HOME MADE CONTENT CREATION

[BuzzKillington]

I've been busy creating some of my own harbor/wharf/seaside buildings during the last few weeks on my freelance route loosely based on Plattsburg, NY is starting to come together. One day, I'll figure out how to export these Sketchup polyhogs to Gmax or Blender to dumb them down a bit. So far, the content I've made hasn't disturbed the games overall performance (so far). There's several screenshots on my Flikr page if you have time to thumb through!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/87191374@N03/15446878936/in/photostream

 

[montanawestren]

David, this stuff is amazing, quite well done, quite frankly masterful, keep it up! Really like the Emporium Seafood.

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

The scenes look tremendous. You have the magic. I'd suggest before making too many more Sketchup objects that you work out how to "dumb them down a bit" as a first priority. It would be depressing to end up with a massive collection but not know how to make them more efficient. It's especially important because N3V's requirements on poly count and LOD's will only become more strict over time.

 

[SharkNose]

Oooh! I like! Very nicely done! :Y:

Andrew

 

[BuzzKillington]

Thank you very much for the kind comment!!

 

[BuzzKillington]

Thank you Andrew!

 

[BuzzKillington]

Agreed. As I stated, the assets haven't affected my performance, but it will eventually as more trees and other things are added to the route. Some brave souls downloaded the few assets I uploaded to DLS, which I apologize for uploading in such haste. I been following a blog on the exporting Sketchup to reduce the poly count and hopefully get these assets down to reasonable numbers. I'd like to upload them to the community eventually. And thank you for the nice comment as well!

 

[tume]

Thank you very much for the kind comment!!

Hallo ...

... and here comes an additional compliment from me too.

I agree with Dinorius_Redundicus!!!

But in my experiences it is not really efficient to create something in Sketchup to take it over eventually to gmax to make the finish e.g. to reduce polys. It is not too hard to work with gmax from beginning on and to use gimp (for example) to prepare the textures.

As you seem to make really nice looking scenery content, I would like to make you interested in the season change functionality of assets. Supporting this you could provide your nice content in summer and snowy times and so route builders could use it in a seasonal route. If you are interested in, I could help you about some questions how to create seasonal content.
If you would like to study some samples I recommend to have a look onto the nice seasonal assets from Dinorius_Redundicus. Just search for his seasonal content on DLS.

Also you could have a look onto this page to see how a full seasonal route looks like.

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/show...Simulation-of-%93The-Milwaukee-Road%94/page40

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/show...Simulation-of-%93The-Milwaukee-Road%94/page41

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/show...Simulation-of-%93The-Milwaukee-Road%94/page53


But again - your harbor/wharf/seaside buildings are really looking great. Keep up your work and please take the season change stuff just as a suggestion

Your's TUME

 

[davesnow]

Yes, for goodness sakes, learn Gmax. If an old guy like me can learn it I'm sure you can! :hehe:

 

[BuzzKillington]

I will give Gmax a serious go, Crabby Old Geezer...I too am old and you know what they say about old dogs. :hehe: BTW...like most of us, I got a bunch of your stuff waiting in the wings for my route if I ever get further along...someday.

 

[clam1952]

Agree with Deano and TUME great stuff, but watch the poly count, afraid the ones on the DLS are rather on the high side.

Just a suggestion, either use a cropped resized screenshot or one from PEV's images to TGA for the thumbnail, as the ones from the sketchup exporter do not do justice to your creations, or any one else's for that matter.

Keep up the good work, you obviously have a creators eye.

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Yes, for goodness sakes, learn Gmax. If an old guy like me can learn it I'm sure you can! :hehe:

..and cue the Blender crowd...

 

[BuzzKillington]

Thanks Malc...good to know...I was wondering about the thumbnail. Poly count is through the roof!! Ugh!! I'm given to understand that most of it comes from textures? Anyway, just downloaded Gmax and onto something completely different.

 

[BuzzKillington]

I understand people like to debate the topic around here. Surely, THAT thread is still active?

 

[Isegrinns]

Wow, impressive work, sire!

 

[BuzzKillington]

Thank you.

 

[martinvk]

Good to see a new creator join the ranks. If you can do that with Sketch, image what more you could do with proper tools. Since the look is all about textures, that is where I would concentrate my first efforts. You can read all about the GMAx vs Blender story in other threads. Suffice it to say that the learning curve is steep either way but the results are worth the effort. Being able to look at any real world object and say, "I could put that in Trainz" is a great feeling. Remember to start small and work your way up to more complicated objects. Every object made is a lesson worth learning.