Railworks America

I may be jumping the gun here a bit but I see there seems to be a need for some realistic telegraph poles in Railworks. The picture below is the set I made for Trainz. These poles are made with LODs and I made them with clear white, and blue green insulators. Each set had a 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 wire version.

The big question is what is the best way to adapt these poles for Railworks?

Create a wire loft object, and add them as a "wire connection component" to the utility pole's blueprint. Some of mine look like this (in order to control poly counts, my insulators are flat "view facing" objects):



The utility pole will need a node at each insulator and named 1_0128_ins0x, where "x" is a number starting at 1 up through however many insulators you have. The node models are the insulators themselves, and are separate objects of the main utility pole model. Each of these insulators need to be centered (x-y-z) where you want the wire to start/end.

As each pole is placed, the insulators will glow red, indicating you're in connecting mode, and with each new pole placed, wires will snap back to the last placed pole. Works pretty good, except that if you stop placing poles, you cannot go back and begin where you left off and expect the wire to connect to the old end point. Each "connecting mode" session is treated as a separate instance. The other PIA is that each pole needs to be placed and rotated into place in a single move, else you'll end the current session. Takes some practice to get the hang of things, but the results are worth the extra effort IMHO.

Some of the current DTG routes contain wire node parameters for poles and towers. You can use some of these as a guide.

Thanks Hack, Great Info. I like those big power lines!

A while ago I posted a short tutorial with some sample files that may help you get started.

http://railworksamerica.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=12632

Hack wrote:Works pretty good, except that if you stop placing poles, you cannot go back and begin where you left off and expect the wire to connect to the old end point.

First, I'd like to say thank you Hack for the great info.

I just wanted to jump in here to say that if you do stop placing the poles and select a different asset to place, you can then select the pole again (from the menu) --> Right click --> and, after right clicking only once, Hover over the last pole you placed, the nodes will turn yellow. If you left click while the nodes are yellow, a new pole will appear allowing you to continue placing from where you left off.

Say for example I placed a few "Pylon white small" assets from the Miami-WPB route in a single session and then went on to place some houses somewhere else I could return to the last pole-->select Pylon White Small from the asset menu, right click to 'clear' it, then I could left click on the last pole that was laid earlier to continue that session. This method works for me and it has saved me from plenty of headaches.

wacampbell wrote:A while ago I posted a short tutorial with some sample files that may help you get started.

http://railworksamerica.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=12632

Thanks. I did take a look at your model in Blender. I'm not sure how the invisible boxes were made or what they are, but when the time comes I'll be looking into this process a much deeper. I don't want to get ahead of myself. I still have some of the basics that I need to learn.

Ryan93 wrote:I just wanted to jump in here to say that if you do stop placing the poles and select a different asset to place, you can then select the pole again (from the menu) --> Right click --> and, after right clicking only once, Hover over the last pole you placed, the nodes will turn yellow. If you left click while the nodes are yellow, a new pole will appear allowing you to continue placing from where you left off.

I'll try that out. That must be fairly new, as I don't recall it being available when I first started tinkering with linked poles.

Ryan93 wrote:I just wanted to jump in here to say that if you do stop placing the poles and select a different asset to place, you can then select the pole again (from the menu) --> Right click --> and, after right clicking only once, Hover over the last pole you placed, the nodes will turn yellow. If you left click while the nodes are yellow, a new pole will appear allowing you to continue placing from where you left off.

I believe there is a video tutorial about this on YouTube. (added Link)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru6CBVt9EJM

Hack wrote:I'll try that out. That must be fairly new, as I don't recall it being available when I first started tinkering with linked poles.

Hack, I have never been able to get the automatic connection feature to work at all. I can manually hook up my poles, but they won't auto connect as in the video.
When I place them, I don't get the green arrow or the red circles shown in the video.

I have my nodes named as you describe 1_0128_ins01, 1_0128_ins02 etc and I am using a GantryBlueprint for the poles. Can you think of anything else that might be required? Would you have a working sample you could provide?

Thanks

wacampbell wrote:I have never been able to get the automatic connection feature to work at all.

I got this sorted. I had been using a 'Gantry Blueprint' but should have been using a 'Wire Connector Blueprint'. These provide for automatic connection as the poles are placed.


Edit - there are a couple of good reference examples of 'Wire Connector' objects for download at the Railworks Austria site here:

http://railworks-austria.at/index.php/s ... ungsmasten

and here

http://railworks-austria.at/index.php/d ... masten-set

wacampbell wrote:I got this sorted. I had been using a 'Gantry Blueprint' but should have been using a 'Wire Connector Blueprint'. These provide for automatic connection as the poles are placed.

Sorry about that - I forgot some important bits.