Railworks America

If you want to learn I'll teach you and you can try to make some Mike.

Here's one I recently finished:



I have a few more in the works - some textured and others in various stages of development. Right now I'm struggling with balancing a good-looking model vs something that's "game-efficient". The above Mustang is about 1200 polys, but I'm not happy with some of the details and may just say what the heck and add a few more to the tires and grille.

What is everyone's thought on a reasonable poly count for scenery items? I usually low ball everything - including previous vehicles that were in the sub-200-poly range, but with today's hardware 1200 to 2500 shouldn't be too bad, yes?

Other vehicles in the works include a Ford Crown Vic (CHP/Sheriff), Ford F350 Econoline Van and Ambulance, Ford Focus, Ford Windstar, Chevy Silverado, Chevy Suburban, Honda Odyssey, Honda Accord, International School Bus and a Pierce Fire Truck. I wish to stick to mostly US vehicles, except I did make a couple of classic VW Buses that I hope to have finished tomorrow. I'll post more pics then.

Hack I love the new Mustang! I have been working on some 70's Fords,myself. Just a reminder for content creators to make cars designed for road traffic with "blurred" wheel detail,as i get to distracted by vehicles with "locked" wheels going down the road. My plan is to make more detailed foreground "parked" vehicles,and lower detail traffic versions.

Some will be released through RCAP, some as part of ScaleRoad, and others included with Tehachapi.

And as far as traffic, I like to spin the wheel texture instead of blurring. On a related subject, does the bug still exist in RW where traffic has textures reversed (text on buses, etc.)?

Hack wrote:Here's one I recently finished:

mustang2.jpg

mustang1.jpg

I have a few more in the works - some textured and others in various stages of development. Right now I'm struggling with balancing a good-looking model vs something that's "game-efficient". The above Mustang is about 1200 polys, but I'm not happy with some of the details and may just say what the heck and add a few more to the tires and grille.

What is everyone's thought on a reasonable poly count for scenery items? I usually low ball everything - including previous vehicles that were in the sub-200-poly range, but with today's hardware 1200 to 2500 shouldn't be too bad, yes?

Other vehicles in the works include a Ford Crown Vic (CHP/Sheriff), Ford F350 Econoline Van and Ambulance, Ford Focus, Ford Windstar, Chevy Silverado, Chevy Suburban, Honda Odyssey, Honda Accord, International School Bus and a Pierce Fire Truck. I wish to stick to mostly US vehicles, except I did make a couple of classic VW Buses that I hope to have finished tomorrow. I'll post more pics then.

Looks fine to me, for some scenery 1200 is decent, can't really get a vehicle much lower then that, my trucks are around 1500 poly.

Also can you make a classic VW Bug to go with that, I love the old Beetles, we used to have one.

Hack wrote:Some will be released through RCAP, some as part of ScaleRoad, and others included with Tehachapi.

And as far as traffic, I like to spin the wheel texture instead of blurring. On a related subject, does the bug still exist in RW where traffic has textures reversed (text on buses, etc.)?

Spinning is a better term than " blurring " that I used. I know your stuff will be great!

Hack wrote:Here's one I recently finished:

mustang2.jpg

mustang1.jpg

I have a few more in the works - some textured and others in various stages of development. Right now I'm struggling with balancing a good-looking model vs something that's "game-efficient". The above Mustang is about 1200 polys, but I'm not happy with some of the details and may just say what the heck and add a few more to the tires and grille.

What is everyone's thought on a reasonable poly count for scenery items? I usually low ball everything - including previous vehicles that were in the sub-200-poly range, but with today's hardware 1200 to 2500 shouldn't be too bad, yes?

Other vehicles in the works include a Ford Crown Vic (CHP/Sheriff), Ford F350 Econoline Van and Ambulance, Ford Focus, Ford Windstar, Chevy Silverado, Chevy Suburban, Honda Odyssey, Honda Accord, International School Bus and a Pierce Fire Truck. I wish to stick to mostly US vehicles, except I did make a couple of classic VW Buses that I hope to have finished tomorrow. I'll post more pics then.

Can you do a version with the hood propped up showing the 4.6 V8 under the hood?

I have a Mustang, :)

In my opinion, only vehicles placed very close to the tracks need to be detailed.
I'd suggest to make two versions: high-poly and low-poly. So route builders would mostly use low-polys for traffic and park an odd high-poly next to the tracks as eye candy.

Mind you, a low-poly carcan still look good if textured carefully.

The cinema industry does that with props and costumes -- for example there were dozens of standard Stormtrooper helmets in Star Wars and a few "hero" helmets for close-ups.

trkspd wrote:Can you do a version with the hood propped up showing the 4.6 V8 under the hood?

I included the textures for the engine and under hood detail, but I'm not sure I'll go that far on these models as they take too long as it is. Besides, the best photo I could find of a late model Mustang had a super charger. I'll probably have to take my own shots of a V6 and V8 engine bay at the local dealer.

Chacal wrote:In my opinion, only vehicles placed very close to the tracks need to be detailed.

That's what Level of Detail (LOD) is for. RW is pretty efficient at handling this and I could never understand some folks making two versions of the same thing - one high and one low, when all that's needed is one model with an good LOD structure. While the Mustang has 1200 polys at its closest LOD, the next LOD only has about 400 (drop the chin and rear spoiler, underside and some body work), then 125, and finally 32 at its furthest (I could probably cut this last one to less than half, however).

I had completely forgotten about LOD.

Well, it's not modern but it's going to be nice.

I'm working on a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air for the sim and it's coming along nicely.

Just to follow up on Hack's LOD comment. I just wrote this up on my blog:
http://thegradecrossing.blogspot.com/20 ... depth.html