Wednesday, September 15, 2021

Converting Those Free 3D Printer Shapes To MSTS Elements

Thought I'd share a glimpse of the process in converting one of Louis Fournier's files. The files were intended to be used for 3D printers. Considering the complexity I'm not sure how well that worked out. Such detailed shapes probably take days to print. Unfortunately you need a pretty pricey printer (with a large print volume) that won't screw up half way through the process (unlike my cheap Malyan). Also, since I print HO scale vehicles solid shapes are much better. The thin details and walls from models like these don't print too well in such a small size. All the interior detail must be removed in some manner and replaced with a solid shape.


Converting these shapes to a solid is probably more work than converting them to MSTS s files. In the MSTS process I only need to select all the outer shell of the model and visible parts. Tedious I guess, but I'm getting pretty proficient at it. In some cases, Many shapes aren't quite right and require a lot of point manipulation to get the proper proportions.

These beasties start with hundreds of thousands of polygons. I work to reduce them to less than two thousand.so that something like this...



...becomes something like this




The first step id to cut the thing in half. This goes a long way to easing the process. I switch the edit setting to points and delete half the shape in one swipe.




Once that's done I switch to poly editing and begin separating the shape into manageable parts. Here I'm starting to make the side of a 1932 Ford. A lot of the shape isn't necessary. In the original things like the door handles and window frames are completely detailed and assigned a material. Since I'll be using "skins" or UV maps, all these things will be represented in the textures. The polys are not always straight forward. Many things such as the windows are created using Boolean geometry. The shape of the window is subtracted from the general model. This works great when creating the model, but results in all kinds of weirdness when taking it apart.



The red lines represent the polys already separated. In some cases I had to delete interior detail so I could find the centers of polygons I wanted to keep. It's a shame these retails have to be removed. You can see the gauges on the dash, even the belts and hoses on the flathead four cylinder engine. Those louvers on the hood sides will go too, replace by a picture of louvers. Even if  I printed this model I'd have to remove them. They wouldn't really print well. The resolution of my printer and many other filament extruder printers (FUD) is not fine enough in small items. The resin printers (STL), which use light to print have a much higher resolution and can reproduce much of this small surface detail.



The other thing that needs to be done is reducing the number of polys. Although Blender has tools for simplifying a mesh they don't do what is required without destroying the overall shape. Even flat surfaces have more polygons than required for our purposes. Curved surfaces have many more segments than I'll ever need. A curve on the roof side can be reduced to 3 segments and look just fine in MSTS.




More details to throw away.... The rear view mirror, hinges and etc. will go. The windshield is shown open on the model so I will only be saving the actual frame (orange)  All the window shapes will become part of the surface they are surrounded by. In most case replaced altogether when I redo the surface with one or two polys.




For this windshield, for example, I'll keep only the outside edges and use one polygon (orange).



Keep in mind that when I use the term "poly" I talking in Blender terms. In Blender I select edges, or points in this case, and the program fills out the area. Here I used 5 points so it's not a perfect rectangle. When I export this as an MSTS file it will end up with triangular polys to make the same shape.

Some parts, like the wheels, are ridiculously complex with tire tread, wheel spokes, even the air valve in three dimensional detail.



These will be replaced by simple 12 sided cylinders. More sides could be used for a smoother looking tire, but I'm trying to keep the poly count under a certain limit. All those wire spokes will be replaced by a wheel texture.



The process continues like that until all I have is a shell of the original. Then it's time for the fun part, the textures.

I search the internet for photos of the car I'm working on. One place I found Vanguard. The site has a plethora of photographs for each car, from dozens of angles. I only need a few, all exterior shots. I start with the side view.

NOTE: when using the Vanguard site don't use the image on the main page. Right click on the thumbnail you want and display in a new tab. The main page won't let you copy, the one in the new tab will.



I copy it to the Paint Shop program I use (out of date but fine for me) . After trimming most of the background away I rotate the image until it sits level with the running boards horizontal. The image gets trimmed again to delete more background.


You'll notice that the bumpers and other parts are cut out. I only need the body side. The fenders will disappear too, The front fender hides part of the louvre detail and the lower part of the hood side. This and the rear fender will be replaced with solid color and hidden details later on.

The side view is then copied to a new 2048 x 2048 image named for the model and saved as a TGA file. With the Vanguard images I usually have to resize them to 200% their original size. I feel that otherwise, the image is a bit small for high resolution textures.


I keep copying images, trimming them down and such till I get something like this....




I found a nice image of bright red wheels to replace the modern chrome wheels. notice that wheel background is square. Many modelers make their wheels with square inner and outer faces. This results in two triangular polys on each side in MSTS. It also require transparent alpha channels, something I try to avoid on these models. Causes some weird issues and requires too many layers of alpha. (same reason I also don't use alpha channels for windows)  This square actually makes the texture easier to make and allows a bit of wiggle room when mapping the wheel skins.


You may have also noticed there are only three wheel textures. two fronts and one back. I only actually need two. A front and a back. The same texture can be used for a number of parts. Parts that require no details can shhare the same skin. I typically map anything black to a black square I use for just that purpose. Same with body parts that lack detail. I make a square of the body color OR use a part of the existing view which shows no details.


Which brings us to another stage of creating these textures. I do not like using photo realistic textures for MSTS objects. To me they don't match the look of other MSTS elements. The shadows and/or highlights don't match properly. The result is a glaringly obvious "standoutishness". They look too real, if you take my meaning. So I cover all the nice visual nuances with blank color. This allows the simulator to provide the shading to match the rest of the scene, not the textures. What I do instead is outline body line using a shade that almost matches the body color, or use a contrasting color as was often done of the actual cars being modeled. In the case of this Ford, I'm going with the subtle look. Maybe the toughest part of this phase is matching the body color. Since the color in our images are often composed of different shade pixels you have to pick one you think looks right and stick with it.


In Paint Shop I set the background to this color, Rather than brush on the color, I delete the existing color. This replaces that with the background. Large areas are deleted using the choose tools, small area are cleared using the eraser tool. You can see where I have "replaced" the glossy paint finish with the black background.






Windows can be tough, but on these older cars the glass was flat. They hadn't developed the auto glass we had since the late '40s. Windows were often rounded rectangles. I use the object tool for these with a rounded rounded rectangle brush and gray color. Voila! Instant window, sorta.

I don't leave the windows plain gray. That just allows me to select the entire window with the magic wand tool for the next step. I use the flood fill tool set for linear gradient for that. I do each window one at a time. I select the window with the magic wand and then flood fill it. Using a gradient without the selection means the flood will average out across the entire image and the effect will wash out. Same thing happens if you select all the windows at once. I also set the opacity low to something like 10% so the effect doesn't overwhelm the rest of the model



As for the rest of the car, I keep replacing the color. Using the lasso selection tool I carefully outline various parts of the original image I want to keep. Again I'm deleting the selected areas to replace the color.



Here I end up with the louvres. They have to be extended down into the area where the fender used to be. I use the selection box to grab the center section of the louvers and then use the deformation tool to stretch them.


Once the louvres are stretched out the way I want them I got back and copy the top of the louvres, paste them and flip them. I line them up as best I can.



So it goes. I repeat all these procedures for each texture for each part. I only use the part of the original photos I need. That's why you see just a windshield and a radiator rather than an entire front view. You may also notice that in many places the side view continues far beyond the part itself. Such "extensions" allow me to texture the side and the hood with the same image, even though they are separate parts.  Same at the rear. The molding on the side actually extends across the front cowl and back of the car. Things like this makes it easier to line up the details on each part of the model.


Once I start to map the textures I also refine the parts. It may be that the texture doesn't line up the way I need it to. It may mean I have to fool around with polygons until I get what I want, or change the geometry in some other way. The 1930 Ford Tudor had to be stretched to better proportions. The radiator was too narrow, the hood too long and the body too short. Perhaps this should have been done when the shape was made. Not my call.


God, I have rambled on quite a bit.....


You may ask why I don't just make the shapes from scratch. You would think it might be less work. The issue is my skillset at this time. I have created many shapes over the years, but the compound curves found on automobiles stump me. It's one thing to do the nose of an ALCO DL109. It's a totally different scenario when creating the curves on this Ford. That blended curve from four different directions is killer. I have to say working on the shapes has taught me quite a bit about how to make them. It's also taught me quite a bit about Blender and its functions. I have started creating some of the curves on these models from scratch


Sorry to take up so much of your time. Please forgive the haphazard way this post goes. The actual process is a lot more organized. I don't jump back and forth like this. I just wanted to give you an idea of what's involved. Thanks for your patient forbearance.

Saturday, January 12, 2019

Inspiration & Nostalgia

Warning!!!
The following image may cause certain addictive behavior in young people and/or some adults...


Model Railroader Magazine, June 1957

I first viewed this photo when I was about 9 and I haven't been right in the head since. This is THE image that inspired my hobby. The picture appeared in the June 1957 issue of Model Railroader, though I saw it sometime in the 60's. It's a very small chunk of a legendary (among model train folks) layout called the Gorre & Daphetid. Built by the late John Allen over a period of 20 years it was absolutely amazing. Among other things, John extended the scenery to the basement floor. Standing in the aisleway visitors were literally in HO scale canyons. John died from heart failure in 1972. The layout outlived him by 2 weeks. His house was totally destroyed in a fire and the work of a lifetime crumbled to ash. The only things remaining are photos and a locomotive, maybe two.

Although this blog started with a focus on the N scale model railroad I was building it has evolved. Currently I've dabbling with HO scale. It was the scale I started with fifty odd years ago. At that time, in early 1960;s, my brother-in-law Jim was a model railroader with a stack of Model Railroader from the '50s. As I remember we were visiting my sister for some reason. I found those magazines and started reading them. I got so enthralled that I sat there the rest of the afternoon with half the stack on my lap, completely distracted by the wonder of those miniature railroads.

The one image that has always stuck in my head is the one at the top of the page. If Jim's magazines had whet my appetite, this picture sealed my fate, so to speak, and I was caught up in the hobby for the rest of my life. My first layout was pretty much awful by anybody's standards but it wasn't the typical flat table top most "newbies" seem to start with. It had a mountain with tunnels and a cut and grades. The mainline, such as it was, actually climbed that mountain to a 6" elevation and came back down.

I called it the Last Chance & Fairplay after a plan I had seen in Model Railroader. I didn't follow the plan, which was too large for the small house we lived in, but I did borrow the name. The LC&F was all of 4'x8' in size and took up half of my bedroom. The motive power consisted of a Mantua 0-4-0 from our Christmas layout and a AHM 0-8-0 lettered for the Indiana Harbor Belt. The Mantua got it's tender modified to resemble the tender seen on the upper bridge in John Allen's photo. The 0-8-0 got repainted green, if I remember correctly, because I liked the Southern's green steamers. Rolling stock consisted of the cars from the Christmas train set and a few Mantua 1860's cars. There was also two diesels, both by AHM. One was their SW1 in the Southern livery. The second was a Monon BL-2.

The diesels and some Mantua coaches got repainted in a rather unstriking black and gray paint job with a white stripe sometimes separating the two colors. I think I also did a boxcar in grey and even lettered it with a black marker. Needless the say, with its gloss paint and freehand markings it was pretty ugly.

I scratch built a few structures and used some Revell buildings my Dad bought for the preformed beaded foam 4' x 4' layout we had under the tree every year. I refused to use the Plasticville buildings, they were so out of scale! Last Chance depot was an Atlas kit while the town of Fairplay was graced with my balsa wood station building. There was also a red grain elevator, also made from balsa built rather loosely after the one MR built for their Maryland & Pennsylvania layout. neither one of the balsa buildings had window frames and such. At the time I thought they were beyond my skillset

My pride and joy were the enginehouse and water tank in Last Chance. The enginehouse was one of Fine Scale Miniatures first kits. It had windows, doors and even a stone foundation made from separate small pebbles. The water tank was built from plans in Model Railroader and was supported by a brick pump house. I used brick paper to cover that. Decades later it still seems to me that the bricks on that paper were more to scale than any of our current kits. Anyway, the tank was balsa that I scribed to simulate individual boards, with thread for those rings that hold the tank together. I built the water spout, frame, counter weights and pulleys myself. I thought it looked "pretty cool" in '60s speak.

So much for nostalgia. All that stuff is long gone and only one or two photos fuzzy photos remain somewhere. The current project is still in the pre-planning stage. We are in a new home and there is no place to put it yet.

The HO Scale Lehigh & Atlantic Railroad

Today I find myself looking back to the Gorre & Daphetid more than I ever have. Relax, I have no intention of reproducing the Great Poobah's masterpiece. John had trains of those very short ore cars that I always loved. Although I think John may have used Varney kits, I went on EBay and bought a bunch of old Roundhouse cars and kits. They are super simple to build and have cast frames that add more than enough weight to hold them to the track.


A String Of Ore Cars & Quotidian Viaduct
John also possessed those Kadee disconnect log cars that I've wanted since I saw them. Got some of those from EBay, though they tend to be pricey. To haul the ore cars abound I repowered two Athearn "Hustlers" with 24 volt Canon motors (from EBay of course) and shortened Roundhouse boxcab shells to fit. For moving the log cars I acquired old Roundhouse Shays. Unfortunately, I read two many articles on how they should be "improved" and now they are being "unimproved" so they will actually run. There's also a Rivarossi Heisler to stand in for the Shays.

I got my hands on another AHM SW1 in Southern livery. Are they all painted for Southern or is it just me? I repowered it also using the 24 Canon motor I used in the boxcabs. Why 24 volt? Because I didn't read the small print. It works out though, those three locomotives can move at a scale 2 mph and the motors may last forever.

Boxcab "Oil Electric"

Hustler Repowered With "Travis Drive"

The majority of my locomotive roster is steam, something I was determined to do this go around. They are a mix of IHC and Mantua, inexpensive and reliable. Only two are conventional cab steamers. The bulk are "camelback" types, fulfilling another wish. I have a fascination with the anthracite lines in the Northeast. My N scale roster consists of road names like Lehigh Valley (and the other "Lehigh" lines L&HR and L&NE), Reading, Erie, Lackawanna, and any other road that served same region. Granted the Mantua & IHC camelbacks are not "exact" replicas. They are generic as camelbacks go and that's all I'm aiming for.
A cornucopia Of Camelbacks
Mantua 4-6-2 Pacific Camelback


IHC 4-4-0 Idles On A Siding Next To Quotidian Viaduct
IHC 2-6-0 Moving Up Siding Past Yard

I'm also using DCC, although It's a second hand Atlas system. It's a relabeled Lenz product and despite a few quirks, works just fine. Most of the steamers sport Digitrax SDH166D sound decoders. I use the least expensive. They make noises that sound like a locomotive, which again, is good enough for me at this time. I bought several Commanders after blowing one up. There is small "glitch" that can toast the main board. The easiest way around it is to use a separate Commander for programming decoders. I got a few more foe a ridiculous price. So now I have DCC control AND a completely separate programming station.

Atlas Commander Decoder Programming Station

Jeez, kind of ran on there. Sorry. I guess since I haven't updated this blog for quite some time I saved up a lot to say.

Anyway, more to come. Thanks for listening
Regards,


Frank

Saturday, August 20, 2016

Addiction

Warning!!!
The following image may cause certain addictive behavior in young people and/or some adults...




I first viewed this photo when I was about 9 and I haven't been right in the head since. This is THE image that inspired my hobby. The picture appeared in the June 1957 issue of Model Railroader, though I saw it sometime in the 60's. It's a very small chunk of a legendary (among model train folks) layout called the Gorre & Daphetid. Built by the late John Allen over a period of 20 years it was absolutely amazing. Among other things, John extended the scenery to the basement floor. Standing in the aisleway visitors were literally surrounded by mountains and deep canyons.
John died from heart failure in 1972. The layout outlived him by 2 weeks. His house was totally destroyed in a fire and the work of a lifetime crumbled to ash. The only things remaining are photos and a single locomotive.















Tuesday, December 29, 2015

The Hustler Hustle

In 1959 Irv Athearn released a short industrial switcher patterned after a Porter product. While the little critters were perfect for very small layouts with tight curves, they had one major drawback. Switching industries is something that should be done at low speeds. The Athearn Hustler, however, really wasn't capable of low speeds. Case in point this pair of the tiny diesels. The Split River side of the layout has a rather straight section of track we call the "racetrack". A yard stick is purposely mounted on the fascia for timing the passage of  locomotives through this area. It took less than a second for the Hustler pair to cover the run. It was impossible to actually time them traversing the speed trap, they were traveling too quickly...

17,800 MPH?


I had to look at the video to get a better idea. I paused it when the Hustler's hit the one end of the yardstick...The clock reads 00:00:00 / 00:00:09. The clock hits 00:00:01 / 00:00:09 after the Hustler's pass the 36" mark. If I'm reading things right, 00:00:01 is one tenth of a second. Checking the Railroad Speed Calculator we find the locomotives are traveling at 3600 inches per second. That's just shy of 17800 mph in HO scale. I must be reading this wrong. If it's correct, the critters are traveling at a velocity that would put them in orbit if the Earth was HO scale.

On the bright side, switching chores would go very quickly, provided anything survives.

In other news...

For Christmas I received two Digitrax SDH166D sound decoders. Both of these have been allocated to the Q Company boxcabs. I connected one to a Travis drive Hustler to see what was what. I set it for the default diesel, a GP38. It growls just like it should and growls louder as the throttle increases. The bell sound is loud and clear. The horn sounds like a horn. It's also plenty loud...

Digitrax SDH166D Default Diesel Sound


Hold on a moment. It is much louder and clearer than the whistles on the steam locomotives. What's up with that?

I've been trying to find out if there's a way to make the whistles louder, but apparently nobody's complained so far. Fiddled around with volume settings etc. Tried a bunch of things. Then I happened across the solution. There are three settings for the whistle/horn on the CV #150. One, 00, is the the default. The second, 01, is a playable horn. The third is 128 plus 2 (why don't they just say 130) for playable horn with volume. I set my locomotives to 01, the playable horn.

In an effort to get more familiar with Digitrax decoders I downloaded the PDF of their manual, Mobile & Sound Decoder ManualSecond Edition  Buried in that rather lengthy tomb is a plethora of info, but nothing on my issue. Then, while reading through I came across a reference that implied that Digitrax controllers have a special pressure sensitive function button for horn playing. I'm using the Lenz/Atlas Compact/Commander. Ain't no pressure sensitive anything. The playable horn was useless. I reset CV 150 to 00, and what do you know, the whistle sounds fine. I can hear it from the other side of the layout. In this video I recorded the sound of two different locomotives. The first, 4-4-0 #5, has the decoder set for playable whistle. The second, 2-6-0 #4 is using the default whistle. You may not be able to hear the whistle on #5...

Digitrax SDH166D Decoder Default Steam Sound


I'll be playing around a bit more with this programming CV thingy.

Regards,
Frank Musick

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Draping the Facade

Scenery is beginning to take shape on the Split River side of the layout. Once again I'm using scrap styrofoam as a base for the shop towels. The bed of the river (and the creek) is actually the top of the styrofoam slab the layout is built on. I didn't take any particular care to create "realistic" landforms. I just piled the styrofoam scraps into what seemed reasonable and fit around the roadbed...

The facade around the layout was notched at the watercourses. These notches currently provide a good place to rest the hand throttles. Eventually  I intend to make "holsters" for the throttles, something that hangs from the back of the fascia.

I also put up the skirting that hides the legs and other junk under the layout. It's attached to the back of the facade with thumbtacks. Each side of the layout has a separate skirt so I can easily access the space underneath...
Shenaminy Creek Side

Split River Side

Quotidian Side

I made a "movie". Nothing spectacular, just bits of video taken as the trains move about the layout. I tried to capture the sounds of the steam engines. The noise in the background comes from #4, a 2-6-0 and #5, a 4-4-0 idling on the siding in Quotidian,"waiting" for an assignment. . Number 3, a 2-6-0 camelback, is out on the mainline with a short train. The video follows Q Company ore trains as they travel up and down between Mine #12 and the outside world. Six or seven cars is about the total length of train the two "oil electrics" can handle together...
Quotidian: The Andyrobertsite Story


Regards,
Frank Musick

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Photography, Short and Sweet

For a long time now I have wanted to take photos of my models. I have been using the shoot from the hip phone captures, or the images from my digital camera. What I wanted was a real honest to goodness photo like you see in the magazines. You know, the ones where everything in the frame is in focus. These photos are taken with an infinite depth of field. The problem is getting there.

I was able to make such photos using my 35 mm Pentax, but I used a pinhole diaphragm I made with a plastic disc. I cut the disc to fit behind my UV filter using a compass/dividers. This allowed me to create a circular form with a tiny hole in the exact center. It worked OK. It had one issue, however. You needed a LOT of light to take the photo.

Then a couple of years ago my son in law gave me his Nikon F100. He had purchased a new digital and the F100 is a film camera. I didn't mind at all. The only difference was the film. The camera had all the bells and whistles one could ever want. Autofocus, autoeverything. Trouble is, I had no clue how to use it. I studied the manual, but decided to just use the thing with the factory settings. Really could not learn how to use all those buttons, switches and levers. A whole lot to remember.

Some months ago, maybe two, I was going thru my old Model Railroader magazines. I came across an article written by John Allen in July of 1946. That changed everything. I don't know if you have ever seen any articles on photographing minatures, but they usually entail A, start off as a rocket scientist or B, modify the camera in some way. B seems to include tearing apart a perfectly good camera. I'm pretty sure that this would lead to a totally useless camera. No joy there. Mr Allen's article makes no mention of this. The article is about two pages long and relates how you can take photos with infinite depth of field. No modifications or degree in quantum physics required.

John describes how you use the camera settings, particularly the f stop, to increase the depth of field. He also created this chart of exposure times...
John Allen's Exposure Chart

So I grabbed the F100 and went out to the layout. I have two lenses for the camera, both automatic. One of them is a macro lens. This is sort of an all inclusive lense system that can zoom from f2.2 out to infinity. I chose this one first because it had the lowest f stop of the two. I set the camera for aperature priority (requires one button) and started taking pictures. This is the best I could get using f2.2 with the macro...
Macro Lens f2.2 Aperature Priority

It's pretty obvious this isn't what I was looking for. Everything in the foregound and the background is out of focus. I tried a few more times with the macro lens and always got the same results. For the last four frames I switched to the standard lens and set it a f3.2, again with aperature priority. Presto magico...
 Standard Lens f3.2 Aperature Priority

Aside from using too much light this is exactly what I was hoping for. To top things off, I didn't have to use John's chart. I let the F100 worry about the exposure time. The film I used was from Walgreens, ISO 200 (I think). The field of view is perfect...

Voila!

If there's one drawback, it's waiting for Walgreens to develop the film. I don't think I want my own darkroom.

Regards,
Frank Musick

Friday, December 18, 2015

Shop Towel Scenery

Terrain is starting to appear, at least it is on the town side of the backdrop. On the previous layout I had used a cardboard lattice covered in paper towels. The towels were soaked in thinned drywall mud. This time around I had a bunch of styrofoam left over from the earlier project. The styrofoam will form the general contour and the towels will be draped over that...
Styrofoam Terrain, Shenaminy Creek

Quotidian Looking West
I have found that the quality of the paper towels I use makes a big difference. The cheap two ply towels come apart in the drywall mix. More expensive towels tend to come with a quilted pattern of some kind. This looks kind of strange when used as a scenery base. I found some paper shop towels while buying a car battery. Perfect!
East Quotidian

A few more realignments were performed. The first eliminated the handbuilt turnout at the "west" end of Quotidian. The track arrangement will be changed a bit and an entirely new set of turnouts will be built. The other change adjusted the grade at The Hump. Locomotives no longer have to struggle to reach the mine. Double heading is still required on long trains (7 cars or so), but there is no stalling.
De Humped
Which brings us to the locomotives themselves. Because of the space required by my version of the Travis drive, the original Hustler shell is too low. A smaller pulley would allow this, but I wasn't concerned. The locomotive the Hustler represents is too "new" for my purposes. The branchline engines are supposed to be first generation boxcabs...
1st Generation Boxcab, 65 Ton Mack

I used sheet styrene to create a freelance model of something that would fit the Hustler frame. The first version looks a little too European to me, like something you might see on the Isle of Sodor...
Boxcab 1st Design

The second design looks a bit more American. Although it still needs a bit of work and lots of rivets, the basic lines are there The radiator is made from styrene blocks and rods....
Boxcab 2nd Design

I had trrouble getting the window openings square. The sanding "sticks" I was using are those flexible foam core kind. I switched to Revlon emory boards. I cut them into scale widths of 1', 1.5' and such. They do a much better job...
Sanding Boards
Regards,
Frank Musick