Hey, I'm impressed! Actually what I find most amazing is the speed at which you develop these things. I guess that's what sets a professional apart from us 3D hackers. (Does your wife ever complain that you spend too much time on this? Or does this take you 10 minutes? LOL)Great looking screenies.Cheers,
My wife does comment from time to time, but it keeps me out of trouble This particular cab has taken me about 20 hours to do, spread across a couple of weekends and weekday evenings. It's now complete and v3.0 of the NS1200 will be available to download sometime on monday
Chris, what really impresses me is the degree of "being there" you create. Having recently attempted to create a 3D cab, I can clearly see where mine is lacking compared to yours. It's in some cases the subtle details. Shadows, shading, etc. that combine to reinforce the impression of persepective and relative distance of the objects in the cab.What graphics tools do you use to do these? I'm using 3D Canvas LP and PSP7, but have yet been able to generate some of these details. Would Canvas Pro version help?I too have noticed that this particular forum has gotten quiet, although I spent a long time reading what is here to try and learn how the experts create what they do. Clearly building a cab shares some of the needs and skills as does creating a loco. However, there seem to be a few tricks required.Would you (or any of the other experts) consider a few brief "how-to" posts? For example, the shadows on the cab wall in your left hand view significantly increase the "believability". I can't see how to do this with 3DC, so have tried to add subtle shadows by hand with PSP7. The results are no where near as good as yours. Is the solution a megabuck 3D package, or is there a trick that can be used with (say) 3DC?It seems that the number of people making cabs is significantly less than those who are, for example, creating wagons. Maybe because it requires a broader range of skill or knowledge. I developed my cab mostly by "try it and see" methodology.I've been reluctant to post here before now as I'm simply a neophyte and doubt I could contribute much. Maybe a few how-to's might encourage others to join in again.Or maybe I'll post how I created mine, and tempt you experts to replay and point out how I could have done it easier/better/etc Regards to all, Jimi
Jimi,I can't speak for Chris, but...As a fellow 3D Canvas user I can tell you what is the missing ingredient. You need to download a rendering package such as POVRay (www.povray.org) and then use it through the render button in 3D Canvas to calculate a fully raytraced image, with shadows, reflections and the like.Cheers,
Aha! I had read about POVRay on the 3DC site, but didn't fully appreciate its capabilities. I think I might need to upgrade from 3DC LP to Pro (if that's possible). I now have a mission for this evening...Many thanks Clem!In the interests of contributing some (hopefully) useful content, I'll post my progress - showing the initial 3DC cab and the improved version, sometime in the near future.Rgds, Jimi
