Rolling Stock skinning ideas

[bombardiere]

Yup, I have downloaded this. Thank. I have not yet used, but I like the preview. Very British looking coaches.

The doubledeckers look good too. So many European countries are using similar coaches.

[Gumboots]

The paint job is sorta British. The livery is basically 19th century GWR, slightly adapted. The cars themselves were modelled on Bavarian cars of the period, simply because that's what I had plans for and they were close enough to a generic car of the 1840's.

[Gumboots]

Have finalised the mesh for the new 1900-1925 express cars. Mail and Troops share the same mesh (no clerestory). Pax and Dining also share the same mesh, but with a different (clerestory) roof and a few more roof vents. This means skinning is easy, with minor tweaks for the different car types on the same basic PSD.

Gave the Mail cars a test run. Everything works. Skin is a little bit dark for my liking at the moment, so I'll lighten it up just a touch. Will also give the striping and lettering a bit more contrast. Shouldn't take long to get all four types done.

Anyway they look like this.
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Test_run.jpg

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For comparison, the car body (not counting roof overhang) is about 5% longer than the default D era pax cars. Roof height (without clerestory) is slightly less than a default D era pax car.

Edit: Got the troop cars done too. Pax and dining cars next.
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Mail_and_troops.jpg

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[Gumboots]

Ok, so I un-finalised the mesh again.

Wasn't quite happy with the look of the troop and mail cars. The low arc roof left them looking a bit "underfed weasel" with the 65 foot car body length. So I gave them a bit more camber in the roof, and curved the roof ends down too. This meant a bit of tweaking but they look a lot better now, like a real car of the period. Basic roof mesh ended up the same for all four cars, except that pax and dining have the centre section replaced with the clerestory. Have also tweaked skins for better balance, which helps looks too. Took a bit of messing around to get it sorted for RT3 game lighting, but they're good to go now.

I also found I could cut the number of LOD's. RT3 does a weird thing with LOD's. Locomotives drop down to the lowest (fifth) LOD while cargo cars are still on the second or third LOD, depending on viewing angle. This means the default cargo cars waste a lot of code, because there's no need for cargo cars to have 5 LOD's. By the time they get to the fifth one, cargo cars will look miniscule and the locomotive will have been on the lowest LOD for ages.

So I cut these cars down to 3 LOD's, dropping a stack of mesh really fast. They look fine in the game, and it means less code to run so it has to be better for performance. It's also easier for me, which I like.

They ended up looking like the shots. I reckon they're classy units, and I'm very happy with them.

New_pax_and_mail_1900_1925.jpg

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New_dining_1900_1925.jpg

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[RulerofRails]

Just to let you know that I have run the A era cars about a bit. Good work. I like how you decided to put the "fancy" car type as the Diner.

[Gumboots]

Yup, back in those days dining cars didn't exist, and often any salon car would be privately owned by some rich person. They'd just pay to have it hauled wherever they wanted to go. So I went with that vibe.

I still think the A era cars need a bit of tweaking. They're almost right, but not quite there. Skin balance is a bit off, and they could do with a little bit of detailing (handles on doors of standard pax cars, for example). Will play around with them and see what happens.

Have had a crack at the rest of the early pax, mail, dining and troop cars. These should be running in the game soon. They use the same PSD as the D era cars I've just done, and share quite a bit of mesh too. Troops starts later than the other express cargoes, so the four troop cars shown are 1848-1864, 1865-1889, 1890-1914 and 1915-1939.
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Troops_A_B_C_D.jpg

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The last one is the same model as the 1900-1925 pax car. IOW, the same model as the 1890-1914 troop car, but with the pax car's clerestory roof added. 1940 to 1964 will be a Pullman troop sleeper (boxcar conversion). These were actually based on a 50 foot car, but I'll be doing them as 60 foot just to fit better with the rest of the models.

Pax and mail cars shown are B to D eras inclusive: 1850-1874, 1875-1899 and 1900-1924. From 1925 they'll go to a more modern style (basic 75 footer, with rounded tail on dining car).
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Passengers_B_C_D.jpg

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Mail_B_C_D.jpg

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[Gumboots]

Ran a quick test of the E era cars, just to check out if my plan for 1925-1949 livery would work under RT3 game lighting. It works.
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Test_basic_E.jpg

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This is a basic job, done by cropping and resizing a profile shot of a model B&O pax car of the period, pasting that over the right sections of the default D era pax car skin, and dropping the result into UserExtraContent for a trial run. Took about ten minutes. Running on default D era mesh at the moment.

So it's good to go, but I'll give it a few tweaks. I'll ditch B&O text, so it doesn't shout "Baltimore!" when the train is running around some place on the other side of the world, because that sort of thing bugs me. Also have to make a round tail dining/observation car to complete the set, which will be easy and fun.

Anyway the short version is the pre-WW2 express roster should be fully sorted this week, barring Armageddon.

[bombardiere]

I like. Me happy.

. I'll ditch B&O text, so it doesn't shout "Baltimore!" when the train is running around some place on the other side of the world, because that sort of thing bugs me.

If you have finalised B&O version then can I have it as an option. Pretty please. Ok, I agreed it would look odd in Africa, but I like when it has a real life livery.

Is that your D version, three axle bogie, based on some real life prototype?

[Gumboots]

It's not finalised yet, just roughed out. I'll do it in combination with the F era car, since both will use the same mesh and UV mapping. The main differences will be that the E cars will be modelled as 75 footers, while F era and later will be 85 feet (IOW, stretch the mesh by 13%) and the F era dining car will have an observation dome on top (there is plenty of room for mapping that on the skin).

The D era car is based on a Pullman unit from the beginning of the 20th century, but there were so many minor variations of them that I felt free to just take the main dimensions and use those to develop my own model. I didn't get obsessive about it.

Edit: Got the B and C era pax, dining and mail cars running this morning. They look the business, IMO.
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Mail_Pax_Dining_B_C.jpg

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Will do the troops A, B and D cars tonight.

Edit: Got them done. Pack is over here - Gumboots' Dungeon of Evil thread.

[Gumboots]

Hey just for fun, as a no-brainer break from doing express cars, I tried throwing a rough skin on that model of the Milwaukee Class A Atlantic that I made a while back. I had been thinking it would be tricky to skin, but after giving it a bit of thought it turns out to be quite easy. This was all done by taking a profile illustration of the loco, and projecting the UV mapping onto the illustration via a straight orthographic profile view. That accounts for where it's a bit rough, like towards the centreline at the front where the illustration gets stretched around the mesh, but overall the results are surprisingly good. It's certainly a useful starting point for something better, and has given me some more ideas for how to tackle skinning.