Welcome
to the second in our on-going series of tutorials to teach you how
to build a locomotive and get it to run in MSTS. This tutorial will
cover some more basic modeling concepts as well as texture map coordinate
and material set-up. We'll also create a special texture map and
deal with transparency and texture quality.
To start, we need to get the textures
that the Dash9 uses. In the root directory of Train Simulator,
look for and go into the Samples directory. Copy the two
files, us2dash9.tga and us2dash92.bmp, into your mydash
directory that you created in the last tutorial.
Now, go
into your mydash directory and rename us2dash9.tga
to us2dsh9.tga Also rename us2dash92.bmp to us2dsh92.bmp.
Notice in each case that the change in the name is that we eliminated
the "a" - just like in the first tutorial. Why do we do this
- because Kuju had the wrong names and all textures that you use
for MSTS must have no more than 8 characters in their name -
not including the extension.
Now, load up your .MAX file from
the last tutorial - mydashsource.max
To do this,
go to File on the menu bar, then click on open. Go
ahead and find mydashsource.max, select it, then click on
Open.
We're going
to create a new piece of geometry to put on our Dash9.
To do this,
Go to the Create tab (it's on the right side of the screen
near the top - the icon looks like an arrow pointing to a star)
Click on
the ball icon below the Create icon to highlight it.
This is the geometry icon. Below that under Object Type,
select the button labeled Box.

Now, hold
down the left mouse button and drag out a box
in the right window view. Release the left mouse button.
Look at the Top view
and push the mouse forward a little. You should see the box grow
in width as you do this. When you get to a certain width, click
the Left mouse button to finish creating the box.
Now in
the Create panel, under the section labelled Name and
Color, click in the text box and name our object - myobject
Now go
and click on the Modify tab to the right of the Create
tab. Look down under Parameters. Let's change the size of
our box to
Length
= 2.3
Width
= 4.7
Height
= 3.065
To do this,
either click in the text field or click in the up or down arrow
next to the text field.
Now we
want to center our box over the Dash9 To do this, click on the move
icon at the top - middle of the screen.
Click in
the Top view to make this the active view. Click on the box,
and move it left or right to center it on the Dash9.
Let's make this shape
a little more interesting. First we need to get access
to the vertices of the box. We need to convert this to
an Editable Mesh. To do this, click the right mouse
button over the word Box. Slide down and select
Editable Mesh and left click on it. We now have
access to vertices, polygons, edges, etc... |
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We're going to extrude some
polygons to make our shape more interesting. Click on the Polygon
icon under Selection. . |
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Now, click
to select the back polygon on the box.
Look at
the panel on the right again and click on the Extrude button
under the Edit Geometry section. Now, put your mouse over
the red highlighted polygon. You should see a new mouse pointer
that looks like a square. Now, right click and drag the mouse
forward just a little bit to extrude a new face.
Now click
on the Scale icon located up at the top, two icons to the left of
the move icon. It looks like a square inside of a square.
Now put
the mouse pointer over the red highlighted polygon in the
Perspective view. The mouse pointer will change to look like
the Scale icon. Left click on the polygon and pull
the mouse back a little bit to scale the polygon smaller.
Let's do
a modified extrude called a Bevel. Go to the Panel
to the Right. Click on the button labeled Bevel. Now move
the mouse over the red highlighted polygon in the Perspective
view. You should see the mouse pointer change to the Bevel
icon. Left click and drag the mouse alittle bit forward then release.
Now move the mouse forward a little bit more to scale the polygon
bigger, then Left click to finish.
Nice interesting
shape, huh.....
Go
to page 3
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