Sid Meiers Railroads Forums.

Hey y'all!

I just finished reskinning the C&0 8401 SW1 model that Slider38 posted. This is the first reskin of a model that I have uploaded!

The first diesel engine that Southern Pacific added to their fleet was an SW1, numbered 1000 in their roster.

Here's a pic of the SW1 1000:



And here's a pic of the reskinned model that I have ingame:



Here is the zipfile containing the model files. I wanted to make sure to give Slider 38 the proper credit for the model, so I added Slider38's and my forum handle to the .xml file, noting that I simply reskinned said model. Enjoy!

Kinda makes me laugh a bit........

Actually, that model is not Sliders work. The skinning is, but not the model.

You need to spend a bit more time examining the forum. Start here: viewforum.php?f=56 There you will find 43 threads/posts of Construction Kits for engines which contain I forget how many different engines, all of which can be skinned to your hearts content. There are also 42 TrainCarswhich will make I forget how many different cars/loads. (I do got to get a count on them...... )

Download and skin yourself into heaven.....

And then you might want to

While working on a custom EMD GP18 for NSRailfan, I remembered something about your engine upload that caught my eye........

You renamed all your files to reflect the name of your engine. And looking over Sliders, he did so also.
Both of you, and anyone else wanting to use CKs,

You can also go here: viewtopic.php?p=6348#p6348 and download Bobby's and examine how he named his files.

This is why I am a firm believer in including modeler credits in readmes. In most other game forums, modelers include a readme with their files, explaining where the model came from, and associated permissions.

Some modelers do not mind having their work reskinned, but some others do. Myself, I don't mind if people piggyback on my work, but if I invested a lot of work in a model, being credited for such work is nice. I don't consider reskinning as a lot of work although it can be time consuming, unless there are massive changes, but if you completely skinned a model from scratch, I think credit is due for that. Also, this will help others in the future if they have a question for the original builder of a model, as he will probably be the most conversant in the associated files for the model.

Some modelers have huge egos, and storm off in hissies if they feel their work was stolen. This site seems to be more of a community effort, where people chip in what they can when they can, but I certainly don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. In my case, I didn't see a SP SW1 on this site or on anyone's to do list, and as Southern Pacific plays a role in the scenario I'm currently working on, I have need for more SP models.

I'd still like to credit the original builder of this model, and was hoping this thread might help bring that to light, as it isn't entirely clear to me who built the first SW1 that Slider38 reskinned.

Adding BB to my files is no problem. What I'd really like to do is credit the original modeler. As I still used a lot of Slider38's color choices, I still feel the need to credit him for those. I also kept all of the baseline files with the same name, and tried to only change the names of files that I modified, or had names different than the 'baseline' name. I think the only file I didn't really change was the dummies file, but as Slider38 has assigned a unique name to that, I simply followed his convention so as to avoid confusion for others (i.e. what is this CO file doing in a SP model folder?).

Also, I want to make sure I follow proper procedure before submitting this as an official building block, and I very much appreciate your input Snoopy, as you are very kind in helping point point out the proper etiquette for model submissions here. As I've posted elsewhere, I think a lot of people here do fine work, and I appreciate having all of these new toys for an older game I enjoy playing and playing around with.

BTW, when i was editing the dds file, I went ahead and cut/pasted/rescaled at 50%/25%/etc. all of my changes, as these were shown in the .dds files. My photoshop plugin didn't seem to do this, although I will admit I probably didn't close and reopen the file after I saved as. Does my photoshop plugin do this already, and is there a specific way I'm supposed to load a file? I have simply gone with whatever the current embedded file settings are when I load model skins and such, and didn't sweat the whole DTX1/3 thing. I certainly can save the other files as DTX1, I just don't like tampering with forces I don't fully understand...

My remark was simply meant to let you know that there are Construction Kits available to more easily skin many engines, not for any other reason.

As to where the models came from........ For that you really would need to keep up with the forum and read back threads/posts. We have had members build the models, members skin the models and post the BBs, I've created the CKs and had many members test them for me before Bobby or I post them. Ideas come from anyone who wants to toss them to us. SAMs and SAM2s were created by Tijer and I and developed by a group of us know as STEP Inc. In short, it's a forum thing as far as who came up with what you see here.

I doubt there is anyone on this forum who is going to complain that their name was not splattered all over your work. Even on the other forum there were many who had no problem in what Tijer and I did, and those who did are no longer around since Bobby created this forum for us to do our work in.

You see, it would be a bit difficult to put in your map that John came up with the trucks, Bill suggested the load, Peter did the 3D for the load, Greg made the load work correctly, Larry put it all together, Alan wrote the code, Terry did the shading, Mike built the CK, Jeff tested it and Thomas skinned the car. 30 Goods, Industries, Train Cars, and Engines, and you'd be writting a book.

If you want your name on your work, by all means, put it in the XML as a note. Request it in a ReadMe in your upload. Of course Bobby and I cannot guarantee that it will be done as you wish, we just check stuff to be sure it work, we do not police it.

As far as my work on this forum, you're free to use what you wish and edit what you wish. This is what I spend all my time for, to get it to work and to see it used. Of course, $100 per model to my favorite charity would be accepted also....... I'll send you my address........

And as far as how to use the programs, I use GIMP and tutorials are all over this forum. Or if you cannot find what you need to know, ask and ye shall be answered.

Hey, don't worry about crediting me. I'm just happy to see something used that I had a hand in. Most of my work is in painting and whatever I can accomplish with NifSkope. Most of the changes I've made are in Industries, with a few exceptions. As I have no 3D modeling software, everything I post started out as something else. You help yourself to anything I post.. I have tried crediting folks a few times only to be told that all I was doing was crediting the poster. I finally gave up on that.

Snoopy - a short story on those SW1 files. I used the normal file from the CK. It had no spec or emsk files so I made my own. The End.

No worries man!

I particularly liked your attention to weathering, and tried to keep that in place where I could. Mostly I used some photoshop transforms to adjust the color of some items, but I still needed to clone stamp some other areas, and rework the detail under the old rail logos and such when I replaced that with Southern Pacific and 1000. I did rework the headlight; it is now one big lens as opposed to the two smaller lenses. Unfortunately, the back headlight assembly is the same color, but since both draw on the same map, I think having the front headlight assembly being yellow makes more sense than it being blue/black.

If I could change one thing, it would be the railings (they should be more angled on the steps to match the pic), but that is beyond my abilities at the moment. It is a minor thing, though, so I'm not that worried about it.

I want to adjust the yellow color slightly to make it more orangey before I release this as an official BB, and will work on wrapping this up later this week.

Thanks!
DDA40X

Well, this is where you get to try something new. If you need to change something like the railings, you should be able to accomplish that in NifSkope. It takes some patience, but it can be done with the investment of a little time.

If you open the nif file for your engine, go down to the block details. Scroll down below where the engine diff, spec, etc files are and you will see a line titled NiTriShape - in my nif file it is line 41. Yours may be the same since this model was used for it. Anyway, expand that by clicking on the plus sign and if you scroll down you will see a line titled vertices. Expand that and you will see a listing of all the vertices that make up the 3D model. When you click on one it will turn yellow on the screen. Go down and look for vertices with a Z factor in the 20s. That should be about the right height for the railings.

It takes a while but you can adjust the position of those railings. Double-click on one of those vertices listings and you can put in whatever number you wish for X, Y and/or Z position. Just do it slowly by using the little arrows. That way you can move something a couple of numbers and if you don't like the result, or something moved in the wrong direction, it's easy to put it back where it was. Give it a try and see what you can do with it.

OK, I've reworked the coloring a bit, and added BB_ to the zip folders.



Here's the new zip file. I also resaved the spec and emsk files as DXT1 to save a little space, per this thread: viewtopic.php?f=61&t=1017.



Enjoy!


BB located here: viewtopic.php?p=10309#p10309