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Blender to TS202X – Create a Simple Windmill

This tutorial is intended to give anyone interested in creating user content for TS202X, a place to start. It is aimed primarily at those with little to no experience. At times, I may over simplify a step and at other times, I may not be specific enough. I’ll apologize in advance, if I insult anyone’s intelligence.

Everything I cover will be very basic. I have no expertise on any of the topics covered. The tutorial is broken into several sections and is in .pdf format, with accompanying videos for reference.

I’m using Blender 2.9x for this tutorial, although it should work for versions 2.8x and up. Some things, such as keyboard shortcuts, may be different with earlier (or later) versions.

The 9 sections in this tutorial will show you how to:

1. Create the Source folder structure in the Steam/.../Railworks folder. This folder doesn’t exist by default and must be created. This is where user-created content is stored for eventual export into the sim. This part also includes steps to create desktop shortcuts to the Source folder and to the Blueprint Editor.

2. Install the BRIAGE exporter into Blender. This also gives a brief overview of the functions that are added by BRIAGE.

3. Setup a few items in Blender to make it somewhat more user-friendly (optional – based on personal preferences). Also, a short video (with screen text) is included, showing some of Blender’s functions that will be used.

4. In Blender, create a simple windmill. This tutorial is not about modeling, but is intended to show the process of getting a simple, animated windmill into the sim. I won’t get into a lot of the features of Blender, but will stay fairly basic. There are many video tutorials available online that cover all the features of Blender. Basically, I’ll cover - creating the geometry for the windmill, animating it, creating and exporting the UV map, assigning a material and shader to the objects, applying the texture, and finally, exporting the
mesh (.igs) and animation (.ia).

5 & 6. Using paint.net, create a texture from the exported UV map and save it in .dds format. I’ll not get too much into the use of paint.net. Just enough to do what’s required for our task.

7 & 8. Using the Blueprint Editor, create a Scenery blueprint and fill in the necessary items, export the windmill into the sim. I’ll also show how to use the Preview Editor.

9. Finally, when all the above steps are complete, I’ll show how to use the World Editor to add the windmill to a route in the sim.

NOTE: If needed you can zoom in on the .pdfs to see the illustrations better. Usually it’s Ctrl+mouse wheel. Each section has a related video for reference (no audio or text).

There are a number of different ways to accomplish what is done in Blender and paint.net. I show what works for me. Once you get through the tutorial and get a little experience, you’ll develop you own techniques.

Here are links to the downloads you’ll need. Everything is freeware. I don’t get into the installation of Blender and paint.net as their installations are pretty straight forward. A couple of the downloads are in .zip and .7z format, so I’ve
included the link to 7-zip.

7-zip https://www.7-zip.org/download.html
Blender https://www.blender.org/download/
BRIAGE http://jujumatic.free.fr/index.php (green box under downloads)
paint.net https://www.dotpdn.com/downloads/pdn.html

I would like to thank everyone on the Railworks America Website forums who provided encouragement and suggestions for this tutorial. Also thanks to Dom107 who created the exporter for Blender 2.5+ and Julian Merle-Remond for developing it into BRIAGE.

Any comments, complaints, criticisms, etc. may be addressed to:
mailto:mikeadams2k@gmail.com

Disclaimer: Use this tutorial and software at you own risk. All software is widely used and should pose no threat to your system. However, if there is a problem, I take no responsibility.