able to enjoy using up until 1850.

PassA_Tuscan.jpg

PassA_Brown.jpg

PassA_Green.jpg

PassA_Sage'.jpg

PassA_Yellow.jpg

[Gumboots]

Gave them another going over. I'm fairly happy with the detailing and the poly count is still reasonable for a basic cargo car.

The actual cars from the prior just had a single door to each compartment, instead of the double doors the default skins have. They were usually not quite so over the top curvy either, and had smaller windows than the RT3 glasshouses. So the new ones are now set up to give something pretty close to real cars of the era.

Sorted.jpg

Obviously it would be pretty easy to reskin them in a different style too. This style is more British, or very early Baltimore & Ohio. Some of the early German cars, for example, gave the curvy stuff a miss and just used rectangular windows and lining on the same basic body shape.

[RulerofRails]

These look much better IMO.

They were usually not quite so over the top curvy either, and had smaller windows than the RT3 glasshouses.

Maybe for a first-class car they are ok, but the volume of passenger traffic that RT3 has in the early years surely cannot be made up of all first-class passengers. Or maybe the history books are wrong and there were lots of rich folks back then. . . .

[Gumboots]

Hey it's RT3. Everyone travels first class.

If I do them as third class you can bet someone will grumble about them not being flash enough for hauling behind their ultra cool express choofer. I could do a composite carriage, with first and second class compartments, or first and third, but such things didn't exist this early in railway history. All carriages at this time were one class, so you have to pick one and go with that. First is the coolest. Everyone is gonna want their trains to be first class.

Although...

I suppose...

since these early carriages are quite short...

some nutter could always double them up and have pairs of first and third class carriages.

Mebbe.

Not hard for mesh, but gets trickier than I want at the moment for skinning.

[Gumboots]

Got the dining car sorted too. Tis very posh. Defo first class.

Dining cars didn't actually exist this far back. There was no access between carriages in this period, so even if someone had put a dining car on the end of the train none of the passengers would have been able to get to it. Unless they fancied swinging along the outside of the train like a mad gibbon, which is the sort of thing that might ruin your appetite anyway.

What did exist from fairly early on was what they called salon cars, which were basically just a first class car that had the internal partitions left out and real furniture added so you could all lounge around in luxury. As long as you didn't mind paying the extra price. And if you brought food with you, you could eat it at a table.

So that's what I've modelled and skinned it as. I couldn't find any drawings of one this old, so I just used my common sense and did it the way I would have done it if I was building one back then. Like obviously if you were paying a premium fare you'd want a small wood or coal stove to warm up a cup of coffee and toast your toes in winter. And a good view. Etc.

Revamped_Dining_A.jpg

There's a couple of minor details still to be sorted (dumb stuff I missed with the skinning) but it's basically at the stage where we just have to decide what colour people want them. Although I could easily do several options and just have swappable PK4's. Which sounds like fun.