For the love of Alcos (RS-3)

[shadowmane]

Hi Steve,

Way down deep in the bowels of the file library - one of my earliest works was a pair of RS1's for Southern on Dick Cowen's kit - I was just cutting my teeth on weathering - and for the time - I don't think they turned out half bad.

Regards,
Scott

Southern RR doesn't seem to get enough love in the file section. Either my search-fu is bad, or there just isn't much for the Southern RR.

[rfranzosa]

What routes are available for SRR (besides the Birmingham route)?


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[burgerbern]

What routes are available for SRR (besides the Birmingham route)?

There's the Saluda Route and CNO&TP 3rd district

[eric]

BLW have some outstanding Southern sets if I recall.

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[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

Just the current state of my Alco - reached a new milestone - outside is fully textured. Went with Erick's beautiful couplers - will probably add his air hoses too. I'm going to try and placard on the numbers to save system resources - never used that method before - it's difficult to match the paint and shading with this method and I've seen the issue where they flash. My panel lines are cut into the hood - so that will take a bit more work with the numbers as well. Still plodding along - I get more time to work on stuff in the winter.

Blender 4.3 is out - they have some new "unwrap" algorithms which might make mapping operations easier.


Regards,
Scott

[eric]

Geeeeeez..... That looks like a $2000 brass O-gauge model, Scott....

[derekmorton]

That will be my latest Alco!!

[superheatedsteam]

It just keeps getting better. Excellent work.

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

Geeeeeez..... That looks like a $2000 brass O-gauge model, Scott....

That will be my latest Alco!!

It just keeps getting better. Excellent work.

Thanks for the kind words - gents. LOL - I know I'm not the fastest modeler - but - I tend to keep plugging along when the creative urge hits...

I've gone from being the Poly Miser to making almost everything 3D on this run - still less than 40K polys - primary textures are (2) 2048 and (1) 1024 - the windows have rubber grommets and even the hinges are 3D.

I have a 3D Cab in place - the control stands roughed in - and I'm working on building out the cab details. I've never made a gauge before - so I'm sure I'll be banging on your door - Marek. I do have your GitHub SD40-2 for reference. You made such a beautiful 3D Cab - someone needs to finish it off and get it to the skinners...

I'm also planning on reworking my crew models that I've used on previous uploads - it's funny so few do this - even an extremely primitive crew looks better than a lead locomotive with no crew.

I'm thinking about just putting some numbers on what I have and uploading as a beta for anyone interested. She runs very well with Gerry's physics. It's also setup the BLW/ZT B&M sounds. Of course - Allen Norton needs a bunch of credit for creating the base kit I started this from.

Back to work...

Regards,
Scott

[CSRX]

Scott, My good lord that looks beautiful, but don't mind me patiently waiting for the MEC version.

mec0557jpC.jpg (1065×555)

[scottb613]

Scott, My good lord that looks beautiful, but don't mind me patiently waiting for the MEC version.

mec0557jpC.jpg (1065×555)

Hi Shawn,

Thanks.

LOL - that looks like a very easy adaption - just a color and logo change. I've looked at MEC before - were they Green or Black on top? I've seen it portrayed both ways.

Regards,
Scott

[CSRX]

Hi Shawn,

Thanks.

LOL - that looks like a very easy adaption - just a color and logo change. I've looked at MEC before - were they Green or Black on top? I've seen it portrayed both ways.

Regards,
Scott

Judging by the front of that photo that has been cleaned up a bit, it appears its darker than the regular green, so safe to assume it is black. Although the whole cab section itself appears green, with just the roof portion black.

[superheatedsteam]

There is a gauges.blend file in the soures folder at github that has the brake, air flow and ammeter gauges I created in order to render the textures which may help or hinder you. I adjusted the render camera in orthographic view so that the gauge fills the field of view. Then I adjust the render output size to however many pixels I need for my final texture sheet. The resultant rendered image can then be placed on the texture sheet without loosing any image quality.

Thanks for the kind words for the 3D cab view but it's a skinners nightmare. I have nearly completed a higher detail external model and only recently started resolving the dimensional inaccuracies in the cab view. Both are being UV mapped suitable for baking.

[pwillard]

I recommend doing NUMBERS using the DECAL method, relying on ALPHA channel versus trying to match up the background.

[scottb613]

I recommend doing NUMBERS using the DECAL method, relying on ALPHA channel versus trying to match up the background.

Hi Pete,

I'll have to look into "decals" - I've seen them mentioned before but never really looked into it. I did placard on some faces for the numbers and cut seams to match the panel lines. It looks pretty good and the fact that the numbers are placed on separate faces is pretty much invisible - no flashing. Works fine in ORTS.

The only issue - is I can no longer do pretty renders - as the faces used by the numbers casts a full shadow on the hood during the render - ignoring the fact that most of the faces are alpha'd out.


Regards,
Scott