RCT3, CSO modelling and Blender

Proportions, Origins and Orientation

Proportions

A square tile on RCT3's (bright blue) grid is supposed to be 4 metres square. This is not exactly the impression you get in the game but this might be due to the “thickness” of the peeps. Correspondingly, a square in Blender is 1m². So one square in RCT3 is made up of 16 squares in Blender. If you zoom in in Blender, new subdivisions appear : each ‘subsquare’ is in turn 10 cm². A terrain increment is 1m high.

A path (on the ground) is about 3.4m broad. The upper end of a path slope is 1m high, that of path steps is 2m high.

1H, 2H, full and 4H walls are 1m, 2m, 3m and 4m high respectively. A wall is 20cm thick.

The platform of a coaster is 1m high. The upper end of the gentle upward slope of a coaster is 2m higher than its base, that of a steep upward slope is 8 metres higher. The dimensions of curved parts are illustrated below.

There are three different heights for peeps. A kid, a teenager and an adult peep are about 1m, 1.5m and 2m tall (the park inspector is the tallest peep).

Also read Belgabor’s post for more information.

Orientation and Origins

This is the main “technical” problem you encounter when importing CSOs from Blender to RCT3. Indeed, Blender and RCT3 use slightly different 3D environments.

In terms of orientation, Blender and RCT3 differ a lot. First because in Blender, height, i.e. up-down, is indicated by the Z axis (so that the X axis and the Y axis define the floor) whereas in RCT3, it is the Y axis that indicates height, the floor being defined by the X axis and the Z axis. If you have Belgabor's Modified Importer, skip the following paragraph since you simply need to check "Fix Orientation" in the Create Scenery window.

The easiest way to deal with this problem is to create your object keeping in mind that the Y axis in Blender indicates height, not the Z axis. In this case, Blender's Top View becomes the Front view and vice versa. The second major difference between Blender and RCT3 concerns the orientation of the Z axis : it is reversed. In other words, your object looks mirrored in the game. Note that this is a problem only if your object and/or your texture(s) are not symmetrical. In this case, you need to mirror your object in a particular way. (see Step 6 in Creating CSOs with Blender - a tutorial for further information).

Origins (coordinates (0,0,0)) are easy to handle, but this is true only if you choose “Full Tile” in the Edit Scenery Settings window of Jonwil’s importer. The eight other positioning options available can make things even more difficult. The following illustrations represent the possible positions of an object created at (0,0,0) in Blender once it is imported and placed on one of RCT3’s square tiles, according to the option selected in Jonwil’s Importer. Bright blue lines represent RCT’s grid, gey lines Blender’s grid, purple circles the positions available on one RCT3’s square tile and the X axis and Y axis Bleder’s axes. I’ve drawn black arrows to indicate that you can use RCT3's "Rotate" button. Note : The following illustrations are wrong in the sense that with Belgabor's new importer "the y-axis has to point away from the center" (I quote Belgabor).

Full Tile