[Resolved (kinda)] Loft Creation In Blender!

[Resolved (kinda)] Loft Creation In Blender!

Postby Yooski » Thu May 18, 2017 9:54 am

Good Morning All,

First of all - thank you for the invitation. I have been using this forum and its tutorials a lot whilst I have been learning to model for Train Simulator!

Now on to my question -

I am in the process of trying to create London underground tunnels in Blender, with some success - however, i have hit a stumbling block with lofted items.

I have managed to create a loft, using start/middle/end geometry of my tunnel, display in the game however when this is used on a gradient the edges become jagged (see image below)
Image
To avoid this effect I was looking to create a true lofted object to lay as a track bed within the tunnel.

To do this I made a simple 3D plan in Blender that originates from the Y-axis starting at 0 that extrudes positively along this axis. (See image below)
The origin of the model is set at 0,0,0.
The shader used is LoftTexDiff.fx, with a simple colour texture.
Rotation and Scale are both set to 0.
The item renders in the game when created as a standard scenery asset.

Image
Image
Image
Image

Could anybody shed any light on why this is not rendering as part of a loft?
Last edited by Yooski on Wed May 24, 2017 11:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Yooski
Engine Cleaner
 
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu May 18, 2017 9:39 am
Has thanked: 0 time
Been thanked: 0 time

Re: Any Help Appreciated - Loft Creation In Blender!

Postby Yooski » Fri May 19, 2017 9:47 am

So last night I was trouble shooting the issue by using a XSEC file from a lofted item that works in game (a UKTS freeware pack item to be precise).

I coped the co-ordinate data from my own blueprinteditor2 generated XSEC file over the data that was present in the working loft file and edited the texture path to point to my own texture. This allowed my loft to be rendered in game, though my texture is a solid colour texture so I am unsure of how well the texture actually rendered e.g. To scale.

From this I have taken that it appears the exporter for blender does not correctly export IGS files that can be converted to XSEC files or that I am missing texture data on my export that is needed for the XSEC to work correctly.

My next plan is to use a photo realistic texture in the 'hybrid' XSEC to see if it renders correctly in game.

Once again any help on lofted items made in blender would be greatly appreciated.
Yooski
Engine Cleaner
 
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu May 18, 2017 9:39 am
Has thanked: 0 time
Been thanked: 0 time

Re: Any Help Appreciated - Loft Creation In Blender!

Postby Yooski » Wed May 24, 2017 11:00 pm

Okay - just in case anyone else ever looks at this.
I must thank Victory Works for all the help provided, i wouldn't have been able to do it without you.

I managed to finally get a loft to correctly render in game - in a really long and convoluted way as I couldnt get the most up to date exporter to work so here goes -
You are going to need Blender 2.7, Blender 2.49, an old version of Python (the version that is utilized by 2.49) and the old rail simulator IGS exporter (made by SteamPSI)

Create the file in Blender 2.7 as per developer docs. Ensure you follow the "rules" for exporting - 1 material, 1 texture with the shader as the name (NOT the new exporter rules - the old ones!)
Save the file using the legacy mesh option.
Open the blender file in Blender 2.49 and export using the old exporter.
Create lofted item with Blueprint editor - it should appear in game.

The new exporter creates a valid IGS file when exported, but when that is converted into a XSEC file by blueprint editor it does not create the "segement" section. No idea why, nor do i care after spending 2/3 nights trying to get it to work.

Once again, thanks to Victory Works for the help and tools you provided. They assisted me massively.
Yooski
Engine Cleaner
 
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu May 18, 2017 9:39 am
Has thanked: 0 time
Been thanked: 0 time

Re: [Resolved (kinda)] Loft Creation In Blender!

Postby AndiS » Thu May 25, 2017 8:28 am

Glad you got that working and glad I did not pretend to be able to help. Must be some really quirky stuff.
AndiS
Top Link Driver!
 
Posts: 736
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 5:48 pm
Has thanked: 268 times
Been thanked: 308 times

Re: [Resolved (kinda)] Loft Creation In Blender!

Postby VictoryWorks » Thu May 25, 2017 10:55 am

Sorry I must have missed this thread originally but glad you messaged me and I'm pleased I could help.
There must be some flag/data that is required to be set in the igs file when using the loft material that the creator of the latest exporter was unaware of. Probably shows how often people create lofts that it's not been noticed until now :lol:
User avatar
VictoryWorks
Driver
 
Posts: 333
Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2014 1:22 pm
Has thanked: 41 times
Been thanked: 224 times

Re: [Resolved (kinda)] Loft Creation In Blender!

Postby AndiS » Thu May 25, 2017 3:05 pm

I thought something similar. When I shortly dealt with lofts a few years ago, I beat up a little hack to generate this simple enough xsec file from a list of coordinates in a spreadsheet. Most loft shapes are dead simple anyway.

Taking the thought about the exporter that would need fixing now that TSW is out a bit further, I see a pattern: We were all pretty slow in grasping and embracing the possibilities of RW. Much of that is associated with the fact that many goodies were only introduced later and - in part due to DTG's information policy - were only discovered with a delay.

So for the new thing (TSW), I can only hope that it will be easy to embrace it in full soon after release of tools and documentation, and let the community take off right at the begin of the product cycle and not towards the end, as we see it in RW now.

On the one hand, it is great to see all the advanced stuff coming out in recent years, on the other hand, all these clever things introduced to overcome this and that limitation will become a thing of the past and new hacks will need to be found. You can consider this a depressing thought of one of ambition and believe in the future, depending on the amount of sunshine that you get at the moment.
AndiS
Top Link Driver!
 
Posts: 736
Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2014 5:48 pm
Has thanked: 268 times
Been thanked: 308 times


Return to Blender

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest

cron