[Bernie]

Looks good!

On a slightly :offtopic: note, I never though that a molten material like sulfur could be sent through a rubber hose. I'd have thought it would melt, even if vulcanized or something, but I guess I'm wrong!

[Genma Saotome]

cnwfan, on 23 March 2016 - 05:26 PM, said:

I've used 3DCrafter for creating a few buildings in Railworks, but I end up roughing the building out in Sketchup anyways since it's far easier to create architectural models in. I'll have to give Sketchup a try for an MSTS/OR building. Any tips or tricks you'd like to pass on... especially with texturing?

Howard

• Use the new exporter found in the beta files section of this board.
  
• Use discipline: enter distance values via the keyboard, always stick to integer values. Most of the time it won't matter but if you find yourself having to go back and completly rework something you will avoid a huge number of headaches by having used integers for all your dimensions. Trust me on this.
  
• Use components extensively. They're the key to avoiding unwanted vertex points.
  
• Rely more on tiling textures. IMO don't even try to paint a whole building on one 512x512 texture. It's not that it won't work, it's that it will will look poor in comparison.
  
• Open rails is far more tolerant to a high count of polys that MSTS and so using a few dozen / hundred to create 3d elements that can be easily textured will save you time. Now that the exporter is improved, I've been making some model specific textures holding 3-5 colors in stripes running from side to side (or top to bottom) to hold the fill colors for anything that's narrow. Just make sure the strips tile on that dimension and then you can use them to texture a very long, narrow whatever, such as a pipe, gutter, visible part of a foundation, etc.
  
• Do not use Google/Trimble materials.
  
• Do not expect much of anything useful from the model warehouse
  
• Get plugins from the extension warehouse and Sketchucation.com. I highly recommend cleanup, material tools, toggle break edges. I use them constantly.
  
• Do understand the reverse side of faces will not respond to lighting effects; turn on monochrome faces before you export to verify those are all inward facing.
  
• Play around with styles to find one you prefer as a standard and stick with it. I use a fairly light yellow ground, and strong orange backface, pure white front face, stuff that's not going to be confused w/ real textures. If its too dark you won't see your lines and end poihnts as well as you should. Of course YMMV.
  
• Always turn on display endpoints. ALWAYS.
  
• Import your textures from a library and assign it's scaling in the materials window. You can open up the same texture mu7ltiple times, giving each different scalings if need be.
  
• Many, many useful textures are available from textures.com. Free.
  
• You can create your own keyboard shortcuts. I that that for X-export, L-set up LOD ranges, U-find untextured, and T-edit texture position. Worthwhile.
  
• If your model is for OR remember that extended view distances can be active and so many more faces can and should have LOD's assigned. On most screens these days an 8 inch wide face is 1-2 pixels wide at 1000m; 16 inch face is 1-2 pixels wide at 2000m, 48inch wide face is 1-2 pixels at 5000m and 96 in wide face is 1-2 pixels wide at 10km -- the current limit for loading and viewing models. IOW, think differently because OR is different than MSTS.

[cnwfan]

Thank you for the tips. I found a post with your preferred plugins / extensions, and started downloading them from Sketchucation. I couldn't get extensions to install directly from the Sketchup web interface window, but Sketchucation seems to have the same ones you recommend, so I'll keep going down that path. Thank you again for the help!




Howard

[Genma Saotome]

cnwfan, on 28 March 2016 - 05:13 PM, said:

I couldn't get extensions to install directly from the Sketchup web interface window...

Howard

Log into your google account (e.g., g-mail is good). It'll work then.

[cnwfan]

I did... still didn't work. I suspect either my security software or DNS provider is blocking the install. I fiddled with it for a little bit, but once I discovered that I could install the extensions from Sketchucation plugin, I abandoned the Trimble method.




Howard