Cargo weight revamping

[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.

PaxE_first_test.jpg

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.

PaxE_alternative_skinz.jpg

Edit again: Dining car, with tail light.

DiningE_first_test.jpg

[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.

MailE_first_test.jpg

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.

MailE_second_test.jpg

[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.

DiningF_first_test.jpg

PaxF_first_test.jpg

[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.

MailF_first_test.jpg

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.

Troops_E_and_F_test.jpg

[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).

Troops_F_and_G_Eurofima.jpg

[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).

TroopsG_PaxG_PaxH.jpg

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.

TroopsG_latest.jpg

[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.

These can just be dropped into UserExtraContent as loose files if you already have the older express pack installed.

[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.