OR & Polygon limits.

[pwillard]

Alas, I wish you had the time and/or courage to use Blender. I do not want to be branded as an evangelist here with this.

I agree with this. I finally had enough of 3Dcanas/Crafter odd issues and bit the bullet and went for Blender. Now there is just no going back

[wacampbell]

It takes a lot of time and energy to learn a 3D cad program. You want to invest in a program that has good future potential. As technology advances and sims evolve the open source nature of Blender helps ensure a path forward. With Blender, what you learn for making MSTS models can be leveraged to make models for Railworks, Trainz, all the way up to making content for the latest Unreal Engine 5.

[jefffarq]

I would be interested to know which tutorials you watched to give you the impression that poly use for Blender is a non issue.

Marek, I watched several tutorials on YouTube where the guy makes a doughnut; I was kind of surprised when he changed the "smoothness" for lack of a more informed term, going from a few polys to a gazillion just by moving a slider. I also watched one that came with the program for "beginners" where the guy zooms around - you can do this, you can do that - without actually showing how to do any of it. And I haven't seen anything yet that describes using textures, except for painting on a solid color on the doughnut. Still looking...

And I've noted a couple of links on here to tutorials, but they didn't work...

I've no doubt that models with as many/few polys as one wants is possible, just a matter of taking care.

I haven't given up on learning Blender, just need to sit down and dedicate some time to figuring things out.

Thanks,

[EldoradoRailroad]

Marek, I watched several tutorials on YouTube where the guy makes a doughnut; I was kind of surprised when he changed the "smoothness" for lack of a more informed term, going from a few polys to a gazillion just by moving a slider. I also watched one that came with the program for "beginners" where the guy zooms around - you can do this, you can do that - without actually showing how to do any of it. And I haven't seen anything yet that describes using textures, except for painting on a solid color on the doughnut. Still looking...

And I've noted a couple of links on here to tutorials, but they didn't work...

I've no doubt that models with as many/few polys as one wants is possible, just a matter of taking care.

A few comments here;

Yes, you can have many polys but be aware that Blender has a feature to smooth out your model, without adding additional polys, oddly enough it is called "Smooth". This feature manipulates the "normals" to the plane/polygon. I have seen some tutorials that allow you to do some really crazy things with normals, for certain desired effects, mainly for newer versions of Blender.

If you have the pro version of TSM, you could save you model in .3DS format and import it into Blender, otherwise you are out of luck. There is a way around this, but it seems we are not ready to allow this type of thinking publicly, but in your case, if they are YOUR models, well it should be just fine.

If per chance you use 3D Canvas/Crafter there is nothing stopping you from exporting your work from that program in .OBJ format for use in Blender.

You might want to consider learning with an older version of Blender, as your search results for that specific version will yield better help results. The latest version of Blender will not have as many helpful tutorials for the item in question. In some cases sadly, in others thankfully, Blender does change interfaces with new releases. You will have to pick your poison with this one!

By all means, experiment and find out what works for you. I would suggest that you download a free model, that may not be train related at all, but you will learn what does what and how. If you do something that does not work, just reload your model. I use many saved versions of a model, so that when I make an error, I can go back to what I was doing before the error. Learning by doing is the best way.

Steve

[superheatedsteam]

The doughnut tutorial on youtube is good for beginners who are new to 3D modelling in general, but is not that good for those who wish to create game assets for game engines like MSTS/OR.

The doughnut is an 'organic' model with very high polygon counts to make the surface smooth. This is required as the desired end result of the doughnut is to use it to render a static photoreal image using materials, lighting and cameras. This is not what you would do for a real-time game engine that MSTS/OR use.

For MSTS/OR you should look at beginner tutorials relating to 'game asset' modelling that focus on creating 'hard surface' objects like buildings or vehicles as opposed to organic objects like characters or trees (unless you want to make those type of objects).

Beginner tutorials on 'hard surface' modelling and 'low poly' modelling can provide further insights, techniques and tips that you can also use to create your models.

I would suggest the "Low Poly Vehicles | Easy Beginner | Blender Tutorial" to get an idea of how to start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkg7Ol2jEjs

This shows how to import a reference image and then start creating a model using hard surface modelling techniques with a minimum of polygons. Because the car model is symmetrical, a mirror modifier is used to minimise the workload, this is not a requirement. Also the imported reference image is not 'scaled' to real world dimensions prior to starting the modelling. When I use a reference image, I first create a box in Blender with the length, height and width of the box matching the dimensions of the real word object. I then import the reference image and scale the image so it matches the dimensions of the box.

In the above tutorial, you can ignore the instructions on using an environment HDR texture and applying materials at the end as this is not required for MSTS/OR models.

For MSTS/OR, like TSM you will have to create a 2D texture file to apply to the model and then unwrap the triangles in your model to the appropriate location on the texture. I would suggest that Wayne's MSTS/OR export tool for Blender should be installed and used to select the texture file as it overwrites the default texture and eases this potentially confusing process. The model is then ready to be unwrapped.

Pete has created a PDF document on creating 3D objects in Blender for OR/MSTS that you can find on github which covers textures and UV Unwrapping.

https://github.com/pwillard/Ebook-ORTSBCCN

When Steve suggests an older version of Blender, I suspect he means v2.8 or later. V2.8 had a major change in the user interface that was far less user hostile than previous versions. Any tutorial from v2.8 onwards will be very similar for all later versions of Blender up to this point in time with only slight changes to where some options may be located.

If you get stuck then post a question, as it helps you and others that may read this post. We have all gone through this so we feel your pain.

Cheers,

Marek.

[jefffarq]

Thanks, Marek.

I'll take a look at these links. I installed the latest version of Blender, 3.1.x, but I may need to back off a version or 2... I'd like to learn this software. I understand the limitations of TSM, but I'm familiar with it. Just don't want to waste time creating things that aren't useable.

[pwillard]

You really should not need to back off versions... after 2.8 the changes are minor unless you do things with Geometry Nodes or Grease Pencil. The differences between 2.79 and 2.8 are pretty major though. At this point, it is just better to avoid version 2.79 and older. Blender 2.79 was released on 12 Sept, 2017. To be honest... 2.8 should have been called 3.0.