Faces On Models From Thomas And Friends Railworks

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Gameoholic1994, Aug 9, 2019.

  1. Gameoholic1994

    Gameoholic1994 New Member

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    If anybody wants to talk about Thomas-related Railworks models, I have something I'm curious about.

    I downloaded some of said models from this freeware site a while back: https://sodorrails.webs.com/

    I've subscribed to this YouTube channel that uses those models, but with what looks like face packs were added to them, which makes them able to change faces and eye positions: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheScotsmanReturns

    And I made a slideshow video on my DeviantArt to show a shorter, quicker example: https://www.deviantart.com/gameoholic1994/art/Faces-in-Railworks-789644374

    How did they do that? I'm very curious about how to make it possible to put changeable faces on those engines.
     
  2. 749006

    749006 Well-Known Member

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    The answer is on the other group you posted this question on.
     
  3. Gameoholic1994

    Gameoholic1994 New Member

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  4. 749006

    749006 Well-Known Member

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  5. Gameoholic1994

    Gameoholic1994 New Member

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  6. Railfan722

    Railfan722 Well-Known Member

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    The faces are child objects that have been created and textured in a 3D modelling program, then exported and scripted onto certain locos. The faces themselves probably aren't changeable, but the authors have probably gone through when writing the episode and figured out which faces they might need, then gone ahead and made each of them a separate entry in the scenario creator. Such a list might look like
    -LBSCR A1X "Stepney" Look_left
    -LBSCR A1X "Stepney" Look_right
    -LBSCR A1X "Stepney" Frown
    -LBSCR A1X "Stepney" Happy
    ... and so on and so forth. If you're really clever, then I guess you could completely re-do the autonumbering and just be able to type in a loco number with a suffix (e.g 55a) where the suffix denotes which face gets called in. That might look like
    a=look left
    b-look right
    c=frown
    d=happy
    You would probably need the original source files for that, though, which most devs won't just hand over.
     
  7. Gameoholic94

    Gameoholic94 New Member

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    Sorry I've been away for so long. I had my own personal life to attend to.

    But anyway... The "Trainz" series from N3V Games uses .cdp files for their locomotive models, face packs, everything. Would using a .cdp file of an entire face pack help me achieve my goal of adding faces to engines in Railworks/Train Simulator Classic in any way?
     
  8. 749006

    749006 Well-Known Member

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    The *.cdp files would not be recognised by Train Simulator
    You might be able to extract them to the base format to use
     
  9. Gameoholic94

    Gameoholic94 New Member

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    Do you mean copy the face textures from the cdp file into a separate folder as material for a file that Train Simulator CAN read? How do you suggest I make the possible file happen? Do you know of any tutorials that might help?
     
  10. OldVern

    OldVern Well-Known Member

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    A cdp file in Trainz is a compressed archive similar to a zip file. If you are looking to reverse engineer other people's work that is very sticky ground. Not to mention the whole copyright and licensing around Thomas etc. And apart from a few kids I doubt many of the adult users will be that interested anyway.
     

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