The Grade Crossing

Another Year

2017-04-17T08:41:00.004-07:00

Six years?

Suffice to say things are winding down for me and Train Simulator, and until DTG gets an editor out for TSW I don't see my time being spent there either. I will still keep the blog alive, and you never know...

It's not 'Good Bye' its 'Until we meet again'. :)

Just in case you missed it... that makes two!

2017-02-08T13:08:00.002-08:00

More GE Love... :)

http://store.steampowered.com/app/376965/

A Dream Come True

2016-11-04T22:35:00.001-07:00

After what... three years, and three engines later? VRC (Jerry and I) have finally made it to Steam:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/376958

For those of you who have supported us through direct sales. Thank you. Without your support we would have given up awhile back.

Five years and counting

2016-04-16T20:30:00.000-07:00

I just realized that this blog is only a year older than my youngest son. :)

I am still working on LUAs for VRC and this next release will be even more exciting than the last. I may even start posting again about my experiences with Blender as it's not as hard as I had originally thought and there is a ton of helpful material out there to ease the learning curve.

To all that still come and visit. Thank you.

To those visiting for the first time. Welcome, I hope you find my content useful.

Four Years Old

2015-04-16T09:32:00.002-07:00

Yup. Its been awhile. I still don't have the time to post any new tutorials, or work on my route. For now I am focused on LUA and blueprint magic on the remaining GP40's and the upcoming U30C over at VRC.

For those who have returned to learn. Thank you.

For those finding my site for the first time. Welcome.

Yes, I am waiting...

2015-01-13T15:58:00.000-08:00

The CC is going (who am I kidding it has been) on a bit of a hiatus. With the upcoming UE4 update to Train Simulator sometime (we can speculate right?) September, I think it best to wait to see what improvements and conversion tools will be available.

Railworks Community Asset Project Version 2 Released!

2013-10-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

Its taken time. I am happy to announce that version 2 has been released and can be found in the RWA file library:
http://railworksamerica.com/index.php/download-library/models?view=document&id=61:railworks-community-asset-project-v1-12-24-12&catid=22:models

This version includes the much acclaimed SMMDigital models (signals, level crossings, tons of stuff) as well as new work from several contributors (including me!).

Enjoy.

TS2014, the CC, and Me

2013-10-01T09:26:00.001-07:00

The upgrade happened and just like all the upgrades before this there is a period of adjustment. Everyone has their story, and here is mine.

The download happened. A single pass was all that I needed to get TS2014 situated on my machine. I ran my two-click installer to copy over my third party assets and tweeks and so far so good. My first test was not my route, but what Jerry, Mike and I have been crafting the last several months. The GP40-2. It loaded and everything was operating as it did prior to the update. A slight bump in the frame rates was nice to see. The next thing I checked out was the new Blueprint Editor... wow. It wouldn't be until later that night until I saw just all nice little gems RSC crafted into the new editor.

Then my son wanted to make his own route...

Like all things in a house with three kids (and one on the way) you must be prepared to change gears suddenly... I wish they invented the automatic transmission for these moments. Keeping with the daily schedule the boy were tucked in starting at 7:30 and ending around 8:45. I sat down in front of my computer and loaded TS again. I was beginning to worry at first. There was a lot of clamor on RWA about broken this, not working that, the usual drama, but not from the usual suspects. I clicked on my route. It failed to load.

wow.

So where to now? Other routes seemed to work. Other assets seem to be present. An interesting quandary ay? I put on my developer hat and and restarted TS with LogMate.

The problem, quiet suddenly, hit me like a brick in the face. Why do the simple bugs have to be the most painful?

Long, long ago, when I was working on a project far far away... lets just call it RCAP version 2. I started making new RCAP assets under the provider 'My RCAP' so as to not mix with the version 1 work which was getting tested for release. Can you see where this is going yet? Can you feel weight of the brick I mortared into the wall? When RCAP v1 release I thought I had renamed all my v2 sources back to 'RCAP', but I missed one, and it was the route marker. Yup. The pin on your map which designates the origin of your route, or some place of interest was malformed. But why crash? TS2013 didn't crash (while I am here kudos to RSC for failing gracefully in TS2014, though some logging would have been nice) it worked fine. The only thing I can think of is that TS2014 validates the files better. This is a good thing if they are letting anyone post their work into the Steam Workshop (garbage in, is garbage out after all). I made my fix to the marker and the route launched. But LogMate wasn't done with me yet. It had to show me the nice muddy field I had made for myself all these years now, and it drug me through that mud and the memories. Hindsight is 20/20 and if I had to start over I would have started smaller, and would have started with making blueprint sources and not my hand crafted hacking of bins. Oh, I did learn a lot. I learned how everything is hooked together. The experience was invaluable, but my inexperience from when I started the CC was a badge I didn't care to wear. I posted my fix to the RCAP group so it would make it into the v2 release.

I never stopped working on the CC, even though I stopped blogging about it. I kinda ran out of things to say, and with the new Engine Driver site providing tutorials perhaps I will need to say even less, for lack of being repeated, repeating what may have already been said, or simply being overlooked for a new shiny site which has it all.

I will continue to work on the CC. I am finally converting all the paths to the old SMM assets to the new RCAP assets. Call it a test I should have done long ago, or just thank the brick. I promise to keep posting, but as I already mentioned I will be posting less often. I am not here to make myself relevant to the world, just to tell my story and share the hobby I love.

And I wanted to visit ...

2013-07-31T10:16:00.001-07:00

I just read this news and wanted to share.

Milepost 154: A Train Blog: General Electric locomotive manufacturing leaves Erie, PA for Ft Worth, Texas

This saddens me not only for the loss of jobs in Erie (which needs a boost), but because I wanted to visit the factory (if they allowed tours) with my boys. Hopefully GE can work something out and keep their historic site in operation and have Texas as a secondary facility.

A rare bird indeed...

2013-06-24T20:32:00.000-07:00

On the way home from a late dinner out. I spotted this lonely bird...

Bill of Materials

2013-06-01T11:35:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me that there are many new folks just starting with 3DC. The amabilis site is not what it once was so a major community is no longer available to them. I hope my site will slowly fill that gap, but lets face it, I am not running a forum here (nor do I wish too).

Today I want to share a tool which was once available at amabilis. Its the material maps table with their available options.

Do you have depth?

2013-05-29T22:21:00.001-07:00

Level of Detail (or Depth) is one of the more powerful features of Railworks. It allows you to make beautiful models and not choke your video card with an open fire hose of polygons. Here I will show you a quick example on how to get this hooked up in 3DC (its much the same in 3DS as well).

I am jumping right up into the saddle here and hoping that you already know the basics. To start I am going to place five different shapes (cube, sphere, cylinder, torus, and cone) on the work area and center their groups.

Some new sites

2013-05-13T22:45:00.003-07:00

Time to come out and announce a couple new exciting sites under my umbrella now. The first is the Atlanta North Project (once known as NSAND), and the second is our new site Virtual Rail Creations debuting a model which is finally getting close to release.

I invite you to take a peek and check back often.

Happy Birthday TGC!

2013-04-16T20:19:00.000-07:00

I am still not sure how I missed The Grade Crossing's first anniversary, however today marks the second year my blog has been around. For this next year I will finally make some progress on my route (thanks to upcoming RCAP v2), there are some more very interesting models to finish, and to start on my list, and some long in the writing tutorials will get posted. I may even flip the switch to turn on the Google+ integration (don't worry, its not what you think).

Thanks for stopping by and supporting the hobby.

Daniel "PapaXpress" Vystrčil

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Where there is red there is hydrant

2013-04-03T20:47:00.004-07:00

So, I was greatly mistaken about what those red markers on the high mast lights mean. I managed to catch a glimpse of a closer mast this morning, and I knew I saw the work FIRE between the lines. This only made sense as no all the masts at Oakland had red markers. When the kids got to bed I started to Google some more, using a different set of search terms.

High mast lights for Oakland Terminal

2013-03-30T00:23:00.000-07:00

I am in the final stages of completing a new 90ft, 11 lamp (yes 11) high mast light model. They will replace the Portland Terminal high mast lights assets I am currently using in the CC's Oakland Terminal.

Back to work

2013-03-28T20:19:00.000-07:00

Perhaps not the work YOU are thinking of, but for me the three month income drought is over. One of the side benefits is that I can take BART to work... and the other benefit?

Watching Oakland terminal in action twice a day :)

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Climax Progress (2013-03-04)

2013-03-04T23:00:00.000-08:00

This is why I don't repaint any more...

Back in the painters saddle?

2013-03-03T23:58:00.000-08:00

Today I was bombarded on RWA with questions about repainting... and its been over a year since I have done anything serious. To my surprise getting back into it was like riding a bike.

The Airslides are new from Golden Age of Railroading, and are very nicely done. If you ask Michael Stephan nicely he may send the repaint PSD file (it helps!). As you can see I still have a long way to go to finish this model. I need to fix the class number, auto-numbers, ID boards, fine print, and make two more. Which translates to: "It could take months to finish". To be honest I am still not sure if I want to get back into repainting. I enjoy modeling more, and my plate is over full already. We will see.

And just to give a few tips. Brushes are your best friends. One like really like is the High Res Dirt Brush, and the other which I am itching to try is the Grunge Rusty Brush.

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Sometimes you just need to Climax

2013-02-25T18:07:00.000-08:00

OK, OK, get out of the gutter... and climb into the cab. If anyone hasn't noticed Mike Rennie has just started his tutorial on how to make a steam locomotive. Just from the first few posts I have learned a number of new tricks, like the DO NOT DELETE ME component. I still have three diesels on the bench which I work on a little bit each month, but I really want to follow along so I can ask questions while the whole process is still hot in Mike's head.

But what locomotive should I do? I was truly stumped. I really have no favorites other than the SP GS4 and AC10 Cab forward, both of which have been done. So I turned to my super-detailing partner MadMike (there are an awful lot of Mikes in Railworks) and posed the question to him. His response was like a brick in the head.

Make a Climax.

A Climax? One of the most complex geared locomotives ever to grace our nations rails?! Now Mike really isn't mad, but he does know how to bait me. This was a true challenge. Was I up to it?

New version of RSBinTool

2013-02-24T16:56:00.003-08:00

A call out to all the repainters. I just extended RSBinTool to support DXT5 DDS files "HC_IMAGE_FORMAT_COMPRESSED_INTERP_ALPHA". The plugin will still support all the textures it was originally designed to work with. You can download it from the RWA library.

3DC to Railworks - Blowing Smoke

2013-02-10T19:41:00.001-08:00

MadMike and I take on a lot of superdetailing projects. Probably more than we can handle, but they are so interesting and fun. When it came time to see what we could do with Michael Stephan's SD7/9 we quickly saw an oyster which could produce beautiful pearls. What helped even more was that Michael was a huge fan of our work, and helped us out by providing some of the 3DC source to his model (no you can't have it) to build from.
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3DC to Railworks - Table of Contents

2013-02-07T18:25:00.002-08:00

Yea, I know you want to. To model your very own locomotive.... yea. But take it from me, it takes months and you learn a ton, and invariably you just go back to the basics and build up. I have written this index in the order I feel will get you to that final milestone. The biggest, meanest most intense model you can make for Railworks.

I will add to this list as I finish writing more tutorials. The items without a link are in progress, so visit often and enjoy.

3DC to Railworks - The Basics

2013-02-07T18:01:00.002-08:00

In order to streamline some of my upcoming tutorials I am going to cover the how to create a simple object in 3D Crafter, texture it, export it, and create a blueprint to get it into the game. This is a bit long winded, so grab your favorite beverage and get ready to dig into it.

First lets set up our workspace in 3DC. By default Crafter sets its units to meters. If you are outside of the US then you are probably comfortable with this, but if you prefer foot/inch like me then select 'Tools > Options > Editing'. From this dialog you can also change size of your work area. I have mine set to 100 and set the origin to -50,0,-50 as I work on locomotives. You can turn off the grids if they bother you, but I keep them on so I can quickly orient myself on the grid.

3DC to Railworks - Making a Speed Warning Sign

2013-01-23T21:27:00.003-08:00

Ever wanted to make your own speed warning sign? Chances are someone already has done one for your route already and its just a download away, but I was curious all the same. In this tutorial I will cover the basics, and then explain how the number works which is where the real magic happens. If you haven't made a TextureSet of number textures you should do that first since we will need them later on.

Lets get started...

Put a cube down and scale it so its 12 inches wide (X) and 6 inches tall (Y).