Never convert units on import

If you allow MAX to convert units, MAX will rescale your object. When you eventually get it into MSTS, it'll be HUGE!!

Oh my Gosh!! - Why did I have to delete those wiperblades?

Well, If you don't delete the wiperblades, you will get an error message when you convert that says that the node "WIPERBLADE" has either a scale or reflection that is not supported. In later tutorials, we'll show you how you can actually fix this problem.

What's the 2000 at the end of the dash9 for?

2000 tells the converter that this model is visible for up to 2000 meters. Since 2000 is the largest you can go, this insures that your new engine we always be visible. Future tutorials will talk about Level of detail modeling which is affected by this distance number.

Why Preserve MAX texture Coordinates?

Well, to properly texture map an object, you need to be able to have multiple mapping coordinates per vertex. The 3DS file format doesn't support it so MAX will modify the geometry to compensate. What it ends-up doing is it splits each one vertice into many so that there is only one mapping coordinate per vertex. This is the reason why we saved a separate .MAX file - we don't want to keep working on a file that keeps growing because of the vertex splits!

Batch files? - What did I just paste?

The conversion tools that come with MSTS are DOS command line based.

conv3ds = the mesh convert program. What follows that is the filename of the destination. The next item is the source filename of what your exported out of 3DSMAX4.

Conv3ds creates the .s file which is a regular text file. Since MSTS cannot read straight ASCII, another program called txt2uni is used to convert the .s ASCII file into a unicode text file that MSTS can read.

Why did I have to make copies and rename those two .ace files?

Well, Kuju, in its haste, didn't supply us with the right .ace files for the Dash9 sample. Also, you'll find out in later tutorials that you need to keep texture names to only 8 characters long - not including the extension.

Tutorial 1: Getting Started in 3DSMAX4 and Exporting to MSTS

Our first tutorial will go over the basics of modeling and exporting a sample model into MSTS. Our tutorials will be based on 3DSMax version 4. As other capable 3d programs become available, we'll update the tutorials to accommodate.

We'll start by importing an existing MSTS model. First, open 3DSMAX4 and go to the files menu. Look down until you see IMPORT and click on that

Now find your MSTS main directory. If you chose the default location to install MSTS, then look in C:\Program files\Microsoft games\Train Simulator.

Once you have found the main Train Simulator folder, go to the samples folder and look for the dash92000.3ds file and load it.

A dialog box should come up asking if you want to Merge or Completely replace the current scene. Select Completely replace the current scene and also uncheck the Convert Units box. Then hit OK.

Now let's learn how to navigate in 3DMAX4. Look down to the lower right corner of the screen. You'll see two rows of Icons. Click on the hand Icon - this is the camera pan icon. Now click on any window, hold the left mouse button down and drag the view around.

Next, click on the icon to the left and up one icon - the icon should just have the magnifying glass and nothing else. Select that icon then click the left mouse button and drag up and down on any window - this is the zoom icon.

Next, find the window that says perspective. Click in that window and notice how the window highlights. This is now your current window.

Click on the icon to the right of the hand icon. This is Arc Rotate - it'll allow you to rotate the camera around the object

Click and drag the mouse in the perspective window. You should be able to look around the object. If you click and drag inside the yellow circle, you'll rotate the camera around the current selected object. If you click outside of the yellow circle, you will roll the camera. Go ahead and play around with these controls and get used to moving around in 3DMAX.

If you have a mouse with a middle mouse button wheel, you can use the navigation short cuts. To pan, hold down the middle mouse button and drag. To zoom, rotate the middle wheel. To rotate camera, hold the "ALT" key down and hold down the middle mouse button.

The dash9 probably isn't centered on the screens any more since you've been working the navigation controls. To get the object centered on the screen, click on the icon on the top row that is farthest to the right. This is the zoom extents all icon. It will automatically zoom the viewports so the whole selected object is visible.

If you only want to zoom extents in one viewport, click on the icon to the left of the zoom extents all icon. It'll just zoom the current highlighted viewport.

Right now, we can see all viewports. If we want to maximize a viewport, click on the icon in the far right, bottom corner. This is a toggle. Click it again if you want to minimize the viewport and see all viewports again.

So, now we know how to navigate. Go ahead now and select the perspective viewport, then hit the Maximize icon in the bottom right corner so the perspective view is big.

Zoom in a little on the Dash9. Depending on what you might have done in 3DMAX before, this view might be either in wireframe or in solid texture mode. To change the view mode, right click over the word perspective in the window. A roll out will appear. Click on a view mode.

Right now, the dash9 should just look grey with no textures. That's fine for now. In later tutorials, we'll learn how to turn the textures on. For now, it's not important.

Minimize the perspective view and click on the left view. If we want to get the right view, right click on the word, Left and a roll-out should appear. Go down to Views and move the mouse to the right. Choose the Right view.

Now we have a basic understanding of viewports. Let's modify the Dash9 a bit.

First, hit the ESC key on the keyboard to put us into selection mode. Click on the main body of the Dash9 to select it. Now look towards the upper right of the screen. You should see some tabs. Select the 5th tab from the far right (it looks like a blue tube). This is the modify tab. Look down under Selection, click on the farthest left button with the red dots on it - its the Vertex icon. This will allow us to modify the vertices.

Go to the right view and click and drag a bounding box around the vertices in the roof of the engine cab. This will turn the selected vertices red.

Look to the top, middle of the screen. Choose the icon with 4 arrows - that's the move icon.

Without clicking any mouse buttons, move the mouse over the red selected vertices. The mouse pointer should look like four arrows.

Go ahead now and click and drag the vertices up a bit. Move it up so it is noticeable but not ridiculous.

Congratulations! You just made your first engine modification! This is the main way that we will make vertex modifications - keep this in mind.

We need to make one more change before we can save our dash9. Click on the Vertex icon again to turn it off.

Next, hit the H key to bring up the selector dialog box. Select the last four items - WIPERBLADE, WIPERBLAD0, WIPERBLAD1, WIPERBLAD2.

Click on SELECT. Now hit the DELETE key on the keyboard.

Now, we're ready to save! We're going to save two files. Let's do the first one. Go to the files menu and select SAVE AS. Now click on the Create New Folder icon and create a new folder called mydash. Remember where this directory is! Go into the mydash directory. Now, name your file MYDASHSOURCE and hit save. We just saved a .MAX file. This will be our source file that we'll make further modifications to in the future.

Now, let's save a 3DS file for exporting into MSTS. Go to the file menu and select export.

Go to your mydash directory.

Go to the Save as Type (at the bottom of the dialog box) and choose 3DStudio(*.3ds). Give the file this exact name: dash92000 and save it.

A dialog will appear asking if you want to preserve MAX texture coordinates, choose YES.

Go ahead and quit 3DMAX. We're done with it for now. Now we are going to make our dash readable for MSTS.

To make things easy, we'll create a batch file to handle the conversion. In windows, find and go into your mydash directory that you just created. Right click in that window and choose new, then pick text document. Rename the text document to convertmydash.bat and hit Yes to the pop-up dialog box.

Now right click on convertmydash.bat and choose edit.

Copy and paste this into the batch file :

conv3ds dash9.s dash92000.3ds

txt2uni dash9.s

Save the file.

Now, just one more thing before we can convert our dash9. Go to your MSTS directory and go into UTILS. Copy all of the .exe files into your mydash directory.

Go ahead now and double-click on the convertmydash.bat in your mydash directory. An msdos box will appear after the batch file runs, go ahead and close the msdos window. You should now see a new file called dash9.s

We need to prepare MSTS to accept our new Dash9. Go to the root of the MSTS directory and look for the TRAINS subdirectory, then the TRAINSET subdirectory, then finally, go into the DASH9 subdirectory. Find the dash9.s file and rename it to olddash9.s - we want to keep the original.

Find the us2dash9.ace in that same directory, right click, drag that file and drop it in the same directory - select Copy Here in the pop-up dialog box. Rename this copy to us2dsh9.ace. Notice the only difference is the new name is missing a "a".

Next, find the us2dash92.ace in that same directory. Do the same thing that you did with the previous file to make a copy. Rename this copy to us2dsh92.ace.

Now, copy the dash9.s file from the mydash directory to the DASH9 directory in MSTS.

Go ahead and run MSTS, pick the Dash9 in any route and get ready to run your first ever imported locomotive in MSTS!

In the next tutorial, we'll go back to our Dash9 file and learn how to model and add more geometry detail and how to texture map it. After learning the basics, we'll get into the meat of the tutorials and start work on our own scratchbuilt locomotive.