GreatNortherner wrote:Hi,
I take it you are using the Wizard to export this? The group names in your hierarchy follow the MSTS naming convention. I'm not using the Wizard myself so my knowledge of it is limited and I can't tell if there may be an issue with the group names you're using and how that relates to the wizard.
I would say there is one clear issue with that hierarchy in that the wheels groups are not children of the bogie groups -- and there appears to be only one set of wheel groups, but there needs to be one for each bogie. In RW naming, the trucks/wheels hierarchy *must* look like this:
1_####_bo01
1_####_bo01wh01
1_####_bo01wh02
1_####_bo02
1_####_bo02wh01
1_####_bo02wh02
And however that translates into "Wizard naming".
You might also want to check if the functional group names (like wagon, bo##, bo##wh##) from your project get translated into RW naming convention correctly:
1_0500_main => 1_0500_wagon
Bogie and wheels -- see above
I'd hazard a guess that one of these two areas might be where the culprit is.
There are also some "not a bug, but could be better" things in that hierarchy: The bogie group doesn't have a LOD distance assigned, even though such a small part probably can't be seen farther than 200 m away. You can also improve the model's performance by combining parts that have the same LOD distance. All these different parts of 1_0100_ and 1_0300_ are really only needed if you need them to be functional (i.e., they are a defined part of the RW hierarchy like truck or wheels, or they are to be animated). Other than that, you can put all these objects into single 1_0100_smallparts and another 1_0300_mediumparts groups and make the renderer's life a bit easier.
A couple of things stand out in your blueprints:
wagon blueprint:
- front and back BogeyPivotX value is the same -- must be negative for front (and those values must be identical to the corresponding group offsets from 0,0,0 in your model)
- couplers position matrix is not set up (but that shouldn't cause the crash, just make it imposssible to couple the cars)
Bogey blueprint
- the Geometry entry is wrong and a possible source for the crash -- confusingly, no IGS gets referenced here, but instead the group name of the truck in your model (i.e., "bo01" and "bo02" -- always without distance prefixes, no matter what they are like in your export)
- correspondingly, bo##wh## are what needs to be filled into the "Node id" fields in the "S axle" pulldown menus -- again with correct offset data or the wheels won't animate -- "Animation id" field should be left blank, wheels and trucks get animated at runtime!
- also note that trucks and wheels *must* be part of the wagon .igs file, it is not possible to use additional shape files for functional parts in RW
- wheel gauge might be wrong -- it's 1.435 for standard gauge
Yes I did use the wizard. To date no one had said to either use the wizard or do straight export. Papa Express tutorial for the locomotive says do a straight export. A 3DC doc I found recently says if using 3DC 9.3 or higher you must use the wizard. No one has committed that either are OK or that a straight export is more ideal. Can't hurt to do a straight export. Either it works or I'm back at square one again.
LOD are still a bit of a mystery to me. But I understand what your saying about doing some regrouping of the 1_100 and 1_0300 LODS.
Bogey Pivot X mistake was a brain fart. I'm getting too old to be working past 1 AM. The whole Bogey blueprint went South on this one. I did one around a week and a half ago that Wayne Campbell said was OK based on reading the .xml. But I discovered with those bogeys that the wheels where not centered. Off by around 2 meters. So I had to fix all that and do a new blueprint.
Naming the bogeys I've gone back and fourth on unfortunately.... I first did it the way you described above then found some docs saying to name the wheels wheel 12, wheel 11 (front) wheel 21, wheel 22 (back). So I'll fix that one. No biggie.
Wheel gauge no issue to fix. I went by what the model was and I'm not sure I measured the correct item. I'll change it to 1.435.
I did assign a shader, but I'm sure now I did that wrong. That info was right in front of my nose all this time. It was part of the Papa Express tutorials. So now I understand how to do that.
There was a link for using shaders on the Amabilis website, but it was a dead link. Got the 404 error. I've seen 3DC tutorials by Amabilis but those links are dead as well. 404 errors. Wish someone had those or knows of a site that might have them.
Thanks Michelle for the input. I learned some more today. I'll get it. I usually catch on to how to do something pretty fast with not many issues. But this is kicking my tushey.
Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2020 6:13 pm