Spam thread for new NAVS content

[ZachBell4400]

Awesome sauce, Sir Erick! A recipe for success!

[Erick_Cantu]

I'm glad people are enjoying them. Now working on the USRA flat - it's been 90% complete for wayyy too long.


The LODs and basic paint kit are complete, but I have 6 truck variations to export. I also need to create the decal shapes. These will get generic NAVX textures - they're really meant for painters, as I don't have any particular roadnames I'd like to paint.

[rdayt]

Quite a jump from a high cube to a USRA flat but I'll take it.
Great work.

Randy

[R. Steele]

That's some mighty fine work on the paint fading and door rust spots on the hi-cube, Erick. Brilliant work!

[eric]

The USRA flats are good timing - we need something decent to put all those fancy MOW containers from the BEW thread onto...

Would it be too much to ask for a version with the brake wheel offset from the centerline and lowered?

In practice, the shaft on those could be dropped to accommodate end loading or larger loads without damaging the brake wheel or having it be in the way. Perhaps have the brake wheel and shaft be done as an INC or FA to be in either position?

https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2018/07/adding-40-foot-flat-cars-part-2.html?m=1

If you're including Blender source, I'd be fine tweaking that for my own purposes, but this was a fairly common feature apparently.

[wwhall]

For use with MOW container sheds, those flats would also need roller bearing trucks. By the came the container buildings came along, I believe that friction bearings were outlawed on most railroads.

[Erick_Cantu]

A few items:

1. The wheel is offset from the centerline, it's in line with the rod linked to the main cylinder.

2. I'm debating the best way to offer a lowered wheel without the number of models getting out of control, see item 3.

3. As a standard Z-Series kit, this model differs from the default replacement cars in that there are 6 truck options. Available makes are ASF A-3 Ride Control and SCTC S-2, with both makes available with plain bearings, roller bearings in plain bearing axle boxes, and roller bearings.

4. No Blender source as I work in 3DS, but I can certainly upload the Max sources or export to FBX.

On most of the prior Z-Series models, I made the carbodies and trucks separate, but on these models I decided to make everything one model like with the default replacement cars. The problem is the number of model combinations could get out of control because I would need:

1. Carbody models with brake wheels up

2. Carbody models with brake wheels down

3. Trucks with hard-coded common textures

4. Alternate trucks with per-folder custom textures

And all of that has to be in quadruplicate because there are 4 carbody slots on the map. Multiply by the number of truck options, and that's 96 models! My hope was to reduce the drawcall count slightly by making it all one model, but I think going back to having the trucks a separate model from the carbody might make it easier for the painter to customize (which was the intent when I started doing that in the first place). In other words - there was nothing to fix 'cause the process wasn't broke in the first place.

[eric]

Yeah, that's why I suggested the brake shaft and wheel as a FA. The frame housing doesn't move, only the shaft does.

It's the same problem of boxcar doors being open or closed, hopper lids or chutes, etc...

Not a deal breaker by any means, and certainly not looking to drive more work. I can always alpha out the shaft and wheel assuming it's a unique mapping.

[Erick_Cantu]

I have elected to separate the trucks and carbodies as with prior kits. This leaves the user with several options:

-2 carbody options (brake wheel up or down)
-6 truck options (S2 or A3, with plain bearings, roller bearings in plain bearing sideframes, and roller bearings)
-2 truck texture options (hard coded to common texture or per-folder custom)

The next step will be to create the decal shapes and then paint the generic NAVX textures. Here are some shots from testing various combinations of options (the darker truck texture is in the car folder, the lighter one is the default hard-coded one).

[brama]

Very nice. Your efforts are much appreciated 😀

[eric]

Indeed, your passion for this level of detail and accuracy is what makes your models stand out.

[dcarleton]

In my virtual universe NAVX is a giant equipment leasing company, and I use NAVS equipment with their straight out-of-the box decoration everywhere. Perhaps I'm not the only one who does that, and we'd be delighted to see more of a "NAVX Equipment Leasing Company" motif.

[wwhall]

^I do that, too. I also have my own fictional private leasing company "WWHX" that I've had for years.

These older flatcars are still around quite a bit in MOW service. They were/are often referred to in railroad slang as "fishbelly" flats. One note for narrow-gauge lovers. In the late-40's and early 50's, the D&RGW converted a number of standard-gauge fishbelly flats into narrow-gauge flatcars during the San Juan Basin oil drilling boom that was the main reason that the narrow gauge west of Alamosa survived. Some of those flats are still in service on the Durango & Silverton and the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic railroads. Some of the narrow-gauge fishbellys were transported to the Burnham Shops in Denver in the early 1960's and later, where the Rio Grande forces there built new narrow gauge coaches on their frames. Those cars are also still in service on the Durango & Silverton today.

[Erick_Cantu]

Sometimes, things are made to solve a problem.



In this case, I needed to build something very small to fill up otherwise unutilized space in the texture map for the loads. In the spirit of some recent projects by others, I elected to build this little shed:

The added handrails shouldn't take up much real estate, even when individually mapped, nor should the shed itself since it's actually very small. At 5 feet wide, with the standard texture resolution of 1/2 inch per pixel, each side should only need 120 pixels of space.

Don't get too excited - there are absolutely no plans for an internal view as that would require a second, hi-res interior to be built, and I have better things to do. This is just a fun little addition to fill up space in the map.

[Erick_Cantu]

I have finally started rendering shadows after a couple weeks of slacking: