steamboateng
New member
Building the NE Mass Route – page 5
Thanks to all
I'm taking a brief break from Surveyor to convey a few thoughts. First of all, a very sincere 'thank you' to all you content creators. Your dedication to the hobby and generosity in time and talent is a benefit to to the entire Trainz Community. Hats off to you all; lads, dads, maidens and moms. You have brought a little pleasure into my life with your contributions. And to be be truthful, I'm at a bit of a loss how I might repay you. For now, I suppose this simple note will have to do.
I'm no content creator, but I do fiddle with blender and can put out a decent model. Unfortunately, I have found, making the model is the easier part. Textures and mapping is what makes or breaks it!
AsTrainz has progressed through its many morphs, it introduced changes in coding and texture generation, in an attempt to accommodate more realistic texture effects in a more efficient format. The changes added a whole degree of complexity to the mapping process.
This in turn prompted a cloud of protest from established creators who wanted to keep the process simple, among other things.
Trainzers were confused, to say the least.
We lost many excellent creators.
To those who stayed the course, a special thanks
Meanwhile,a new generation of content creators has evolved. There are some excellent Russian, German, and Polish modelers who have made many fine contributions to the Download Station. You wouldn't think I could plunk Eastern European models onto a New England landscape. Surprisingly, I can! A good deal of 'generic content' can cross international borders and look right at home on any route.
Creating a piece of content for TS12 is an increasingly complicated affair.Creating a 'good' piece of content has to be, I would think, a work of pride and fulfillment.
Thank you all!
Route content
I'm fairly picky about what content goes into the route. I want the most visual bang for the least memory buck!. If I can get the effect I want with a farm house costing 300kb, you betcha I'm gonna scrap the one that costs 1mb. And so it goes. If you follow this series of blogs and check out the screen shots, you will see trees, bushes,buildings and vehicles changed out regularly as I refine my choices based on cost and visual impact. It will take several months to narrow down groups of content which fit specific scenes. This is not indecision. It's route building!
In the screen shot below, I have changed out some buildings as well as added/deleted vegetation. The brick buildings are close matches to what stood there many years ago.
Rockportcontent 01:http://i1251.photobucket.com/albums/hh557/steamboateng/Rockportcontent01.jpg
The next screen shot shows I have modified the station canopies to match a turn of the century photo. The station building and canopies are similar to what was there at one time.
Rockportcontent 02:http://i1251.photobucket.com/albums/hh557/steamboateng/Rockportcontent02.jpg
Thanks to all
I'm taking a brief break from Surveyor to convey a few thoughts. First of all, a very sincere 'thank you' to all you content creators. Your dedication to the hobby and generosity in time and talent is a benefit to to the entire Trainz Community. Hats off to you all; lads, dads, maidens and moms. You have brought a little pleasure into my life with your contributions. And to be be truthful, I'm at a bit of a loss how I might repay you. For now, I suppose this simple note will have to do.
I'm no content creator, but I do fiddle with blender and can put out a decent model. Unfortunately, I have found, making the model is the easier part. Textures and mapping is what makes or breaks it!
AsTrainz has progressed through its many morphs, it introduced changes in coding and texture generation, in an attempt to accommodate more realistic texture effects in a more efficient format. The changes added a whole degree of complexity to the mapping process.
This in turn prompted a cloud of protest from established creators who wanted to keep the process simple, among other things.
Trainzers were confused, to say the least.
We lost many excellent creators.
To those who stayed the course, a special thanks
Meanwhile,a new generation of content creators has evolved. There are some excellent Russian, German, and Polish modelers who have made many fine contributions to the Download Station. You wouldn't think I could plunk Eastern European models onto a New England landscape. Surprisingly, I can! A good deal of 'generic content' can cross international borders and look right at home on any route.
Creating a piece of content for TS12 is an increasingly complicated affair.Creating a 'good' piece of content has to be, I would think, a work of pride and fulfillment.
Thank you all!
Route content
I'm fairly picky about what content goes into the route. I want the most visual bang for the least memory buck!. If I can get the effect I want with a farm house costing 300kb, you betcha I'm gonna scrap the one that costs 1mb. And so it goes. If you follow this series of blogs and check out the screen shots, you will see trees, bushes,buildings and vehicles changed out regularly as I refine my choices based on cost and visual impact. It will take several months to narrow down groups of content which fit specific scenes. This is not indecision. It's route building!
In the screen shot below, I have changed out some buildings as well as added/deleted vegetation. The brick buildings are close matches to what stood there many years ago.
Rockportcontent 01:http://i1251.photobucket.com/albums/hh557/steamboateng/Rockportcontent01.jpg
The next screen shot shows I have modified the station canopies to match a turn of the century photo. The station building and canopies are similar to what was there at one time.
Rockportcontent 02:http://i1251.photobucket.com/albums/hh557/steamboateng/Rockportcontent02.jpg