Cargo weight revamping

[Gumboots]

Yeah I'm having some fun with it (in case you couldn't tell).

Was thinking about later eras too. Couldn't help it. For the 1975-2000 period I can use the same basic mesh as for the earlier cars. It's a pretty close match for size and shape to cars of that period, although it'd preferably have a change of eye candy. Not really a drama, since I like eye candy anyway.

The round tail observation car doesn't really fit the post-1975 period, but I can make a square-ended dining car easily enough. That's just minor skinning changes on a pax car. For the post-2000 period things get a bit different, so I did my usual trick and started looking around for drawings and dimensions.

I ended up getting quite enthusiastic about the ICE 3. They managed to build the things so that all the mechanicals are below floor level. The result is that the full length of every car is usable passenger space. The floor for the end cars just continues through to the driver's compartment, with only a glass panel between passengers and driver. This effectively turns the leading and trailing units into observation cars, with the end row passengers having a view straight out the windscreens at 200 mph. This is a pretty cool feature, and apparently is very popular with customers.

So I whipped up a mesh for the intermediate cars, which won't be hard to skin. If someone wants to make an ICE 3 end car for an RT3 electric loco at some point (which really wouldn't be hard either) then these cars will fit nicely behind it. They should also fit pretty well with any modern loco, and obviously could be given any custom livery without much trouble.

And yeah, I know I was thinking of double deck pax units a while back, but they really only fit with matching double deck end cars. They'd look wrong with most RT3 locomotives, so I decided against them.

Edit: Ok, leading and trailing cars. Why not? First one is a roughed-out ICE 3.

Second one is a roughed-out ICE-T, with some quick and simple messing around for custom livery ideas.

I'm thinking the ICE-T shape would be good for a generic H era "dining car" (even though it isn't really a dining car).

[Gumboots]

Ok, change of plan. Me, not ever using electrics, didn't realise there was already an ICE in 1.06.

It's an ICE 1, since the ICE 3 didn't exist when the game was released. So, I figured it would probably make more sense to use ICE 1 cars for late era express and have them match the existing locomotive. In terms of shape, they are a better fit to a range of locomotives, and are slightly easier to model than the ICE 3 cars. An added bonus is that the ICE 1 has a very distinctive and rather cool dining car, which is also very easy to model.

So these have all been meshed up to scale and had a rough skin thrown at them (basic project from view stuff in Blender, onto whatever images I had handy). Skinning them properly won't be a big deal. Since the existing 1.06 ICE loco model was a tad rougho, I also sorted a new version for that. This is also an easier one to deal with than the ICE 3 loco, and comes out very smooth with a pretty low poly count. It can be used as a cleaner replacement for 1.06 loco.

[Gumboots]

Ok, have the final decision on G and H era express cars. If anyone wants ICE cars and/or locomotives, they are already modelled. Anyone who wants to skin them up and get them running is welcome to the Blender file.

For the default set I wanted a good progression that made sense for timing and style, and that wasn't too ugly through the 1980's (when everything was ugly on principle ). So, I'm going with Amfleet II cars for the G era and Siemens Viaggio (OBB Railjet) for the H era.

This combo works for me. The Amfleets are a good continuation from the classic 1950' stainless steel cars. In the late 20th century everyone was nuts about using bare stainless cars, but the Amfleets are better looking than most. Added bonus is that there was a version that will make a passable dining car, since it has a clean rear end with windows (Budd SPV, rebuilt as a coach, if you want to know).

The Railjet cars are a good looking unit too, IMO, and are a more common style and more versatile than ICE cars. Plus ICE cars are just white, which is boring. I want these to be fun. All express cars are modelled now, and I should be able to get the set finished in the next week or so.

[Gumboots]

Have made a good start on the graphics. The previous shot was just a quick distorted application to some pictures of HO models, which is fine for getting the feel of things but not up to scratch for an actual asset. It's shaping up to be pretty easy to skin, and the UV mapping is a piece of cake (that's already sorted).

This is going to need a bit of a fudge for RT3 consists. The control car (pictured) does not actually contain the dining area on the Railjet. The control car just takes first class pax (and the driver, of course). The second car is also first class pax, as is half of the third car. The other half of the third car is the dining setup.

Dining cars in RT3 go on the end, so I'm gonna pretend the dining area is in the control car. The actual Railjet dining car can, with slight adjustments to windows, make a good stand-in for the mail car that RT3 requires. It looks more or less like one anyway, so it's all good.

Troops will get the standard Railjet coach, but with the livery done in olive green/white/black instead of the reds.

[Gumboots]

Got a bit more done. Hint for young players: when working on model mesh in Blender, do not accidentally scale the entire mesh to zero length, then save the file, and not notice because you were concentrating on UV mapping.

Fortunately the X and Z coordinates weren't screwed, so fixing it was basically just a matter of dragging edge loops longitudinally to where they should be (not quite as tricky as it sounds, because I know basic geometry stuff). Having got that little escapade out of the way (with much swearing) I managed to get something useful done instead.

[Gumboots]

This is coming along nicely, although I did have the usual complications. Namely, spending lotsa time looking for more information, along with finding details I hadn't thought about before and consequently having to re-jig some things I thought were finished. However, I'm now past all of that and the end is in sight.

Among other things, I have figured out some useful points for getting the best results with DDS image compression. A while back Jim put me onto using a very small amount of Gaussian noise (around 1%), after flattening the PSD but before saving as DDS, to reduce artifacts in the final texture. This works well sometimes, but not all the time. Sometimes it can make things worse.

I found this out when I was looking at the skinned model in Blender, and thought it looked a bit bleh, so just on a whim I re-made the DDS without adding any noise first. Hey presto, the texture instantly looked a lot better in most places. It didn't look as good everywhere though, so I started investigating and trying a few things. What it comes down to is that noise before saving can work very well for some areas of a texture, but the same amount everywhere won't necessarily give better overall results.

I think the best approach is to start by saving without noise. Try that first, and see how it looks. Probably, some bits will be very good and some bits not so good. The way to get the best results is to add noise only to the not-so-good sections of the image, by using whatever trickery as patches in the PSD (pattern overlay is a good option, since it is adjustable for a wide range of effects). This isn't difficult to do. I got most of the texture figured out pretty quickly by playing with varying amounts of noise effects in a few places.

Another thing that I finally figured out: when you unwrap something like a cargo car model, with one side at the top of the texture, then the roof in the middle, then the other side at the bottom, it's best to set everything out so that it's vertically centred on pixels that are a multiple of 4. The reason for this is that DDS compression works on chunks of 4x4 pixels, so if you are centred on a multiple of four that means you get the same compression artifacts on both sides of the car. This means that if you need any tweaks to reduce artifacts, then the same fix will work on both sides. You won't have to try and figure out two different fixes.

[Gumboots]

Gave it a test run and it looks pretty decent. The skinning could do with a bit more tweaking, but it's shaping up well.

I'll get the other cars running too, so I can have several variations running side by side while I'm messing around with skin tweaks. That should speed up the process a bit, instead of having to restart RT3 every time I want to see how something looks.

The other cars should be a no-brainer now. Same basic layout, but simpler. I can use all the same guides and layers and just do a bit of cropping and shuffling.

[Gumboots]

Got Troops and Pax running too. Mail won't take long.

[Gumboots]

Mail car, first test.

[Gumboots]

All righty then, back to the other end of the scale. Got the E era (1925-1949) pax cars up and running. Mail and dining car will follow shortly.

For some reason ended up going back to a Tuscan red base, but with different detailing to what I had tried before. I have to say that saving the skins without adding noise is a total winner a lot of the time. In future I will only add noise specifically where it is needed. A lot of the time, the skins come out much better without it. These are crystal clear, at least for a 1024x1024 DDS. You can pick slight compression flaws at very close range if you really look for them, but nothing to worry about.

Edit: Just whipped up a couple of ideas for alternative skins. These are very easy to do once the PSD is set up. I'm liking both of these too, so I may amuse myself by making several swappable packs.

Edit again: Dining car, with tail light.

[Gumboots]

Ok, mail cars. Upper shot is a string of them. Lower shot is a pax car on the left, and a mail car on the right.

Obviously the mail cars work just fine, but I may play with the livery a bit to make them more distinguishable at a glance.
Still, they work. Latvia is my go-to map for sandboxing now. I like the scenery.

Edit: Tweaked them a bit. I like this look. It fits well with the pax cars and with mixed traffic, and the plainer look suits a mail/baggage van better IMO.

[Gumboots]

First stab at F era dining cars and passenger cars (1950-1974). Not too shabby, but I think I can get the stainless steel look a bit better. Am going to mess around with it a bit more.

[Gumboots]

Mail cars. I think these are actually classier than the pax and dining cars, which is a bit of a worry. I'll have to tweak the others a bit. Anyway, I think mail cars are sorted.

I'm also thinking I'll get a tad lazy and skip the Amfleet cars for the G era, at least for now. This model can do F and G eras with slight tweaks to livery, and then go to the Railjet/Viaggio cars for the H era.

[Gumboots]

Troop cars. Should have the complete pack ready soon.

[Gumboots]

Meh. Decided I didn't like those last F era troop cars, so I'm going with much the same livery as the E era, but with the larger body size and more modern windows. Looks a lot better IMO.

I'm definitely skipping the Amfleet cars too. They're too specific and don't really fit in with the rest. The F era pax mesh and skinning is a better fit for a range of pax cars in that period, so using that with slight livery tweaks makes more sense.

However, for the last troop car era (G - 1990 onwards) I'm going to use Eurofima coaches with a custom troopy livery. Eurofima's are the standard Euro pax coach of the late 20th century, and were used all over the place in a range of configurations and paint jobs. They're still in use, and with the upgraded bogies they have now they are rated for 200 kmh (130 mph). This makes them a good fit for a troop car that starts in 1990 and continues into the 21st century, and they fit well with the H era pax cars (Railjet/Viaggio) since they are built to the same loading gauge. I'll make the troop car paint job something that fits in well with the Railjet paint job (similar striping width and heights, etc).

[Gumboots]

Got the Eurofima/XTroopsG a bit more sorted. They fit well with either the G era pax cars (stainless steel, until 1999) or the H era pax cars (Viaggio/Railjet, post-2000).

I got a bit carried away with vestibule detailing, but it's something a bit different for modelling and I felt like doing it. The LOD's drop lotsa mesh rapidly anyway, so a lot of the time it won't be any heavier on the gfx card than other pax cars.

Edit: Close to finished now. Just needs a little more detailing.

[Gumboots]

I have a bit more tidying up to do with the express pack. Apart from anything else, the old pack had all the DDS images saved with mips, so the images for the A to D eras need to be re-done anyway. However, I've attached the current state of the E to H eras in case anyone wants to mess around with them and give some feedback.

Edit: See the first post of this topic for an updated pack.

[Gumboots]

Has anyone given these a run, and had any thoughts about them?

[RulerofRails]

I ran them around a in a sandbox game for awhile. They look good, were running smoothly.

If I was to nitpick something: on the side of the stainless cars there is a sort of diagonal striping of "light" (alpha channel?, I don't really know these modelling terms). Maybe this is intentional to give them a less flat/drab look. I can see that this is true, maybe that could still be achieved if the "striping" were a little softer. But of course, it's more than above standard for anything in this game, no biggie.

Nice details, I especially noticed the suspension on the H-era cars.

[Gumboots]

Yes I was thinking of toning that down anyway, as part of the final tidying up.

I was more wondering if people thought the set as a whole "flowed" well. The Jagdpanther idea I had for weapons cars wasn't popular, so I thought I'd see if anyone had concerns about this lot. I realise the A pax/mail in temporary combination with A troops isn't perfect, but once past that hurdle I think the set is pretty good.