3D OpenTTD Animation 2 Part 2 finished!

[michiyl]

Well, it is finally done - again!

After some 104 hours of rendering the scene my computer finished the work on spitting out the 968 frames which form the second part of the second animation!

To celebrate this (and to let you, my audience, know about the new video) I'll post some exclusively rendered images here! Yay! I'll also show you how the Arctic terrain evolved to what it is now - yes, more screens for your viewing pleasure!
However, if you don't want to spoil your video experience, then don't scroll to the last part of this thread or don't look at the last bunch of pictures please

I had placed a few hidden links into my other "3D OpenTTD" videos and some of you even made it to to pre-final version - congratulations for that

But now ...

... the video - you should turn it to "480p" to get all the details



Quite the rollercoaster ride, eh? Sorry for packing so much stuff into this but there's a lot of stuff going on when you build your transport empire for some 40 ingame years

Let's continue with the pictures, shall we?

The following detail images are rendered in 1920x1080 pixels as you can see, so quite perfect as a wallpaper if you need them as such
I think these are all self-explaining as they show different angles of what you normally can't see:








The Development of the Arctic terrain world!

The first three images show the pure terrain model with different rendering styles.
It was a new kind of technique for me to work on the terrain since I usually divided the ground into several pieces and designed each of them to fit seamlessly together according to a screenshot from the game. This time I did it all on one single piece of model which errased a lot of unnecessary points between the pieces but still was a lot of work to form the whole terrain. There were quite a lot of errors in regard to make the model look like the slopes and tiles we all know but I think there were none left at the end


Texture this!
The Arctic terrain of course has it's own beauty, so I tried to get as close to this as possible as you can see in the first picture. The second one is displaying a change in the lighting. Please mind that I made the snow level more accurate than in the game


Every industry is placed!
The "southern" power plant got switched of course.


Road Layout.
Transport Tycoon focuses on trains but almost no game without roads - at least the towns need them! Four of them were in the screenshot I based my arctic terrain on but only one of them made it!


Next Stop: Station!
Almost self-explaining: You can clearly see now that there were other places planned but I scrapped that. I realised that I had to do the movement of the camera now, otherwise I'd have to insert a lot of unnecessary stuff that no one would ever see in the video.


Tracksport Tycoon.
Like the red carpet for the star of my videos: Rail tracks! Also almost the final atmospheric settings.


It's bridging time!
After creating almost all of the bridges the game offers I was finally able to place my hard work into the arctic terrain. I obviously scrapped a lot of the unnecessary terrain to speed up the object placement.


BuildOnSlopes:
One of the best parts of (Open)TTD, now also very prominent in my terrain!


Fences added.
Yes, it's now all up to the details that make it so believable! And tunnels, too!


Trees:
The finishing touch of a nice and complete scene!


So, that is almost what it takes to get the terrain. But what makes a scene worth looking at in a video?
Background stuff!


-----------------------------------------
Some numbers for those who like to know (they might be higher):

- it took about 4 months from planning and creating to uploading the 61 MB video file
- the scene file is some 322 MB in size
- it consists of more than 5.3 million points and over 4.1 million polygons
- there are way over 140.000 single objects (for instance, a train consists of more than just the body, there are axles, bogies and other details made of objects belonging to a group forming a train)
- writing this thread needed some 2-3 hours and I still think somethings missing

-----------------------------------------

So, I hope you liked all the work I put into this, and still will put into this since I really want to get to the very last one of the five parts


And a special treat for those who read through all of this ... or just scrolled to the end
A somewhat close-up of the town - save this and compare it to an ingame screen, even if it's still not made on the final world

And a special treat for those who read through all of this ... or just scrolled to the end
A comparison of the town and oil refinery!


. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

If you ask yourself now why I haven't made a thread for the very first part of the second animation ... well, there wasn't that much to show you to be honest. It's quite basic like it is with the very first railroad lines you build ... and it contains some brutal rookie errors.

[michael blunck]

Although the graphics wouldn´t be my special cup of tea, the amount of work involved is astonishing and the whole project really has a style of its own. Amazing work!

regards
Michael

[V453000 :)]

It is not something which would make my jaw drop, but it certainly is very interesting to look at!

Most of the time when watching it I am wondering how could you use this to make a base set, I would be quite interested if zbase is just poorly created or if 3D rendered objects just have some "limitations" when regarding sprites.

Do you plan to use the models somehow when you are done here?

Either way, very special effort in a different direction. It is awesome especially if it would eventually get some continuation in a sense of a newGRF or a base set.

[michiyl]

Thanks Michael!

It is not something which would make my jaw drop, but it certainly is very interesting to look at!

Most of the time when watching it I am wondering how could you use this to make a base set, I would be quite interested if zbase is just poorly created or if 3D rendered objects just have some "limitations" when regarding sprites.

Do you plan to use the models somehow when you are done here?

Either way, very special effort in a different direction. It is awesome especially if it would eventually get some continuation in a sense of a newGRF or a base set.

I think the jaw-dropping parts are the later videos I plan to do. At least I hope that they won't be boring It's also a bit tricky to show what is supposed to be good - some people like beautiful track layouts, others like a complicated and cool looking signaling style ... I tried to include both in this part.
Maybe I'll have a contest to choose the next terrains, track layout and so on - you guys are way better at railway design than I am!

There were actually two people who contacted me telling they have programming skills but not the models, so I send them some basic things (the SH "8P", a passenger waggon and some track variations) to play and test around with. I might hear from them in the near future
Aside from that I might be able to generate the necessary images for the sprites of a NewGRF (or base set). Unfortunately, I don't use any of the programs mentioned in the tutorial for that, so I skipped this for now
However, with the amount of models I'll have I think I don't get around at least trying to release some graphics for the community

[Eddi]

as long as the results are properly formatted .png files, it won't matter much what programs you use...

[V453000 :)]

Aside from that I might be able to generate the necessary images for the sprites of a NewGRF (or base set). Unfortunately, I don't use any of the programs mentioned in the tutorial for that, so I skipped this for now
However, with the amount of models I'll have I think I don't get around at least trying to release some graphics for the community [/quote]

Regarding rail designs and signalling techniques, I honestly think you use the worst possible signalling (2-way PBS), BUT! That does not hut this animation one single bit at all! And if you hear that from me, that means something .

Talking about newGRFs, base sets and whatnot... if you provide nice, usable and complete sprites, odds are that you will most likely get your stuff coded by someone! Aaaannd if not, it is easy to learn coding in NML (I managed to do that to some extent so it cant be That hard!)

Anyway, I better prepare to get my jaw dropped

[Bad Hair Day]

Impressive, very impressive indeed, I love it. Quite curious to see what you produce next.

[orudge]

Very nice indeed! I thought your first video was excellent, but this one is even better, and it's obvious you've put a huge amount of effort into replicating the TTD environment!

[Drury]

Regarding rail designs and signalling techniques, I honestly think you use the worst possible signalling (2-way PBS), BUT! That does not hut this animation one single bit at all! And if you hear that from me, that means something .

Well, that made my jaw drop indeed!

But seriously, the video was awesome. It was like seeing something I'd build, except shown in a more awesome way! You even used the "build a huge bridge over a city because why not" thing I do all the time.

[michiyl]

as long as the results are properly formatted .png files, it won't matter much what programs you use...

Talking about newGRFs, base sets and whatnot... if you provide nice, usable and complete sprites, odds are that you will most likely get your stuff coded by someone! Aaaannd if not, it is easy to learn coding in NML (I managed to do that to some extent so it cant be That hard!)

I did some Hex code learning to include every vehicle in every terrain (well, except for the toyland stuff) for my OpenTTD games in a NewGRF, so it's not that I start from nothing, even if the "language" is another. Though it's still easier when the task is to only replace graphics than to introduce new trains or industries into the game

Impressive, very impressive indeed, I love it. Quite curious to see what you produce next.

I can give you a small hint what I will show next: It's a song from Metallica ... well, not so much the song but what it says in the title

Very nice indeed! I thought your first video was excellent, but this one is even better, and it's obvious you've put a huge amount of effort into replicating the TTD environment!

Great to hear that, especially when the sound is still missing which can make the difference between "nice" and "wow" Also, I hope to not have to use a lot of the cantilever bridges! They are great ingame but are not so good when you want to have a clear line of view in a 3D-model video about OpenTTD

Regarding rail designs and signalling techniques, I honestly think you use the worst possible signalling (2-way PBS), BUT! That does not hut this animation one single bit at all! And if you hear that from me, that means something .

Well, that made my jaw drop indeed!

But seriously, the video was awesome. It was like seeing something I'd build, except shown in a more awesome way! You even used the "build a huge bridge over a city because why not" thing I do all the time.

My jaw dropped too, reading this comment

I'm glad you noticed that - not that I did anything to hide it. I was experimenting with different track layouts which where basically all avoiding the city (e.g. the main passenger line I followed would've been next to the tunnels nearby the city) until I was fed up with that and realised I can show another possibility of OpenTTD - and the bridges over the city streets are also two levels high at some points, so there you have another great feature of the game!

[Dave]

This is brilliant!!!