Gmax Shiny Wheel Tutorial

In this tutorial you will learn how to create an axle add the textures, map the textures and apply a shiny texture to the bogey wheels suitable for rolling stock. The methods used to create the object and apply the shiny textures can be adapted to any Trainz object.

Note. To complete this tutorial you will need to have the texture files which can be downloaded here.

To assist in the presentation of this tutorial I have changed the viewport settings to shade selected faces. This is done by selecting the text in the top left corner of the viewport and selecting "Configure..." and then selecting the "Shade selected faces" checkbox.

3. Converting to mesh

Now we can remove some unnecessary polygons. Select the wheel and then on the modifier list expand the "Editable Mesh" entry and select "Polygon". Then click on the top of the wheel and the entire top should be selected. Hit the delete button A message box will appear asking if you want to "Delete Isolated Vertices?" Select "Yes"

After you have deleted the polys it will appear that the side of the cylinder is also partly gone and the base of the cylinder has been deleted. This is because the polygons for the sides and bases are one sided and when viewing from behind they appear to be invisible.

4. Rotating and moving

Select one of the cylinders and then select the rotate tool from the main tool button menu and type 90 into the Y co-ordinate which is 90º. Do this for all the cylinders.

Now before we move the cylinders into location we need to reset the pivot point to the center of each object to do this we go to the "Hierarchy" menu and select the "Affect Pivot Only" Then select an object and click on "Center to Object". This moves the pivot point for the object to the center of the object. Do this for all the objects. Deselect the "Affect Pivot Only" when you are finished.

Now select the "New" button and apply the "wheels.tga" texture to the "Diffuse Color" slot and the "env_metal.bmp to the "Reflection" slot. Change the value for the "Reflection" to 70. When you have completed the texture loading select the first materials globe and drag it to both the wheel and the axle. In order for the textures to show up in the window select the blue and white cube in the "Material Editor". Now that we have applied a texture to the entire wheel we need to change it so that the bogey texture is only shown on the front and rear of the wheel and the outside rim and the shiny textures to the wheel's running surface and the flanges face. To do this we need to add an "Edit Mesh" modifier to the stack.

We now have to select the individual faces that we want the shiny texture applied to. The easiest way to do this is to expand the "Edit Mesh" modifier and then select element. Select the wheel then change the "Edit Mesh" to polygon. Hold down the control button and select the front face of the wheel. This should deselect the wheel face. Hold down the control key and select the face of the flange, you should have the result shown in figure 16. With the polys selected  open the "Material Editor" and drag the second globe onto the selected area. Make sure you drop the texture onto the selected area only. Deselect the polys and you should have a result similar to figure 17.

At this stage the textures on the wheel don't appear to be shiny. This is because texture effect such a reflection do not show up in the view port.

6. Adding an "Unwrap UVW" modifier

Now that we have applied the texture to the wheel and axle we need to map the texture to the correct location. To do this we need to add an "Unwrap UVW" modifier to both the axle and the wheel. To add the modifier you need to select an object and then go to the modify list in the modify menu. You may have to scroll down to find the "Unwrap UVW" modifier

After you have applied the modifier expand the "Unwrap UVW" in the "Modifier List" and select the "Select Face" entry. Then select the front face of the wheel and click on "Edit" in the "Parameters" section of the "Unwrap UVW". A new window will appear called the "Edit UVW"

Now that we have a face selected and the "Edit UVW" window open you will see the screen in Figure 20. If the texture in the background is wrong then you will need to change the map. To do this select the correct map from the drop down box on the top tool button bar.

While the face of the wheel is still selected we need to "Detach Edge Verts". To do this right click the selected map and then select "Detach Edge Verts" . This will allow us to detach the front face of the wheel from the rest of the mapping.

Before proceeding any further we need to make sure the "Move" icon is selected. Place the cursor over the selected map and move it to one side. Then select the rest of the mapping and move it to one side. You can also use the "Filter Selected Faces" icon to hide the other mapping but I prefer to leave all maps visible that way you don't apply the same texture area to two different mesh areas. Now we need to adjust the mapping to suit the texture. To resize the map click on the corner of the map and a the corner box should turn red. You can now drag the corner of the map down or up to the correct size. Place the texture as shown in figure 19. Continue selecting faces, selecting "Planr Map" and moving resizing maps until you are happy with the locations and you have a result similar to figure 19.

NOTE The texture map outlines may be a different color in your version of Gmax

Figure 30 Mirror tool.

Figure 31 Mirror dialog box.

Now we can attach all the items together. Select the axle and attach the wheels. When the dialog box appears asking for "Attach options" select the "Match Material ID's To Material" and click "OK".  Then give the object a meaningful name. If you selected a wheel and attached the rest to it then you will need to reset the pivot point. At this stage we also need to use the "Reset Xform" modifier. Select the axle/wheel unit and select "XForm" from the modifier list. You can also do the same by selecting "Reset XForm" from the utilities menu and then clicking the "Reset Selected" button. You will notice after applying the "Reset Xform" that the rotation coordinates are reset to zero. There are other modifiers such as smooth and mesh weights that can be added but this tutorial does not cover their use. Once you have added the "Reset XForm" right click on the axle/wheel and select "Convert to Editable Mesh" again.

Once you have completed the mesh then we need to export it to the Trainz format. Deselect everything and select "Export" from the file menu. Type in a name with the .im extension. Then select the "Trainz format [*.IM,*.KIN,*.PM]" entry from the file type drop box and click "Save". If you have animations on the scene then select "Export" again and this time type anim.kin as the file name. When the "Export Animation" dialog box appears click on the "OK" button.

Download this tutorial here as a PDF document.

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