My L&HR Heavy Mountain

Hi Folks,

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v304/scottb613/TS/Mountain992_zpsa88ec907.png

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v304/scottb613/TS/Mountain99_zpsd68710b0.png

Regards,
Scott

Did you hear that sound? That was my jaw dropping and hitting the floor! 😀

Very nice work, Scott. Is it animated or just a static model? Either way it’s great! You’ve got the weathering perfect!

Hi Andrew,

LOL – thanks – I’ve certainly put enough time into her… Honestly – Paul Gausden deserves half the credit – I would have never been able to create something like this without all the fine tools he shared with us for 3DC… It’s fully animated and runs in either MSTS or Open Rails… I’m finishing one last skin for her – as the L&HR only had three #10, #11, and #12… I’m using some new texture techniques by using some of the free real world metal textures that you can find on the Internet – then modifying them to suit my needs… I’m pretty happy with the results… I should have them finished in the next two weeks or so…

Regards,
Scott

I can definitely confirm it’s a lovely model 🙂 🙂 – Thanks for the pre-release copy Scott.

Thanks and my pleasure – Paul…
🙂

Scott

Seeing what you have done building that locomotive with Crafter makes me realize that I still have a long way to go with my own efforts. I have just completed building my first steam locomotive with Crafter 9.2.2 – in my case for Railworks -Train Simulator 2013. (http://album.atomic-systems.com/showPic.php/124695/2013-06-05_00026.jpg).

I found, however, that Crafter 9.2.2 is quite unstable. Particularly as the locomotive became more complex and more and more groups and objects were added to the scene, run-time errors and similar crashes became increasingly frequent, to the extent that in the later stages of building, they were happening five or six times in a building session. In almost all cases, it was possible to recover the work done when the program was relaunched, (though on one occasion, the recovered model had lost all of its texture information and had to be re-textured), but I am nervous that eventually there will be a crash from which the model can not be recovered. I also found that the program slowed noticeably the more complex the model became and eventually that slowdown led to a crash.

I would be interested in knowing if you built your locomotive with 9.2.2 or an earlier version of Crafter/Canvas and if you experienced similar crashes with whichever version you use. I switched to 9.2.2. mainly because of the much greater flexibility that version gives me and the much improved UV texture mapping allowing individual or groups of points to be selected and adjusted. However, I have all the installation files all the various versions of Crafter/Canvas since 7.1.2 and might switch back to one of these versions if it is more stable than the current version. I have a dual boot system – XP and Windows 7, but the same problems arise irrespective of which OS I use.

My second question is more technical. Despite all the animations working correctly in Crafter, when I export the loco to Railworks, there is a noticable jerk at low speeds at the end of every rotation of the conrods, piston rods and eccentric rods in the game. Does this also happen in MSTS, or is it a problem only for Railworks? I tried increasing the number of key frames from 16 to 32, but it did not make any difference.

Brendan

Hi Brendan,

Especially for a first model – that looks excellent – sir…

I started with 3DC 6.x and I’m currently using the latest version 3DC 9.22… I think my least favorite version was 3DC 8.x and the absolute most stable is 3DC 7.1.2… I think the crashes are just par for the course – I think we all get them and just live with them – at this point we don’t have much of a choice… Richard has been MIA for a long time… As you mentioned – we can roll back to older versions of 3DC but then we lose many of the improvements… I’ve found the crashes manageable – and – knock on wood – haven’t lost any data yet… I use an extra safety net though – whenever I complete a substantial task – I save a copy and put it away… On my model posted above – I have over 120 different saved copies – backed up on other media – so I can go back to any point in it’s development history… As I’m sure you are aware – we spend way too much time doing this to lose the model in a catostrophic file/hardware failure…

I’ve never used Railworks – but – I’ve seen your valve gear motion issue mentioned before… I’m pretty sure there is a fix – had something to do with groupings or naming conventions from what I remember… I’ll see if I can find any reference for it… As w all know – this forum is aweful and makes it difficult to find anything useful…

Regards,
Scott