The Grade Crossing: Hey! I have a great idea...

And so I asked. And so it came around and sucked me into yet another facet of RailWorks. And so I have no time to work on my route. And so I blog. (how would that sound in Latin?)

Its no secret that I praise SMMDigital over at RWA for his fantastic tutorial on making signals. Even though I did not use it to make a signal, it did help me with some of the ins and outs of how to use 3DCrafter and how to use filters and Kuju materials. Which in turn helped me make all the parts I needed to super-detail the UPY-588.

And so I asked SMMDigital if he could make a tutorial for making locomotives... not for me, but for the benefit for those who wanted to try and provide some more North American content for RailWorks. I was already hard pressed for time, and I wanted to spend what I had on my route, but SMMDigital came back with a resounding (and well justified) offer. He wanted three people to follow along or the whole thing was off. I found that I had no choice but to clear off my plate of CC and super-detailing projects and ante up.

And so I was sucked into doing something new and exciting. Why? Because I firmly believe in SMMDitigal's ability to produce an informative and concise tutorial, and I believe that it will benifit the RW community to see that making locomotives is not a 'dark art' or 'weird science'. I was not going to let this opportunity simply walk away.

SimpleEngine using RSC's tutorial

I will not lie and say that this is easy. There are many factors you need to consider as you make a model like this. Not only do you have the poly count to keep down, you need to think about how the model unwraps so that it can be repainted not only with ease, but with detail, and then there is the RSC blueprint editor... yuck. No joke, but I am learning so much from this project its already priceless.

A beginning... but pointed in the opposite direction

And so I have no time to work on the CC or anything else. In the long run this adventure will end up helping me with the CC of which I have an enormous amount of models I need to build. Besides... its not a race, and its not work, and I am having fun.