A new plugin to assist with Trainz...

If you select a single face and run the plugin:

A small red pyramid is added to the centre of the face, pointing out of the face.
A new group called a.attach is added to the main group of the model, centred on the base of the pyramid.

if you select a single object:

You are prompted for front, rear, left, right top bottom. (relative to the selected object orientation!)
Selecting one of these will place a pyramid and group pointing out of the selected face of the object bounding box.

TRSAttach.zip (11 Kb, 87 downloads) Version 6.5

Version 6.6

... as with the TRS export - the orientation may need a bit of experimentation.

an example of use:

select a front buffer object, run the plugin and select front.
Now just set the x value to 0.0 (relative to the main group) and there is your a.limfront attachment point.

TRSAttach-66.zip (11 Kb, 78 downloads) Version 6.6

Hi,

I'm using the attachment point plugin to add a naming feature to a signal box. ie. a.name0

All seems fine and the text does show at the corect loacation except that it is horizontal (flat) with the ground. I have rotated the attachment point and changed the axis orientation but all to no awail. The text will not sit vertically along the side wall of the signal box. Have I overlooked something ?

Thanks, Tony

Hi Tony,

You've done nothing wrong, the attachment point plugin unfortunately doesn't get the orientation correct.

The thing to do is select the object in the a.name0 group in 3dc and set the group orientations all to 0 degrees.

Export the model and see what happens to the name in TRS.

If it is not correct, try changing the x, y or z orientations to + or - 90 degrees one at a time to see if it corrects the problem.

It's one thing I really must fix... I'm afrair it's a bit of trial and error at the moment.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your reply. I deleted my initial attachment point and made a new one selecting the face first and then running the plugin. The text showed this time on a vertical plane but was also upright so I thought a simple rotation of -90 would do the job. It rotated OK but the text fell flat again. Any further adjustments just don't seem to make any difference though I'll keep trying.

While I'm at it can you recommend some light settings for buildings ? Loco models are fine but I find I get too much shadow one side of a building and too much brightness the other. Then I have to fight with the specular to get rid of the shiny surface effect. I also found that a building can look fine without any attachments when the 1st option is chosen in your plugin (whole tree) Using attachment points and choosing the second option (Non animated with attachment points)the lighting of the building can be less than desirable and it takes a lot of adjusting to get a compromise.

If I had a few presets for both types of export it would be great.

Tony

The TRS export plugin gets the axes wrong so you may need to rotate the group in completely the wrong direction in 3DC to get it right in TRS.

Material Light settings....

Specular of 0 makes the objects glow at night.
Specular of 1,2 or 3 should be no shine
4+ varying degrees of shine focus (higher, more shiny)

Ambient determines the amount of shade colour - 20 is 50% grey.
I believe a lot of the criticism of TRS lighting not looking realistic is down to the fact the ambient values are too high.

If you set the ambient value to 30 or 40 you'll find the shaded sides are much more like the current TRS models.

Ambient values of <10 will darken the whole material, even in the sun.

Translucency values of 1 to 4 are used to determine the sorting order of chunks if you have textures that contain tranlucency. Transparency can use a value of 0.
You can use these in combinations to draw external faces of translucent windows (high priority 2) that show internal faces of other translucent windows (low priority 1) e.g. carriages. The rest of the model (solid or transparent) would be 0.

These values were basically to keep it in line with the MSTS exporter, so models would convert easily.

The main difference between options 1 and the others in the exporter is the Jet version number of the file created. If you can find the right settings, it may be best to stick with option 2 as this is the newer file format.

Hi Paul,

Thanks again for some very useful information.

I'll keep trying with the name attachment and if I see a pattern or anything that might help, I'll let you know. Could be a while though, it's very boring

regards, Tony

Hi,

Sorry for bringing this up again but I've spent days(off and on) trying to find the correct setting to allow text to show vertically on the side of a signal box, with no success. Could anybody who has managed it give me a working set of orientation figures ? I know it shouldn't be that hard but it is, for me anyhow.

Paul, could you maybe have a look at the exporter as I have about another 5 of these to do for a 3rd party route and I'm not looking forward to it at this stage. I appreciate you are very busy with other things but I'd be eternally greatful. BTW the light settings you gave me worked a treat. No more shiny buildings.

regards, Tony

an alternative is to shift the orientation of the models being attached e.g. make them face straight upwards or downwards.

Unfortunately a hard disk crash and christmas look like getting in the way of any changes soon, but I'll try my best to get sometime over the hols.

Hi Paul,

Your suggestion of shifting the orientation of the models worked a treat and I now have working name boards on my signal-boxes

I'm working on a DMU set at the moment and it's not so easy as the orientation of the model has to be correct and can't really be moved for this purpose. I am using scripted directional head and tail lights but unfortunately the attachment points won't play ball as once again the lights only occasionally show at odd angles. Funny thing is I attached (using the same attach plugin) some additional meshes of Vacc/res/air hoses and they seemed to orientate fine. These will form part of the "bluestar" animated coupling system. However I will be adding more scripted bits as well that all need to use attachment points. Custom scripting is really becoming a popular integral part of model building in Trainz.

So, what it boils down to is that I'd like you again to please have another look at the attachment point plugin. It would certainly reduce a lot of the tears I currently shed

regards, Tony

I seem to recall some crazyness with alignment of Attachment Points even using GMAX. I don't fault Paul at all.

Actually, can't you just create a miniscule object yourself and name it like an attachment point and use that instead of the plugin? My memory is kind of rusty, but I'm pretty sure that's how I did mine.

Hi pwillard,

I've tried your suggestion and got the same results so it seems it isn't the fault of the attachment plugin. I just hope that Paul can find some solution and apply it to the plugin. It would really be a great help, to me anyhow

I'm back from a week away skiing.

I think I'm clear for a day or 2 so I'll try and look at it again this week.

Tony - here's another attempt at adjusting the attachment orientations.

I've not had a chance to test this, but the attachments should follow the a.*** group orientations (3 color arrows) in the model more closely now.

I'm not sure which version you're using, but this is the one for 6.6.5

TSTIMEX665.zip (52 Kb, 29 downloads) TRS export for 6.6.5

... and for 7.0

TSTIMEX70.zip (52 Kb, 32 downloads)

Paul - sorry for not replying sooner. Got distracted

I've just updated to version 7 so I'll test that version of the plug-in and get back to you. Thanks very much BTW.

My first real test today seems OK.

There may be a slight problem with the x axis, but on the whole my steam loco steam attachment points went where they were pointed, so a big improvement there.

Unfortunately I've had less success with my lights but that could be the fault of the script (which I didn't write) I'll have to look at that. I never really had that much trouble attaching other meshes using the plugin apart from a bit of rotation but it seems that's sorted now.

Thanks Paul, I appreciate the effort. Great job.