We're ready to export the
Dash9! As in Tutorial # 1, go to File on the menu bar,
then select export...
Find your mydash
directory, then save the file as dash92000.3ds and
click on Save.
A
pop-up will ask if you want to replace it, click on Yes.
Another pop-up will show asking if you want to preserve MAX's
texture coordinates, click on OK.
Go
ahead and Save a .MAX version of your file. Go to File
on the menubar and select Save. You can quit
out of 3DSMAX now.
We
have a new texture - testtex.tga. We need to convert
this to an .ACE file. Let's update our convertmydash.bat
file to convert the texture also. As in Tutorial #1, go to
your mydash directory and right click on the convertmydash.bat
- select Edit from the pop-up dialog box.
Add
this line to the end:
makeace testtex.tga testtex.ace
Save this file, then close
Notepad. Now double click on convertmydash.bat
Just like in Tutorial #1,
copy the dash9.s and the testtex.ace files into
the Dash9 directory in MSTS. Review tutorial #1 if
you forgot where that is.
Go
ahead and run MSTS - choose the Dash9 and hit key 2
to see an outside view. Take a look at the top texture…..Yikes!!
what happened to the color? Look at all of the banding….
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Quit out
of MSTS - Let's make a change….go and right click on
convertmydash.bat, select Edit. Now add -trans to
the last line like this:
makeace testtex.tga testtex.ace
-trans
Save the
file and double click on it. Copy the testtex.ace file to
the Dash9 directory and run MSTS. Look at the texture now…much
better, not as much banding on the top texture.
So what
happened here? Well, it turns out that there are 3 different quality
levels associated with what kind of bitmap format that you convert
into an .ACE file. The best quality is with a 24 bit .BMP file.
You'll have all 24-bits (16.7 million colors ) - no banding
or weird graphic artifacts.
The average
quality is with a 32 bit .TGA converted with the -trans option.
The -trans option tells the convertor that this texture has an alpha
but it is to treat it as a 1 bit alpha - only black and white (fully
opaque or fully see-through). In the game development community,
this is called "punch through". Using this option, you are limited
to only 32768 colors.
The lowest
quality is with a 32 bit .TGA without the -trans option.
This tells the convertor that the texture's alpha is a full 8 bit
alpha. That's how you get semi-transparency - tinted windows. This
is neat, but it comes at a price - you only get 4096 colors!
That's a big difference from the 16.7 million colors in the highest
quality. It is the thing that separates this
scale the texture verti
From this ces. In
the Edit UVWs wi
Keep this in mind if you
want quality textures that stand out from anyone else - including
MSTS… In a future tutorial, I'll show you a simple trick
to allow you to have full 24-bit textures with semi-transparency!
One
more thing before we end this tutorial. Notice how you can
see through the window in our object, but it looks like the
other side disappears - we don't see the backside of the window.
In our next tutorial, I'll show you how to fix this!
Keep looking out for our
next tutorial. It will be the last of the beginner tutorials.
The tutorial will concentrate on editing the .eng file, modeling
and texturing a brand new simple loco that can be seen, driven,
and placed in a consist, and learning how to Alias cab and
sound files so you don't have to have extra copies of files
to clog up your harddrive.
After that tutorial, we'll
start the intermediate tutorials that will build on the beginner
tutorials. We'll be building a diesel locomotive from scratch
and to prototypical spec. After the intermediate tutorials,
we'll do the advanced tutorials - we'll build steam engines
from scratch and pretty much learn everything - from modeling
and texturing, to .eng tuning, to adding and editing new sound
effects, to building cabs and passenger interior views.
By
time you are done with this series - you could be on your
way to being a master engine modeler for MSTS as well as other
train sim programs.
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