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.
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