Tutorial 2: More Basic Modelling and Texture Mapping part 1

Welcome to the second in our on-going series of tutorials to teach you how to build a locomotive and get it to run in MSTS. This tutorial will cover some more basic modeling concepts as well as texture map coordinate and material set-up. We'll also create a special texture map and deal with transparency and texture quality.

To start, we need to get the textures that the Dash9 uses. In the root directory of Train Simulator, look for and go into the Samples directory. Copy the two files, us2dash9.tga and us2dash92.bmp, into your mydash directory that you created in the last tutorial.

Now, go into your mydash directory and rename us2dash9.tga to us2dsh9.tga Also rename us2dash92.bmp to us2dsh92.bmp. Notice in each case that the change in the name is that we eliminated the "a" - just like in the first tutorial. Why do we do this - because Kuju had the wrong names and all textures that you use for MSTS must have no more than 8 characters in their name - not including the extension.

Now, load up your .MAX file from the last tutorial - mydashsource.max

To do this, go to File on the menu bar, then click on open. Go ahead and find mydashsource.max, select it, then click on Open.

We're going to create a new piece of geometry to put on our Dash9.

To do this, Go to the Create tab (it's on the right side of the screen near the top - the icon looks like an arrow pointing to a star)

Click on the ball icon below the Create icon to highlight it. This is the geometry icon. Below that under Object Type, select the button labeled Box.

Now, hold down the left mouse button and drag out a box in the right window view. Release the left mouse button.

Look at the Top view and push the mouse forward a little. You should see the box grow in width as you do this. When you get to a certain width, click the Left mouse button to finish creating the box.

Now in the Create panel, under the section labelled Name and Color, click in the text box and name our object - myobject

Now go and click on the Modify tab to the right of the Create tab. Look down under Parameters. Let's change the size of our box to

Length = 2.3

Width = 4.7

Height = 3.065

To do this, either click in the text field or click in the up or down arrow next to the text field.

Now we want to center our box over the Dash9 To do this, click on the move icon at the top - middle of the screen.

Click in the Top view to make this the active view. Click on the box, and move it left or right to center it on the Dash9.

Let's make this shape a little more interesting. First we need to get access to the vertices of the box. We need to convert this to an Editable Mesh. To do this, click the right mouse button over the word Box. Slide down and select Editable Mesh and left click on it. We now have access to vertices, polygons, edges, etc...

We're going to extrude some polygons to make our shape more interesting. Click on the Polygon icon under Selection. .

Now, click to select the back polygon on the box.

Look at the panel on the right again and click on the Extrude button under the Edit Geometry section. Now, put your mouse over the red highlighted polygon. You should see a new mouse pointer that looks like a square. Now, right click and drag the mouse forward just a little bit to extrude a new face.

Now click on the Scale icon located up at the top, two icons to the left of the move icon. It looks like a square inside of a square.

Now put the mouse pointer over the red highlighted polygon in the Perspective view. The mouse pointer will change to look like the Scale icon. Left click on the polygon and pull the mouse back a little bit to scale the polygon smaller.

Let's do a modified extrude called a Bevel. Go to the Panel to the Right. Click on the button labeled Bevel. Now move the mouse over the red highlighted polygon in the Perspective view. You should see the mouse pointer change to the Bevel icon. Left click and drag the mouse alittle bit forward then release. Now move the mouse forward a little bit more to scale the polygon bigger, then Left click to finish.

Nice interesting shape, huh.....

On to Material Assignment and Texture Mapping...