My First Wagon

I have experimented more, and expanded my wagon. I created a pair of bogies, well cubes floating between the axles, and set up the hierachy of frames, the body frame andnbsp;being called ‘Main’, with the two bogie frames andnbsp;within being ‘Bogie1′ and Bogie2’, and wheels frames inside the bogie frames, called ‘Wheels11’, ‘Wheels12’, ‘Wheels21’ and ‘Wheels22’. The frame axis (pivot points) were in the centre of the bogie cubes.

Hey Presto, it works. Bogies swivel around the curves and all the wheels turn. No animation required.

I also worked out the application of the .tga texture as two .bmp files to get the right effect. It also does not make buildings the wagon goes past turn invisible.

I have now built my first proper wagon, from the drawings. It is a British Railways 21T mineral wagon on 12ft wheelbase chassis. The modelling is done, I just have to put together the texture files this evening and it should be ready to post. Then I might start writing it up as another tutorial.

OK, so its not much to look at, but it took a while to figure out how to set up the frame hierachy to make a Main and Wheels1 and Wheels2 hierachy for MSTS. It works like a wagon in MSTS, but the wheels don’t go round. Also, I was expecting to get square wheels as I just used a .bmp texture file, but they came out like this.

Anyone managed to get wheels to go round yet? If so, can you please give me a clue?

Mike and Ian excellent work. andnbsp;Ian I like your simple wagon approach to sort out issues. andnbsp;Keep up the good work.

Ian, that looks as though it would be about the right size for my Rocket when that is finished (only paint job I could find was Scotsman green ) Sorry about the image but it is one I produced while checking out texture lighting options.

You get square wheels when you add the surfaces to control the ‘world transparency’ problem (discussed elsewhere) and use just the bmp file with the alpha channel removed for the texture map. Adding the alpha information via thee ‘translucency map’ tab makes them round again <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –> I’m planning to put together a tutorial on this when I’ve finished the one on the 3ds file transfer.

Ian, another thought. The bogie wheels on the locos rotate automatically, you don’t have to animate them. I guess this is so you only have to provide animation manually when ‘rods’ are also involved. I haven’t tried rolling stock, but you might like to try adding a bogie/s as parent/s to your wheels and see if that avoids you having to provide manual animation.

… and here is where the frame axis has to be to make the wheels go round correctly (note my axle is rather off centre, but I was more concerned with getting something work than looking nice. <!– s;) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_wink.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!– s;) –>

In case it helps anyone else, here is the frame hierarchy in 3DC for a 4 wheel wagon that works in MSTS:

OK, my fault, I should have used Wheels11 and Wheels12 as my frame names. They are rotating now, its just not the rotation axis I would have expected. Back to the experiments.

I have them rotating the right way now. It took me a while to figure out that I can’t rotate the frame axis, I have to shift/rotate the wheels leaving the frame axis where it is, then rotate the wheels and frame axis together back to the right place.

Hope all this helps someone else avoid the same problems.

I have not used any animation at all, thats the magic of using Wheels11 etc. Its only Wheels1, Wheels2 etc that have to be animated by hand.

Now I have a set of wheels that work, and are not wobbly and the correct gauge (I was actualy pretty close with my first attempt) I will try putting them into my object library for future use. I will work up to a bogie wagon later. andnbsp;