Creation Sharing Gwr Pannier Tank Loco Reassessed

Well, it is raining and overcast. How does it look when it's sunny?

 

Agreed, I would love to see this become a third party release.

 

I had thought of that and reset the Scenario to Summer fine weather. This photo shows the result.



The whole cab now has a blue cast so the green walls looks the same as the grey metal parts and this also includes the loco dome outside the window and even the distant Goods Shed building.

This may be related to Unreal engine handling of sRGB textures so I also tried turning the sRGB off on the Base Colour texture (making it Linear Colour) and the next photo shows the result.(In the rain)




Although quite bright the colours are closer to the original with clear separation between the green walls and the metal parts and even differences between the cast valves and the lighter coloured steel parts.
The main problem with this version is that the green walls have large areas of "oil stain" colours which I guess are due to noise masks which I applied in Armor Paint (to get the colour variation) being too low resolution for the 8 bit 4K texture to handle . I saved a 16 bit .exr version of the texture but this was 95Mb compared to 6.5Mb for the 8 bit.

I'm not sure if I need to have a Post Processing Volume (or Lightmass) in the Cab but the DTG models I'm copying don't seem to have them.

I 'll leave it as it is at the moment and concentrate on trying to get the controls working.

 

Thanks to you and star#5823 for your encouragement.
I'm not sure I'm really third party partner material and for the moment I'll just carry on trying to sort things out for myself.

Thanks again for your support.

 

Well I’ve been watching this since the early days and I’m blown away

 

Thanks for your encouragement.

 

Do you have discord?

 

Wow. Keep up the fantastic work mate!

 

Thanks for your encouragement. Sorry for the delay in responding but I have been very busy trying to set up the loco in the editor.

Please see my other thread (Setting up RVV for steam loco) for latest updates.

 

Yes this would be a mighty popular release for us steamies.

 

Thanks for your encouragement.

Unfortunately not much progress to report this week. I have managed to get the cab controls animated and feeding into the Simugraph so I can now drive the train from the cab.

At the moment the reverser is jumping back to the centre position when I let go of the VHID but I think this is because I'm using a rotary control in the RVM which doesn't rally understand the Lever reverse.

The main problem (which I've struggled for over a week to fix) is that the coupling rods still rotate around with the wheels instead of staying horizontal.
The nearest I've come to solving this problem is to attach separate coupling rods to a spring arm. The Coupling Rod then rotates correctly but refuses to line up with the loco and maintains a World Rotation sticking out at an angle. If I adjust the angle that works OK until the loco goes round a corner and then the rod moves again.
If I set the spring arm to inherit Z Axis rotation everything is fine but when the rod reaches the centre of the wheel it flips "inside out" on the Z axis and doesn't line up correctly. This is apparently the famous Gimbal Lock.

As the loco uses a TSW Rail Vehicle Animation Blueprint (which drives the wheels automatically from the Simugraph) it is difficult to use any of Unreal 's recommended methods. Again, this problem only affects Steam locos as the wheels themselves are working fine.

I will have to spend some time on other things (steam effects and sounds) and take a break from the coupling rods for a while.

On a brighter note I have realised that I can reuse most of the work so far (with a little modification) to make the Class 48xx/14xx Auto tank engine and here is photo of the "Test bed" loco with the smaller trailing wheels at the back in the Editor !!

 

Thanks for another update, keep at it and at this rate this locomotive would be better than 90% of the locomotive packs

 

Just a quick thought, but the DTG Simugraph driving the wheel animation is almost certainly doing so by updating the axle bone's rotation. My first thought is that you should be able to get a reference to the bone in your rvv blueprint, and then get the rotation from that to work out the appropriate offset mathematically. I expect that's one of the first things you tried, though.

Edited to add: if you can get a position using that or another method, you could copy the orientation for the beam from the main rvv component, or root bone for instance. You'd want to have it update per tick, of course.

 

Thanks to you both (star#5823 and pwilson79) for your encouragement.

Today I tried a simple method of sending a Variable (Default 0) from the RVV on Event Tick to the main loco Animation Blueprint and using that with Transform Bone Node to set the Y axis rotation of the Coupling Rod to zero.
Nothing happened so I put an Additive Node between the transform and the Output Pose.
When I loaded the scenario the Cab seemed to be underground and when I looked out of the window I could see giant wheels and realised my cab was in one corner of a 100 times full size loco !!.

I can happily manipulate bones in the Cab ABP but trying to alter or add to the Rail Vehicle one (which moves the wheels) is not working for me.

I have been continuing with getting all the (Driver's) Controls animating and am currently downloading the free upgrade of TSW6 (with minimum additional DLC'S) in the hope that I will then be able to get the "new" Editor ? from Epic Games.

I'll do another update if and when I make any positive progress.

 

This looks fantastic! Can't wait to see what comes of it. The only thing I've noticed that doesn't look right on the model is that you have the whistles the wrong way round. The low tone (larger one) should be on the right hand side and the high tone (smaller one) on the left/fireman's side. Other than that this is coming together rather nicely
Hopefully this and other similar projects show DTG that there is still a demand for steam and that they should pick up the development of the steam side of TSW again. Build it and they will come as the saying goes.

 

Thanks for your encouragement.

I stand corrected on the subject of the whistles. For these details on I was relying on F.W. Roche book of loco drawings in 4mm scale and he gives the dimensions of the whistles but draws them one behind the other so I wasn't clear about which side they were on.
I need to reload the mesh to correct an error where the Reverser Lever Pivot Pins are being left behind when the lever moves so I will correct the Whistles at the same time.

If I can correct the Coupling Rods I hope to do a You Tube video showing the loco being driven in a test scenario. I have almost finished the cab control animations (not the Fireman's) and it now looks Ok from in the cab (apart from the conn rods coming up through the floor every so often.)

I still need to sort out the Brake System (Steam Brake with vacuum train pipe control ) in the Simugraph and also how to link up the two steam cylinders. Currently with one of the cylinders offset by 90 degrees the loco runs OK in Reverse but gets stuck in Forward with the driven wheels rocking backwards and forwards. The same happens with the corresponding valve gear offset at 90 degrees either with or without the cylinder offset the same amount.

For interest the attached photo shows my current Simugraph arrangement for the cylinders. (I realise the _R cylinder is connected to the _L valve gear ) but the names don't seem to have any connection with the Simugraph Logic. The pink lines represent Steam and the yellow lines Torque.
The red "cut off" pins on the valve gear are fed with the current Reverser setting from the event Graph of the RVM (in the range -1 to+1 with zero as the "Mid Gear" value.




The connections to the axle are a bit confusing because the valve gears need a link to the axle (to feed the cylinder correctly) and the torque output from the cylinders (and brake shoes) also has to be attached to the axles - all seemingly at the same pin on the axle node.
I suspect this is where the problem is occurring.

Clearly I still have much to learn about Simugraph !

 

Brief Update.

I have sorted out the Steam Brake so that the application is less fierce and I can vent the Brake Cylinder after/ during braking. I am now able to complete a simple test scenario of driving from one place to another and stopping accurately on the spot.

I have also resolved the Blast Pipe problem which was caused by my use of a Steam Exhaust Node for the Blast Pipe instead of a Steam Blower Node. I now get the proper "blast" noise from the loco when pulling away and (if replaying after a successful scenario) I get the steam /smoke effects as well.
This may help with the Exhauster which wasn't working before (I could put Steam in but no flow and no effect on the Brake Pipe).
Perhaps if I put a "Blower" node on the outlet side it may work correctly.

Still haven't resolved the setup of the second cylinder and playing with the offset angle still results in the loco moving slightly forwards and then slightly backwards as if the two cylinders are pushing against each other. Also have yet to resolve the "rotating" Coupling Rod issue.

Most of the cab controls are working now but no luck with the Whistle sound or the steam particle effects for the Whistle, Safety Valves or Cylinder Cocks.

 

Honestly, if you did change money for this, it would be a day 1 purchase. This 57XX looks better than the current steam locos we have in TSW. I would wish DTG allowed mods on Consoles.

 

Thank you for your encouragement.

Update
I have just solved the problem of the two cylinders and it turned out the solution was very simple once you see it.
I set the angle to -45 degrees on the Valve Gear and Cylinder on the Right hand side and to +45 degrees on the left hand side. Now I can drive in either direction at any speed.

 

Fantastic work! I take my hat off to this masterpiece.

 

Thanks to vircom for your encouragement.

Another step forward !
After trying for several weeks to get the coupling rods to behave correctly I have finally resolved the problem.

I couldn't find a method in Unreal to apply a constraint to the coupling rods (unable to Enable the Control Rig Plugin in the editor) so I decided to use separate coupling rods attached to a Spring Arm which in turn is attached to the Coupling Rod bone (Crankpin).

This has worked previously except the coupling rods take up World Orientation (in the z axis) and would move out of position driving round a curve.
I have now used a node in the view blueprint to Get World (z) Rotation of the loco skeletal mesh and feed that to Set World Location of the Rod. The rods now remain horizontal while moving and remain "parallel" to the loco wheels even when driving round a 90 degree curve.
I'll set up a Test Scenario with the loco on the turntable to check.

I would like to do a video of the loco running in a simple scenario to show the progress so far but not sure of best way to do this - is YouTube the best option?

Next job in the Simugraph is to sort out the Brake control system so that I can control the Vacuum Brake Pipe and then sort the Couplings so that I can release the brake on a coupled vehicle.

Nearly there ! ?

 

Go for Youtube, it's the only video host this site supports embedding.

 

Sorry it's been a while since an update but real life issues have been pressing for a while.

I am now thinking about how far I've come with the project and how to proceed in future.

When I started I didn't think I'd get this far (making the cab, Simugraph etc.) and although I am still making slow progress I realise that most of the outstanding "problems" relate to Unreal animation issues and my lack of (Unreal) knowledge of how to integrate animations into a DTG Base class animation blueprint.

Also I started the Class 57 because it had the 0-6-0 wheel layout and I hoped I would be able to make an elaborate "reskin" for use on my GWR route. Having learnt more about Simugraph etc. I realise I could have chosen any loco and if I have to "go back to basics" I am tempted to proceed with the 14xx Auto tank - perhaps with a 8750 variant of the pannier tank on the way (the 14xx and 8750 cabs are virtually the same).
Alternatively I may focus on learning more in Unreal itself.

For the moment, I will take a break from the forum and not add any updates to this thread. Thanks to everyone who has offered support and encouragement over many months.

To end on a positive note, I have completed a 6 mile scenario run in the Tank Engine from Box to Chippenham (including the two mile uphill climb through Box Tunnel) without any problems.

Also as promised I have uploaded a video to YouTube of a short scenario to show how the loco is looking and working at this stage.
The link is here :-