General guidelines for someone starting modelling

Dear Sly,

First: That’s your first attempt? Wow!

Second: Thanks for taking the time to go into so much detail, that was just the kind of info I was after.

Exellent stuff, thank you for the advice about the plans and thanks for the link to the tutorials.

Regards,

Shadders

Hello all,

I’ve got 3DC pro V7.1.2.0 and would love to dive in and start modelling locos and rolling stock for Rail Sim.

However, I’m going to exercise some constraint first and ask the more experienced users of 3DC a few questions about how you’d approach creating a new model.

What kind of reference material do you use? I’ve seen books about locos for scratch building scale models, these seem like a good place to start. Does anyone have any other recommendations?

When starting a model, do you go for as much detail as you can model first and then worry about reducing the polygon count later?

If the last question was answered yes; when would you texture the loco/wagon, before or after reducing the poly count?

Would you start with the body of the loco/wagon first and then add the wheels or vice versa?

Are there any glaring newbie mistakes I should watch out for? Ignore this question if you feel that it’s answered in a tutorial.

Thank you in advance for your responses,

Shadders.

Hi Shadders and welcome

I started from scratch 6 weeks ago and chose a pretty ambitious project for a beginner, however with perseverence I’m nearly there…

here’s some of the mistakes and a few things I think I actually did right.

Working with drawings..
I tried and started working from a few photographs and key dimensions I could dig up on the net, eventually I found a line drawing and then had re-adjust everything……….. getting hold of 3 view plans however simple will help no end, find out how to place them at the correct scale in the correct positions on the background planes.

Poly count..
Still not worried about numbers so long as it still works in the sim OK… however more poly’s make texturing a lot harder so you are making a rod for your own back..

Surfaces as opposed to solids…
Using the primitive solids was easy, but using boolean operations (adding, subtracting stuff) can do funny things.. so for complex shapes making a surface and then extruding it definately seems the way to go.

Using the constraints and coordinates….
Kept learning the hard way, when I wanted to move something down the length of my loco I would grab it and move without locking out ‘Constraining’ the other axes… so later on I would find that I had moved it sideways as well… grrrrrr
Also find out what each of the coordinate settings mean, they can save a lot of view shifting

Re-Orienting Primitives
I started by dragging say a cylinder round by 90 degrees using the gizmo’s… needless to say this was hopelessly inaccurate.. so now I use the shift selection tool or right click and set any rotation required in the properties box…

Using the editing and viewing gizmos
Important to get to grips with exactly what does what, its not entirely intuitive at first.. but it works well when used to it… tip, zoom level effects response so if you need to positition things accuratley.. get in close

Herarchy
Took me ages to get my head round this.. but its just like folders in windows… Name your parts as you go along, not so much a chore that way and you will need to find something using its name at some stage.

Favourite Methods and tools
Dividing faces the way I want and extruding them with and without bevel,
The ability to drag faces or edges around to get the shape I want without having to use the group selection tool.
The rescale tool gets continous use too.. get the shape correct then nudge it to the right size.

How did I start ? well for my steam loco…

I used Paul’s excellent Trainworks.. punched in the major dimensions and pressed the button
Woah !.. half way there already (haHa) a rolling chassis appears before your eyes.
Set your 3 drawings to the right scale and position on the background planes so they are aligned with your rolling chassis (side, front and top views)
Use Orthographic views and drag primitives onto the project, re size them by using the scale tool added taper by using extrusion or resizing just one end face of a cylinder for example.. Until you have the major components… cab, boiler, firebox, smokebox, running plate etc at the right location and the right size even if the shape is a little crude.
At this stage It would have helped me if I had gone through the properties for each component and made sure they were set to the same exact centreline.. lesson learnt…

Refine the shapes of each major component, eg shape the cab roof adding and moving edges.. don’t forget to restrain it to the direction you want, I then used a zero extrusioin with a small amount of bevel, followed by a negative extrusion to ‘hollow’ out the cab.. sure there are probably easier and better ways but thats what my head told me to do ..

I then started adding detail… but to one side only, there are a lot of things that are symetrical on a locomotive… so detail one side, place it in a group then mirror the group to the other side… hence the need for an accurate centreline

Just keep adding Detail until you have had enough lol… you can go on forever
The actual making of the model appears to me to be about only 25% of the work required maybe even less to get a model into the game, however you can attempt <!– s;) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!– s;) –> to get it in once you have wheels on the ground (rail) and it will do wonders for your motivation.

Have fun and good luck

Here’s my first attempt
[img:g8k8up04]http&#58;//i257&#46;photobucket&#46;com/albums/hh213/401Sly/Image6small&#46;jpg[/img:g8k8up04]

Sly

I would definitely recommend starting with simple wagons to get something working quickly and to practice using the 3DC tool.

Get some scanned plans (I have a few if you want any)

Try out the Tools/Plugin/Trainworks/Train Sim Engineer menu option.

Also to help – here is a little light reading…
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<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://steam4me.railpage.org.au/trainsim/tutorials/index.html#models">http://steam4me.railpage.org.au/trainsi … tml#models</a><!– m –>

It relates to MSTS and is a bit old now (use the high poly wheel options these days) but the techniques are basically the same.