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Hiya Mal,

Wondered if you'd shed some light on how you aligned the steps so perfectly leading up to the temple. I can't do a whole building model but want to create a facade in front of some ground boxes and thought your steps would fit there nicely, but geez man you got some technique for positioning models along the ground... same thing, almost, with those hay bales in mo-x. Thanks if you got any great tips.

I have often thought of begging Bill to implement a x & z axis key command like we have for the y, it would make positioning so much easier... oh well.

I believe Wint has a much better handle on it than i with tracked3... i still need to look into that but for now the technique i use is to position the traxx camera view <u>directly</u> overhead of the model, then highlight the model by clicking on it and exposing it's wireframe, I then use the models wireframe outline in relationship to the terrains grid outline to position the models z/x, not the models texture rendering, that's not as accurate as the wire frame is and can be misleading... after i'm happy with the visual x/z placement i'll move the camera view to ground level and again highlight the models wireframe and adjust the y in relationship to the terrain and in the case of the tibet steps the relationship to the other models wireframes as well.

that will get me as close as possible within traxx, but 90% of the time it'll be off a tad one way or another in the game, as you know the views in traxx are difficult at best at times... so i'll mount the track and drive it in chase near view with pencil and paper in hand to jot down the nessesary adjustments to make by strategically positioning the truck and swinging the camera view around the model to get the best perspective and making notes on paper as to correcting any misalignments, ie [step model 1] left 1, right 2, forward 1, backward 1, right 0 left 2, and in the case of the MOx bales, tilt forward 1, tilt back 1, tilt left 2.. etc.., each number represents a adjustment 'click' in one direction or another, the y axis is the simplest to correct in traxx by just hitting 's' or 'x' for fine tuning, but the x and z dir's are a pain because they rely on the mouse and will jump all over if you're not positioned directly above it when making an adjustment which is next to impossible, so once you left click a model don't let go of the left mouse button until you're happy with the models new position, if at first the model jumps way over you still have the 'ghost' frame of where it was for a finer tune so long as you keep the left button depressed.

in summary the key elements that help me the most are #1 the traxx camera position and angle, #2 always keep a good perspective of the models wireframe and its relationship to other relative models and the terrain grid, #3 a pencil and paper, drive it, make notes.

as I recall the steps in tibet were fairly easy in comparison to the bales in MOx which were not nearly as tedius as the fences were on quid which in turn were a piece of cake compared to the positioning of the object boxes behind the rock models in buzzard, that was the hardest thing to do because their scrape points are not only misleading in traxx but as you know they are rendered invisible in the game (gold mode does not help much) so i literaly had to drive it like a blind man with my truck as a white cane to make notes for traxx ob adjustments which are always hit or miss and took multiple runs before i got it right... the last thing i was concerned about on that track was whether or not leon had a light over his head or blew a train horn as he walked lol...

Steps 1 and 2 I had down... and actually it was those views, and their problems, that eventually led to what has now become affectionately known as canoga park. I had thought that the uneditable numbers in the traxx object property box were singular and unique whereas it turns out those numbers are rounded too - you can get a few pixel variance with no change in the values. And yes, wk has some good ideas with tracked3; however, I find that sometimes impractical as I'm making terrain, manufacturing textures and models, and designing the course all simultaneously. Jumping back and forth is not always an option. I guess what I was really missing was the, uh, the pencil and paper test drive phase. And the reason for that is, uh, I think we've talked about this, uh, it's been over a week on this track and uh, I don't own pencils and papers, yea that's it, lol. I think the worst for me is the tilting. We gotta figure out a way to build in keyboard keys for those.

Anyway, thanks. I've got things close enough they're livable now.

It would be much easier in Tracked2, It has keys for moving models. I lined up two of my tunnels perfectly in Tracked2 in no time flat.
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I went to some length to learn Tracked2 and found it to have many beneficial features. I'm not saying it would ever replace traxx but it can certainly be exploited to take advantage of it's strengths. That said, vertical model positioning isn't one of them - they snap to ground level but even that has it's benefit.

While we're here, I found the most accurate model placement method is to edit the box information directly in the sit file. I've done this a few times now and nothing compares.... to the accuracy as well as to the enormous effort required.

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