Tutorial 3: Make a Basic Locomotive from Scratch or Nearly...

Part 2

This is part 2 of the third tutorial in our on-going series to teach you how to build a locomotive for MSTS from scratch. This will be the last of the beginners tutorials before we start the intermediate tutorials.

We'll concentrate on texture-mapping and assigning materials to our own simple locomotive. We'll also add transparent surfaces, hook up hierarchical bogies and wheels, and make a working directory for your creation, including editing all the neccessary support files, that will allow you to run your loco and add it to a consist.

The locomotive we will build is a simple design and has some resemblance to a GP9. Please realize that this is only a beginner's tutorial, so the engine that you will build isn't nessessarily prototypical. We'll build prototypical locomotives in the intermediate tutorials later.

Now continuing on with our NEW LOCO!

Our last tutorial left off with us completing the modeling of the loco. Now we need to texture it.

Texturing!!! Just like in Tutorial#2!

First, let's download the texture for the engine here..

Unzip this and put the texture in the myloco directory.

Open the Material Editor. Click on the first shader ball on the second row. Click on the Standard button to the right of the shader name. Double-click on Multi/Sub-Object in the Material/Map Browser lister box. A dialog will pop-up asking if you want to Keep old Material as sub-material. Hit OK this time.

Click on the Set Number button and set the number of sub-materials to 3 Click on the button for the first Sub-Material slot. In the Material Name Text field, type SolidNorm1. This is our regular texture.

Under Blinn Basic Parameters, click on the square button to the right of Diffuse: In the Material/Map Browser lister box, double-click on Bitmap. In the File selector pop-up, select myloco.tga and hit Open.

In the Material Editor, under Bitmap Parameters, under Alpha Source, make sure that None (Opaque) is selected and Premultiplied Alpha is not selected.

Click on the Show Map in Viewport icon. Click on the Go to Parent icon. Click on it one more time to get to the main shader. Let's make the next sub-material by making a copy. This time click on the first material slot button, hold and drag down to the second material slot button. The Instance (Copy) Material dialog will appear. Make sure that Copy is selected and hit OK.

Now, click on the second Material slot button and in the sub-material name field, type in TransNorm1. This will be our transparent or punch through material for the glass frame. Let's copy another Sub-Material. Click on the first Sub-Material Slot button, hold and drag to the third slot button. Make sure Copy is selected in the pop-up dialog box and hit OK. Click on the third Material slot button and in the Sub-Material Name field, type in AlphNorm1. This material will allow us to have tinted windows.

Make sure that Select Object icon is active at the top of the screen. Now click on the loco body to highlight it.

Go ahead and assign this new shader to our engine. Make sure that our new shader is selected in the Material Editor, then click on the Assign Material to Selection icon in the Material Editor.

Let's turn off the See-through property on the engine geometry so we can see the textures. Right click over the Engine geometry. Choose Properties in the bottom right-hand menu. In the Object Properties dialog box, under Display Properties, click on See-Through to deactivate it and hit OK.

Let's start setting the texture coordinates. Click on the Polygon icon. Make sure that the Select Object icon is activated at the top of the screen. Also, make sure that Ignore Backfacing is off in the Modify panel, and in the Left viewport, drag-select a rubber-band box around the whole engine to select all of the faces

Go to the Modifier List rollout. Under UV Coordinate Modifiers, select UVW Map. Since we are mapping the side view, in the Modifier Panel, under Alignment, choose X. You should see the mapping gizmo in the Left viewport. RIght now, the texture is rotated the 90 degrees the wrong way, so we need to rotate it back. In the Window below the Modifier List, find the UVW Mapping modifier and click on the plus sign to the left. Click on Gizmo.

Now we can manipulate the mapping.

Click on the Rotate Icon at the top, middle of the screen to the right of the Move icon.

In the Left viewport, move the mouse over the blue dot with the yellow Z. Click and drag the mouse up until the gizmo is 90m degrees vertical.

You can see the degrees by looking at the read-outs just under the Perspective viewport. Watch the Z: degree

Under Alignment, hit the Fit button. Now, we need to edit those UV coordinates. Go to the Modifier List Rollout and under UV Coordinate Modifiers, select Unwrap UVW. In the Modifier panel, hit the Edit button. Use the same techniques introduced in Tutorial#2 to align the UV coordinates to the texture map.

Once you have it aligned, let's collapse the stack, just right-click in the window below the Modifier List and select Collapse All.

A warning dialog will pop-up, just hit Yes.

Now we need to do the top. Be very careful here and only select those polygons that face the top. Select the Polygon icon.

In the Left viewport hold the ALT key down and select drag through the middle of the engine body to deselect those faces.

Do the same from the bottom ,up and don't include the top of the floorboard geometry.

You should now have just the top and bottom faces selected.

As as before, go to the Modifier List Rollout and select the UVW Map modifier.

Again, we need to get to the mapping gizmo, so click on the plus sign to the left of UVW Mapping in the window under the Modifier List. Click on Gizmo.

Make sure the Rotate icon is activated, and rotate the gizmo -90.0 degress in the Front viewport.

Make sure that the mouse pointer is over the blue dot with the yellow Z before you click and drag up.

Hit the Fit button in the Modify panel.

Let's go to the Modifier list rollover and select the UV Unwrap modifier. Click on the Edit button and align the UV coordinates with the bitmap.

Collapse the modifier afterwards by right-clicking in the modifier list window and selecting Collapse All.

Now we need to do the front and back. Select the Polygon icon. In that same section in the Modify panel, you should see a Hide button. Hit that now - this will hide the faces that we already mapped so it will be easier to get the to remaining faces.

We're going to have to pick the front facing polygons manually so make sure Ignore Backfacng is on. Ctrl select each face until you have them all. Use the Perspective viewport to pick all of the faces - you can rotate around and select the faces.

Again, get the UVW Map modifier, under Alignment, choose Y and hit the Fit button.

The Gizmo is already in the right orientation so we can select the UVW Unwrap modifier. Hit Edit and align the UV Coordinates to the texture map.

After you finish editing, collapse the modifier, then select the Polygon icon. Hit the Hide button again to hide the faces that we just mapped.

Now let's get those remaining rear facing polygons.

Go ahead and map those faces using the above steps.

After that, select the Polygon icon and hit the UnHide All button to get all of the faces back.

The last step in texturing the loco is assigning the sub-materials to the polygons of the engine. Let's first apply sub-material #1 to all of the faces of the loco. Make sure Ignore Backfacng is OFF in the Modify panel. Drag-select a rubber-band box around the whole engine geometry to select all of the polygons. In the Modify panel, under Surface Properties, you'll see Material and under that you'll see ID: In the text box right next to it, type in 1.

We need to apply the transparency sub-material to the cab so the windows will be transparent. In the Left viewport, drag-select inside the cab just under the window.

In the Modify panel, under Surface Properties, you'll see Material and under that you'll see ID: In the text box right next to it, type in 2.

We still have a couple of windows left to the front and rear of the cab, select those and assign sub-material 2 to them also.

Let's get the Dash9 Bogies and wheels hooked to our engine temporarily so we can take the engine out for a quick spin. Click on the Display tab and hit the Unhide All button.

We need to move the bogies a bit to fit them better with our engine. Make sure that the Move icon is activated and In the Left viewport, click and select the bogie on the left. Move it to the right alittle.

Do the same thing with the bogie on the right - move it to the left a little bit.

Let's connect the Bogies to our engine! At the top-left of the screen is the Link icon. Click on it to activate it then go to the Left viewport and move the mouse over the currently selected bogie.

The mouse pointer should turn into the Link icon. Click and drag the mouse from the bogie to the middle of the engine geometry.

The engine geometry will highlight briefly to show that it is now the parent of the bogie.

Now click on top of the other bogie on the left and drag the mouse up to the middle of the engine geometry. This bogie is now a child of the engine geometry.

Click on the Select Object icon to get out of Link mode.

Go ahead and save your .max file now, before we go on to the next section.

On to Eng and File Set-up for MyLoco