New sign set in progress

We have also a new sign set in progress that includes many more track side signs.

Railway crossing set

Next task is to implement railway crossing materials to current Railworks. Models exist but they lack necessary sripting and animation.

Picture 1. Overview of all objects.

Picture 2. Old light system with two trains indicator.

Picture 3. Old light system in Railworks 2 back in 2010.

Freight terminal in game

After 9 hours in total freight terminal is finally textured and ingame.

Freight terminal progress

Finally after 8 hours in total the freight terminal is mapped. Now only convert to Railworks left. 

Hbr

Hbr-freight wagon is being modelled by our second modeller.

Currently there are no release timetable available.

Texturing proceeds

Ok, these two weeks have been quite hectic. No time to model until now. After additional 2 hours the texturing looks still bit dull.

Scenery progress

After 5 hours of work meshing of freight terminal is ready. Next stop, textures.

Building scenery

Today in addition to rolling stock modelling a freight terminal ("tavaramakasiini") was started as a scenery item for the route. This is hopefully below 5 hour project in total because there are many landmark buildings to model.

  Pic 1. A start with rough dimensions measured from aerial photos.

Pic 2. A hour spent.

Rewrapping in progress

I decided to improve repaintability of Sr1 by unwrapping some areas again. This allows other tweaks/improvements to the model as well. As golden rule you shouldn't change the model after unwrapping so hopefully this is last iteration..

More ground textures

Three more textures were added today:

Terrain texture set

Today first set of ground textures were created. Currently the set consists of 5 bare ground textures, 1 sand texture, 1 grass texture and 1 mix texture.

Track Numbers

Today track number sign T-401 was created. The sign allows route creator to set custom 4-digit number as track indicator. The implementation of dynamic numbers was done by using a milepost blueprint, so technically those are mileposts with custom numbers. Mostly these kind of signs are found in bigger yards around Finland often attached to gantries.

First set of tracks ready

Today 4 hours was spent on ironing out bugs/tweaking track assets for initial package. First version contains K30, K30 rust, K43, K43 rust, 54E1 and 60E1 tracks. It seems that my first version of the Lappeenranta yard has crashed irreversibly. The loss isn't that bad because I would have to place every track again anyway. Today I learned that to save hair and nerves one should make yard area(especially junctions) on flat ground so that tracks are aligned on same level. 
The tool selected in the screenshot allows one to specify the desired level very accurately.

Transformers

Today junction heater transformer and grounding transformer("imumuuntaja") were created:

Neutral section signs

Today hour was spent on T-120A, T-122A and T-123A signs used on marking neutral section break("erotusjakso"):

These were my first exports for TS2013 and there were no problems, which is always good news. Hopefully we can get this blog updated more frequently now on.

Sm1 progress

Our second developer is building Sm1 in its original 1970 shape. Sm1 was first finnish EMU and after 40 years is still in operation.

Hopefully the Sr1 will take further leaps as well in coming days.

Sr1 Cabin texturing proceeds

Today I managed to continue a bit Sr1 cockpit building. Because the model hadn't been converted to RW2012 it took a moment to find the troubles in export but everything went fine after tweaking. Coffee Maker and tabloids on table found themselves textured and premiliary projecting light was installed to ceiling. Still co-pilots seat and refinements to wall texturing before this view is graphically ready.

Here is view to the drivers side(RW's new lighting system works great).

More playing with textures

I managed to get few default textures incorporated to my texture set by using RSBinTool. What I see as problem in many RW routes are harsh edges between different textures. As picture tells its not easy to get easy blending scene with default ones. The conclussion is that I need to make a few transition textures to the edge areas.

No easy way out

Created first terrain texture(They need to be 32 bit). In RW you don't have possibility to add one texture to library of defaults, instead own texture library must be created(3-5 terrain textures). One texture takes about 1-2 hours to perfect so its another time sink there.. Tracks match to the terrain bit better now:

Because Finland doesn't look desert outside the railyards I have to create more terrain types..

Mastering track laying

Today hour was spent on mastery of track laying tools of RW. I must admit they are bit difficult at start but once you get hang of it it is easier to make prototypical track compared to Trainz. There are issues with current track models in junctions where two trackbeds overlap. Its hard to get it look right without either of track going over. Second challenge comes from getting the track blend well with the rest of scenery. I need to tone the textures bit more..

Overpass finished

After bit tweaking I managed to get nicely blending textures with terrain. Because this is secondary scenery object I am not using more time with this (In order to get the route finished someday).

Scenery testing

After test placement of the overpass in RW I found that the scenery objects need to have cover zones to blend with the quite coarse terrain model. Also track ballast texture needs to be darkened a bit.

Overpass

Trying to recreate this ( https://maps.google.com/?ll=61.049162,28.197269&spn=0.00498,0.016512&t=m&z=17&layer=c&cbll=61.049063,28.197434&panoid=vBofUqDqfWCgixPHMkz7Rg&cbp=12,83.07,,0,0.06 ) overpass next to the Lappeenranta station. Altough textures derived from photos are quite quick way, they demand their own time and making something to scale nicely without drawings is a challenge. This kind of scenery should take about hour to complete if the time budget were to be followed, but in reality its easy to spend something like 4 hours.
Here is the work after 2 hours including the texture tweaking and gathering reference.

Hardest part is going to get that earth wall blend to ingame terrain textures without huge difference in any season of year.

New track bed

This one isn't so flat anymore. (60E1 Rails are really huge IRL as well)

Portal stuff

After 3 hours of modelling there is some clutter ready to be attached to the portals. Still going to need a transformer for junction heaters and some minor stuff, and wires ofcourse.

More portals

Today I continued the work with gantry portals. Let me introduce from left:
portal with R-pillar, secondary portal with R-pillar and finally the famous portal with P-pillar!

Portals

Today, I managed to continue catenary construction. The largest portal we found in aerial pictures was over 9 tracks so there are going to be 9 different portal models in each type plus various kind of clutter they attach to these(transformers, lights etc)

Success!

Thanks to Scailman for his helpful tutorial. Everything else was fine in the model except a shader. Previously I had used BlendATexDiff.fx instead of undocumented TrainDecal.fx. After change everything works perfectly.

Here are finnish speed limit signs T-101A and T-102A both in older black and newer red versions.

Tweaking with speed signs

It took 1 hours to model the speed sign and 5 hours and counting to get it properly to the game..

Currently the sign can only show values "21" or "1" depending on the speed limit and I cannot seem to solve the mystery behind it.

Signal testing - a major breakthrough

 Today our esteemed signal team managed to get first signal working. This is bigger achievement than it may appear since one signal takes about 5-10 pages of LUA code.

Sr1 passes new main aspect with two lights. Notice the gloss effect in lenses :P

Back in action - sound editing

Ok, we are back. Had a refreshing holiday abroad. Yesterday was wasted in trying to get the blueprint editor open again(deleting temp folder was the solution). Today it is time to continue with track rules. Almost everything else is finished now but still missing sounds. In hour I managed to get one pretty good sound sampled and ready for use. There are still few to go..  

Loops are made with curtain-tool. Track sounds are played on all consists over the track so there cannot be any clear hints of the used rolling stock in recording.

The Devil is in the details

Because this blog is picture oriented I shall post an image of the most time consuming and least rewarding phase: tweaking. The image tells pretty well the pain of selecting faces in compiled model. In idealistic linear world one would build a model from start to finish. When that doesn't happen does the modeller have to rip already finished things open and tweak.. In this stage you spend hours and even days on minor things that don't bring anything interesting to the model but can ruin it without implementing them.

(In pic I had forgotten to map the doorway walls, which were invisible until the doors were opened for the first time)

Progress on signals!

Main signals were tested in Railworks for first time(forgive the F4-hud which was used for some reason?)

Overhead wires

Today I created first pylons for overhead wires. I am not sure yet If I am going to pursue for zigzag formation of the lines yet because it will increase the workload in route editor considerably. I'd hope RW would natively support it in future.

A bench

Usually before I start modelling I set clear goals for that session. In that way it helps to keep the motivation up. As rolling stock projects can take up to 100 hours(about the same amount of days) its rather rewarding to get something finished in between. Easy scenery objects do that nicely. Today the goal was a bench used in railway station area. It took approximately one hour from start to finish in Railworks. 

Testing specular and bump maps

Today I managed to make some additional details to texturing and decals. Specular mapping is still bit off and needs some effort to get right. In 3dsmax one can easily preview the effects before being exported to Railworks, which is quite a time saver.

Here is also older picture of Sr1-locomotive in similar process stage but with more finished textures.

New signal posts

We have new signal posts being modelled. These will house newer signals.

More buffers!

Today I managed to spent 1½ hours on 30 kg/m and 54 kg/m buffers. There is not much glamour of buffers but they are essential part of tracks so they have some priority over other projects.

A hour well spent

Since we don't have any luxury of any 1524 mm tracks out there, it is time to create one. Today I created buffer for the 43 kg/m track which was backbone of finnish railsystem for many decades before concrete sleepers were introduced.

Welcome

Here are few status shots of current WIP projects going on. Current aim of these projects is to get one realistic passenger train to driveable condition on a prototypical route. We start the shots with a passenger carriage.

Figures 1 and 2 represent the status of Ex - second class intercity carriage produced from 1988-1992.

Figure 3 shows current state of passengerview on the carriage.

In next pictures the state of the route is demonstrated.

The pics show the current status Lappeenranta station model and route. The route will include many custom scenery objects and signals for realism. More info on that and Sr1 locomotive later.

Figure 7 shows the complete set and figure 8 shows old main aspect with distant included in Railworks.