[media] Railroads for TE

[Raven]

I know they are, but I bet that at small size you won't notice the difference

Well, there's always the possiblity of creating new wheels and replacing. I feel it won't be an issue.

[m3henry]

seeing as there are trains but no track Ive created a 100' 1" stretch of standard guage track using sketchup, (no texture)

[ZxBiohazardZx]

seems to me not quite well rendered or to bright color scedules, i hope someone can make them look little better?

[Hyronymus]

Seems to be someone looked at model track a bit too much or is it my imagination that I see track connectors and the end of the rail? Despite that, this is our first piece of track, can you try and enhance it m3henry?!

[uzurpator]

I have a premonition edging an assurement that we will not use track _model_ but a track _texture_ due to the polycount budget.

Besides - this is a good place to start talks about track geometry issues. Since locomotion-like approach is preferred (alas now).

So ask yourself - which curves/switches etc you want.

BTW - the final stage should be implementation of this:

http://www.hobbylinc.com/gr/atl/atl2000.jpg

A flex track.

I'll post some examples what I mean by track elements - just not today.

[m3henry]

yes hyro is does have track connectors in there, and ballast.
the idea is that it is a) bent in-game to give desired effect b) bent in blender for pre-set peices.
Ive made a new version (uploaded) a little while ago, it has raised ballast
I dont have any textures I can use for this
so I need some textures before I can do the gravel

uzurpator: oh dear an image of track, I hope your not edging towards an isometric game.

[uzurpator]

I am thinking about such shot really:)

http://ukfs.trainsimfiles.com/docs/separation2.jpg

[m3henry]

such shot is still going to not work for me, unless the veiw is explictly isometric/topdown and the terrain has an angle at that point of no more than a few degrees.
I say this because I was an avid player of RRT2, in game it used a 3d terrain, with 2d buildings ontop and a texture for track. this worked on gentle slopes and in the isometric veiw it was set but on the steeper slopes, the track was stretched over the tile and it looked ghastly!

[Arathorn]

We could integrate the sleepers into the bedding without looking ugly, but I'm afraid we'll have to use separate rails to make it look good from all angles. This example rail uses 16 faces, 32 when using triangles.

[TossIB]

The only chance to realize a good looking track at small scale is by heavy use of elevation maps and bump maps... These techniques create an almost perfect 3d impression where in reality is only a flat texture, but only inside the boundaries of the triangle. Conclusion: As long as your viewing angle is not too flat (the rail does not overlap the edge of the face) you get the impression of perfect 3d. To achieve good results it is necessary to create a high-poly model of the track of which on is able to create the bump maps.

Alternatively for this application it's worth thinking about a trimmed-down version of texture clouds: One flat face for the underground (dended in curves, with bump map) - one slightly elevated horizontal face which is mostly transparent but carries multiple textures for the crossties (not bended, only rotated) - one elevated horizontal face which carries two (bended) textures for the rails. Looking horizontally from one side will cause the track to disappear, but noone will ever do that anyways (at least if the camera is restricted ).

Realization of track elements may then be done as follows. Alpha blend the underground. Adjust position and length of crossties, do not overlap. Alpha blend rails and maybe add special elements like the heart of a junction.

[An00biS]

Hello everybody.

I did some photos of railway track (top-down view, from a road bridge). I thought they may be useful for making textures.
I had to split them into 3 archives, because with bigger files the upload always got stuck.
Here they are:

[Steve]

Random.. but I like it!

Should be a good timesaver.

[Raven]

Hi, got some new stuff, an US hopper.

ushopper.png (139 KiB) Viewed 11277 times

It has one or two design flaws I'll have to iron out. And too many polys for a 3d game, but at least there's new content around.

A lot of care was put into the bogies. (Most, in fact)

It'd be a wise idea to add a texture to the sides, to include all the riveting and text.
It would be pretty easy to have a variation of wagons (liveries) using the same model, for no extra cost.

[Hyronymus]

This really looks awesome, Raven! Good to see you're submitting stuff again too .

[HawVer]

Something like this D52?
(Guess that al least it'll need some kind of valve gear

Oh, dutch you say?

But although they served their function when rendered for Simutrans pak128, they have not received enough care for certain tasks such as, well, a 3D game.

In any case, I'm posting the Klopopler model.

Love your renders! This render inspired me. I would love to see the amount of detail in a game!

[m3henry]

I thought i might have another go at the track, this time has a much lower poly-count and the textures are shown as colours for now. The track pieces can be morphed by the game to fit the user's track spline/set track.

Code: Select all

purple     - ballast and sleepers
light blue - shiny rail
brown      - rusty rail
green      - semi-transparent ballast (inside is opaque, outside is almost fully transparent) 
yellow     - ballast (goes between sections when close enough)

[NukeBuster]

We have sort of talked about doing 2 tracks on 1 tile. (for straight pieces) Would this be possible with this set?