railworks reskinning tutorials..

[warchild]

I'm going to use this thread to post the urls of what reskinning tutorials i can find. Hope they help..
Pam

[warchild]

First up a tutorial on reskinning scenery objects using Paint Shop and RW Tools..
RW Tools is donationware. i donated five bucks cuz frankly, thats all i can sqweek by with at the moment. Hopefully I'll get a license for it..
Anyway.. the url isss..

http://www.rstools.info/tutorials/Re..._RailWorks.pdf

Although it focuses on RW Tools and scenery, i cant believe that painting a train would be too much different, but i'm still looking..
Pam

[warchild]

Ummmm, OK.. RW tools is definately worthwhile..
Heres the official reskinning tutorial for an engine.. ( waring, you may need alka seltzer and a good nights sleep before safely tackling this )..

http://unofficialrailworks.wikispace...ial+Reskinning

[warchild]

from a thread on UK trains

http://forums.atomic-systems.com/vie...9059&p=1214895

[warchild]

And a tutorial using RS bin tools ( which looks amazingly like the tutorial above )

http://www.warts-n-all.com/viewtopic...=79059&start=0

[Henry]

rw tools is an excellent program
check for updates
H

[Lionheart]

I agree. I got RW Tools last week. Very nice package.

[warchild]

Your right henry.. RW tools is awsome..
It aint great, but i just did this using nothing but RW tools and photoshop 7 .. still have a couple details to work out but heh.. i'm all proud ;lol:;

[Henry]

how do you use rw tools for pulling out textures?
and tweaking the engines etc?
H

[Lionheart]

Looking great Pam!

Goodness.. That was fast.


Bill

[warchild]

In the rw tool "file" menu, select the "Open .tgpcdx texture file".

once you do that, you'll see a whole bunch of stuff in the window, and none of it graphical, but thats ok, thats what we want.. it says your file has loaded successfully.

Once your file has loaded, open the "Graphics Tools" menu and select "Convert .tgpsdx to.dds"

When you do this, a small window will open giving an advisory with regards to the file and will contain the dds format to use as well as the number of mip maps required for the edited file to work after its converted back. Its very important you save your file after editing using the parameters that are given in that window or you can end up with invisible textures, moire patters, or something even more bizzarr.

Next from the Graphics tools menu select "Edit.dds File"

That will open your graphics editor provided you have comfigured RW Tools options to point to it.
You'll also need a .dds pluggin for your graphics editor. I use photoshop and have an nvidia card, so i use the Nvidia pluggins and they work quite well with this program, but i know that pluggins also exist for PSP and other programs.

When you finish editing the texture, save it using the dds format and number of mip maps given in the advisory when you converted the file to dds.

Now go back to RW Tools and select "Convert .dds to .tgpcdx".
Another window will open showing your edited .dds file. double click on the file name or highlight it and select "open". Thiis will convert your edited file back to .tgpcdx and copy it back into your trains folder..

Run RailWorks and enjoy ..


Now, thats the down and dirty way of doing it. If your creating a new livery, and want to keep the original livery, Thres a couple more things that need to be done "Before" editing the texture files, but those are covered in any ( and all ) of the tutorial files i posted above. Railworks file management is about as convoluted as it gets, so to identify which version and livery of the train your running, it uses pointers inside the main .bin file. I personally havent gone that far yet so i can only refer you to the tutorials. for practice though the above method works fairly well.. There ARE some anomolies i can see which i wonder about, such as the fact that the entire livery i painted for the double d has miniature waffle squares all through it, like the grid on a metal grating. You cant see them unless you get rediculessly close, but they're there, and i'm not quite certain what is going wrong, or where..

For practicing I can recommend using any of Dicky Cowes "Family Lines" stuff from BritKits. Lets face it, "Family Lines" is (A.) not Pretty and (B.) not a real railroad, but they are good models to drive ( although the high nose GP-7 is a pain in the ars some times ) and a wonderul way to practice painting without much worry about ruining anything ( the textures are very very simple, especially for the cab view).

Enjoy and have fun
Pam

[warchild]

Looking great Pam!

Goodness.. That was fast.


Bill

:;chuckles:: Thanks Bill..
These Big slab sided paint jobs arent all that difficult though Just big blocks of color realy.. Its those crazy german and brit liveries that look more like the aftermath to a bad birthday party tht are the hard ones to do.. .. the double d was easy except for color matching between texture files. that took a bit of effort and a lot of prayer for my eyes to see right for once ::lol:;..

[warchild]

Henry,
For tweaking the engines it gets fun ( i think )..
Open Rw tools and on the top menu click on "Edit Assets". A new window will open with a picture on the right side of some monsterous steam loco. on the left side of that window is a directory window showing the railworks directory main folder. use that window to navigate to the Assets directory, then so on till you get to the model you want to edit. For this example i'm using the SD40SfPack01 by RSC so i'm going to Assets/RSC/SD40SlPack01/railvehicles/diesel/SD40-2Sl/SFSP.
Next, In the windows center next to the directory window is several buttons. I'm going to highlight the SFSP directory and click on the "Add to List" button.

in the large window pane below the buttons you will see a catagorized table being generated of every file in the SFSP directory. Among those will be a .bin file for the engine itself. In this case the file name is listed in the "Engine" subdirectory and called sd40_2_sf.bin and i want to highlight that file by clicking directly on the file name.
With the file highlighted, i now want to open the "Edit Rolling Stock" menu and select "Edit rolling Stock Physics ( Diesel and electric )" since we're working with diesel and not steam.
This opens a whole new big window with all the engines physical characteristics in it.. Simply navigate to the number you want to change and double click on the number itself to put a cursor in there. Make your change and save.
The changes you made take effect immediately so just start up railworks and enjoy ..


Hope this helps a little
Pam

[Henry]

Thanks i took a wee bit looking around
but found it
and on a side note today i was in my wifes office and heard a horn
looking our the window was a kcs train pulling a blue and white one
just like your repant
H

[warchild]

Nice to know some of the old ones are still around ..

I'm noticing that on my machine, when i try and use the default britkits engines, theres always something out of place. the cab is above and forward, or the horns are ten feet above the engine, or something else, but if i use their nc engines they work fine. the problem comes in cloning the nc engines. They dont show up in railworks, so i'm pretty much forced to edit the nc textures directly.. Good thing i dont like "Family Lines" livery..

Working on an F3 at the moment. the entire model is slightly cockeyed but not enough to nootice without really looking hard ( like when your trying to line up textures ) .. Oh well.. ::chuckles::