[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

Quick Question - we have a six-axle limit on rolling stock?

I'm trying to get my seven-axle centipede tender to work.

As per my testing - the named WHEELS that will automatically animate are:

• WHEELS11
  
• WHEELS12
  
• WHEELS13
  
• WHEELS21
  
• WHEELS22
  
• WHEELS23

I tried other possibles like 24 and 31 - no joy. Am I missing something?

I can certainly animate the wheel myself and I think that will work - but - it's simpler and uniform using the official naming convention.

Thanks.

Regards,
Scott

[charland]

Hi Scott,

In TSM you can have:

Wheels 1
Wheels 2
Wheels 3
Wheels 4

Wheels 11
Wheels 12
Wheels 13

Wheels 21
Wheels 22
Wheels 23

Wheels 31
Wheels 32
Wheels 33

When I made the CV 2-10-4 I named the drivers Wheels 1 to 4, then to get the fifth driver I copied pasted and repositioned Wheels 4 and TSM just named it Wheels 4.1. It worked fine.

Paul :-)

[charland]

Just a thought. If you wheels are solid and not spoked you could always make the treads smooth polygons and just leave them. They really don't need to rotate if you think about it.

Paul :-)

[Traindude]

Not necessarily. The Coals to Newcastle PRR Decapod has both short and long tenders, the latter having 4 axles per truck. In the MSTS days, the fourth axle in each truck was nonanimated, but I was able to modify the shape file so all 4 axles were animated. I also did the same thing to the CTN New York Central Niagara. For the record, the axles are numbered like this for the Decapod long tender:

Front Truck (BOGIE1, front to back):
WHEELS11
WHEELS12
WHEELS13
WHEELS14

Rear Truck (BOGIE2, front to back):
WHEELS21
WHEELS22
WHEELS23
WHEELS24


...and the Niagara Tender:
Front Truck (BOGIE1 front to back):
WHEELS11
WHEELS12

Ridgid-frame (BOGIE2, front to back):
WHEELS21
WHEELS22
WHEELS23
WHEELS24
WHEELS25

And believe it or not, the modified shape file now has all wheels moving! Now, if there was only a way to truly have idler axles within a rigid frame, rather than parented to a "dummy" truck...

[scottb613]

charland, on 11 January 2024 - 05:34 PM, said:

Just a thought. If you wheels are solid and not spoked you could always make the treads smooth polygons and just leave them. They really don't need to rotate if you think about it.

Paul :-)

Hi Paul,

LOL - yep - back in MSTS - that's the way I did it on the original LHR Mountain - it just dragged around a dead axle. I just copied what the NALW guys did with their centipedes. I don't know if it was impossible animate in MSTS, or I didn't know enough to animate it manually.

Perhaps TSM does something with the exporter with all those choices, but I was looking for the internally ORTS recognized keywords - that don't require the modeler to animate them in the modeling software. I looked at my - old - B&M Mountain and I used WHEELS31 - as the axle outside the norm - but I think I had to animate that in my modeling software. I could only get the listed six above to work this way - now.

Thanks for the responses...
:)

Regards,
Scott

[scottb613]

Traindude, on 11 January 2024 - 08:43 PM, said:

Not necessarily. The Coals to Newcastle PRR Decapod has both short and long tenders, the latter having 4 axles per truck. In the MSTS days, the fourth axle in each truck was nonanimated, but I was able to modify the shape file so all 4 axles were animated. I also did the same thing to the CTN New York Central Niagara. For the record, the axles are numbered like this for the Decapod long tender:

Front Truck (BOGIE1, front to back):
WHEELS11
WHEELS12
WHEELS13
WHEELS14

Rear Truck (BOGIE2, front to back):
WHEELS21
WHEELS22
WHEELS23
WHEELS24


...and the Niagara Tender:
Front Truck (BOGIE1 front to back):
WHEELS11
WHEELS12

Ridgid-frame (BOGIE2, front to back):
WHEELS21
WHEELS22
WHEELS23
WHEELS24
WHEELS25

And believe it or not, the modified shape file now has all wheels moving! Now, if there was only a way to truly have idler axles within a rigid frame, rather than parented to a "dummy" truck...

Hi...

Hmm - so you had to modify the shape file to make the axles work? That's above my paygrade - texture file edits and animation speed fixes are all I know how to do in a shape file. I'm pretty sure I can just animate the wheels - as we do with the drivers - in Blender and just export it that way. I recall being pretty happy when I finally had the seventh axle to turn on my old model in ORTS. I definitely tried naming WHEELS14, WHEELS24 and WHEELS25 and they won't work without intervention.

Thanks as well.
;)

Regards,
Scott

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

OK - I manually animated the axle as WHEELS24 - it works - however - it rotates at a slightly slower speed than the WHEELS animated by the OR code. Obviously the [WheelRadius] parameter in the WAG will not control the speed of the manually animated axle. Perhaps it's slower because it has a flange and the [WheelRadius] is set to the part in contact with the rail? Not a big deal - I can place the manually animated WHEELS into the center of the side frames and I will be the only one who notices.

Still - you would think a few extra WHEELS in the OR code - would be an extremely simple thing to add. Aren't there some 8 axle specialty cars out there?

Thanks for all the help.

:sign_thanks:


Regards,
Scott

[charland]

Hi Scott,

I just copied Wheels 4 and TSM renamed it Wheels 4.1. The shape stayed the same and they were the same on the real engine. It's a spoked driver so if it was going slower it would have been quite noticeable, but it's rotation is the same as the other drivers.

Paul :-)

[scottb613]

Hi Paul,

Understood - but - I don't think - the WHEELS1,2,3,4,5 are animated by the ORTS code directly - don't we need to animate them in our modeling software - frame by frame - to make them turn?

It's been a VERY long time since I fired up TSM - I don't know if it handles this differently.

Thanks.

Regards,
Scott

[dajones]

I think the Blender exporter recognizes wheels11, wheels12, wheels13, wheels21, wheels22 and wheels23 as automatically animated. Anything else that isn't manually animated could get combined with other parts and as a result OR won't see it. I don't know what the current OR code recognizes, but I think it used to animate anything that started with wheels. The Blender exporter might have an option to disable the combining of unanimated objects. If it does you could try that.

Doug