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#51
11-05-2009, 08:31 PM
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Talk about flying under the radar, I must have missed these posts but looking real good. I know you're a Pennsy fan but could I trouble you for a NH version when possible?
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 Cory Duguid US NAVY 
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#52
11-05-2009, 08:39 PM
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Cory, Read back a little bit and you'll see there was a discussion about an E33/EF-4/EL-C. There IS already an E44 in NH colors out there (which is, of course, fictitious), and so I won't be doing that, but I'm considering doing an actual E33/EF-4/EL-C. First things first, let me finish this.
 By the way, has anyone found the proper Leslie horn for the E44? Steve
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#54
11-06-2009, 11:06 AM
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Quote:
Calling DGLE black is heresy to a PRR nut and will get you burned at the stake or hung in effigy at their next convention. DGLE is sometimes humorously referred to as a bucket of black paint with a cup of green added... That said and understand I'm not a painter myself, it may be possible to get the detail you want by dialing up the Green content just a smidge on the DGLE used here????? If anyone can it would be Steve
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Chuck Schneider Chief Cook and Bottle Washer (Virtual CEO) North American (Virtual) Locomotive Works Last edited by chucksc; 11-06-2009 at 11:07 AM. Reason: content
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#55
11-06-2009, 01:31 PM
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Steve,
That is looking truly spectacular. I shall be patient (it'll be hard, but I will, honest). When it is released, I suspect that there will be a serious number of screen shots appearing in short order. Thank you for filling an important gap in the PRR roster. Rob.
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onen hag oll!
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#56
11-06-2009, 02:12 PM
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I've played around with the color quite a bit, and I may yet play with it some more. My final yardstick is to get it in the sim and adjust to that. Things always look slightly different when they're in the sim than in Shape Viewer or TSM. That's why loading it up full into the sim is my next major task.
Also keep in mind that the background makes a big difference as to what you see, as well as the location, settings, and type of computer monitor (in the morning, where I have my computer, I've been getting a little glare on my screen and it REALLY makes the stuff on my screen look dark). I particularly chose a dark background in Shape Viewer because a light background really does make it appear very dark, and I wanted to show as much detail as possible. I have lightened and "greened" it up from the previous screenshot I showed, believe it or not. I just don't want to take it too far into the light/green direction or it won't look DGLE (Chuck has a good handle on the situation with his comments above). It's a difficult balance to strike. I have a few tricks up my sleeve, so hang in there. And I have made some tests on modifying for a PC (black) and CR (Smurf blue) version, so stay tuned. Steve
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#57
11-06-2009, 03:10 PM
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Quote:
"The E-44's were delivered with Leslie S-3L tab back cap horns." Nice work Steve!
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#58
11-06-2009, 07:01 PM
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Quote:
__________________
Chuck Schneider Chief Cook and Bottle Washer (Virtual CEO) North American (Virtual) Locomotive Works
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#59
11-07-2009, 12:11 PM
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Quote:
I'm about speechless. Your E44 is truly capturing the appearance of the prototype. If I remember right, weren't the E44's designed to be able to take a similar weight train handed off from a GE U25C and be able to drag it without flaws? I remember reading also in the Don Ball Book "The Pennsylvania Railroad 1940s - 1950s, that a crew had used three E44's and was able to drag a heavy coal drag through the tunnels and Penn Station, NYC before handing it off to the NH for a trip over the Hell Gate Bridge. only when the Alco FA's replaced the E44's did a coupler pull out... Chuck, I didn't know about the E44's having bells from K4's. I'd pay to know what happened to them myself. On the note of DGLE, there was also another recent discussion about it on the PRR Modeling Yahoo Group, and a new theory on it's contents released: There is a slight probability that DGLE was a mixture of a Copper Oxide and Black paint. under this theory, as the paint ages, the copper oxide in it oxidizes and turns, gradually turning green, and effectively lightening the paint as it ages.
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Thomas J Pearce  Broadway Limited Locomotive Works Come see our Pullman 6-3 Sleepers for Rail Simulator. Last edited by TVRRMAN; 11-07-2009 at 12:32 PM.
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#60
11-09-2009, 04:15 PM
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After spending the weekend fiddling, troubleshooting, and "Polymastering"
 I was finally able to get the full version of my E44 model working in MSTS: After the prior discussions, I did make some adjustments to the body texture. What I did was to essentially increase the contrast a bit (really a shift in black/white values, emphasizing the lighter hues) - that had the effect of making it a little "greener", but not objectionably so, in my opinion. Depending on lighting in MSTS, it looks anything from black to the lightest shade of green you see in this shot (I tried to get it at the lightest angle to show detail). I'm still thinking about how this looks and I may play with it some more. After looking at it in the sim, there are a few more little tweaks I'm going to make. One is to switch the pantographs so the forward one is up by default in a forward facing unit (short hood forward) - that's more prototypical. There are a few other little texture details that I'm going to adjust as well. Technical notes: The model stands at 13,140 polys right now, using 5 textures. Shape Viewer is giving it 8.90 Kujus in the highest LOD (I have built in 3 LODs). I've included some animations, in addition to both pantographs, I've animated the wipers, the sliding cab windows, shown open in the above view (using the "mirror" animation), and the drop steps (door - I didn't want to animate the cab doors themselves for a couple of reasons, mostly "KISS"). I'm particularly proud of the cab window animation: the windows open and the folding armrest folds out when "Ctrl+Num8" is pressed. Getting the final model to load from the original TSM .S file was no simple process. The initial trial caused MSTS to immediately crash when any external view was selected. So I followed the same advice I've given to others on many occasions: split the model up into chunks and load it by adding little bits at a time. By now, I've gotten clever enough to know what types of things are most likely to give me trouble in this part of the process: Animated parts, "bent tube" type parts, and anything which was copied multiple times and rotated during the process (this is something I minimize while model building, so I didn't have any of this to worry about in this model). I did isolate things like the MU hoses and cables, which turned out to be problematic parts - I played a couple tricks with those and was able to get the non-animated parts to load. I separately isolated the animated parts and determined that there were issues with both the "mirror" (cab window) and "door" (drop step) parts. After fiddling with them a bit, I also got those to load and animate. Then I merged the "fixed" parts all together this afternoon, ran everything through PolyMaster to create subobjects, LODs, and sort the Alpha channels, and got the whole model into the game. Certainly, there's a lot more involved than that, but that's just the thumbnail sketch to help folks understand that there's more to the process than just telling TSM to create the .S file and dropping it into the game. The next step will be to sync this up with the latest/best .ENG file (lighting parameters, size for coupling, etc.) and get this out to a couple of folks to do some testing. I still haven't determined what path I should take for a Cab... Steve Last edited by mestevet; 11-09-2009 at 04:17 PM.
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