Improved Visual Quality of Assets?

boleyd

Well-known member
I just browsed through the Store Front offerings of Dave Snow. They have character. That is, those are the real looking businesses that we might see in many towns throughout the USA. The varieties are almost endless so you can imagine being in one of those businesses at some time yourself. When used in towns along the track they are a significant addition to the ambience of the scene.

Where there seems to be a missing element is in houses. Many fine complex structures exist but they are mono-colored which makes them appear unreal. Considerable time was spent with the structure but there is no character to the house. I therefore wonder if there is some way to make houses in the same manner as the store fronts in terms of visual detail and reality. Perhaps rather than making a structure and using the paint can icon to finish it, an opposite approach might be to take a photo and make the asset to fit that photo.

Just to quell the usual remarks of "well, why don't you do it" - I don't want to. At my age gathering the tools and climbing the learning curve is something that is beyond my capabilities.
 
Which is exactly what I do now, although earlier models were admittedly not based on photos. Even a photo with poor perspective and obstructions in front can be edited and used with a little effort. I have a good file of shop fronts and houses to work on. (Sorry - UK prototypes only.)

Ray

PS I'm 85 and a bit so it's never too late!
 
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We want the models to be simple so that we can load up lots of them unlike business blocks which can be more detailed because there are fewer of them in place. Using a simple textures, these models load up faster because there is little in the way of extra details and higher resolution textures to push around. This is why I also find Dave Drake's models so great for large areas as well. In fact I have recently created a city using his old Cityscape series houses and business blocks.

The simplicity of the models lends to reskinning very easily as well. I took a couple of Dave Snow's houses and have reskinned them in different colors using the color replacement tool in old Photoshop. The process took about 5 minutes if that and the end result is quite nice.
 
Perhaps rather than making a structure and using the paint can icon to finish it, an opposite approach might be to take a photo and make the asset to fit that photo.

How about 'take a photo and make the photo fit the asset'? It's not difficult, for instance, to get a photo of a window and paste it onto the side of a house. Or French doors at the rear. Or get an image of roof tiles and paste them onto the roof. Or clapboard, brickwork or siding. Most image editing programs provide special effects which can be used to provide random detail, like aged paintwork, rendering or stonework. Special tools like stamp (custom brushes) or clone (copy brush) can provide very nice effects. It's not much of a learning curve, although it does take time to experiment and see what works and what doesn't. The effects collection for Paint.Net is huge, and easy to use.
 
There probably is a tutorial somewhere, that I can't fins, to tell me how to take a mono colored face of a house and texture it to look more realistic. Can someone point me to it? I just do not want to get into Photoshop or similar high end tools when all I want to do is improve the texture from solid bright colors to muted/weathered base colors with the usual defects produced my nature.

85 and still producing goodies. Wow! There should be an N3V award for you !
 
We want the models to be simple so that we can load up lots of them unlike business blocks which can be more detailed because there are fewer of them in place. Using a simple textures, these models load up faster because there is little in the way of extra details and higher resolution textures to push around. This is why I also find Dave Drake's models so great for large areas as well. In fact I have recently created a city using his old Cityscape series houses and business blocks.

The simplicity of the models lends to reskinning very easily as well. I took a couple of Dave Snow's houses and have reskinned them in different colors using the color replacement tool in old Photoshop. The process took about 5 minutes if that and the end result is quite nice.

But you have to bear in mind the overhead for each one. It used to be 300 poly equivalents for a mesh and 200 for a texture file and
I don't think its changed much so a more detailed model of two units together and they can have a fair space between them that are more detailed can actually be more performance friendly and even adding detail doesn't add that much extra performance penalty an extra fifty polys is only 10%.

Cheerio John
 
85 and still producing goodies. Wow! There should be an N3V award for you

My reward is the pleasure I get from Trainz, for having so many virtual friends through the forums, and in being able to continue creating models without having to mess around with card, craft knives, glue, little pots of paint, etc.

I agree with BuilderBob and frequently use individual bits of a photo, like a door or window, cutting and pasting it elsewhere. In fact it's often the only way of creating a realistic back for a building, as these are usually inaccessible. Another example is shop fronts - these can often be photographed in town when the higher parts of the building are photographically inaccessible. I have quite a collection.

Free texture sites on the internet can be useful. There may be a limit to the number of downloads permitted each day, and an acknowledgment of the source may be required, but the range available is enormous.

boleyd - I have never come across a tutorial on adding colour to a monochrome photo, such as those I used to take in the good old days of film cameras - again I have quite a collection, and it's given me food for thought! The first thing, of course, would be to scan the original print so that it can be used in a graphics program.

Digital cameras are a boon for modellers. Mine is very simple, dating back to 2003, but perfectly adequate for the purpose. The auto setting, not having to fiddle with exposure, aperture, etc. is essential in shopping areas when having to wait for the moment when the window gazers move on for a second or two. But even a photo with obstructions in front of the building can be used provided they can be hidden with borrowed or cloned bits. And straightening an out-of-perspective shot (like mine usually are) is just a few seconds work.

But others who already use photos to create building textures already know all this ...

Ray

PS please notice the editing of my earlier post which should have read earlier models were admittedly not based on photos.
 
Something I do quite often when people are walking about in front of a building is to take two or three shots without moving the camera, then combine the unobstructed sections to make the one picture, it works in quite a few situations.

Chris.
 
Here are my reskins of houses by Dave Snow. These haven't been uploaded to the DLS and are only in existence on my routes.

Using a simple color replacement from white to the other colors produced the painted houses in the pics here. They look pretty nice when surrounded by trees and stuff. This route was originally started in TS12 and recently brought into T:ANE. I'm still amazed at the draw distance and being able to see across the harbor now. In TS12 all that was invisible... Anyway, this was about the houses...




 
If you will pardon my being critical.
Note how the detail washes out when the "brilliance" (or whatever)is set too high. Same area in shadow reveals detail. Then all of the boards and other surfaces are perfect. But the front steps side surface is quite real looking due to color variations. The bricks are quite good. With TANE capable of reproducing some very good detail it would be nice to see shadows under clapboards, perhaps some staining along side the drain pipe, some areas of the boards slightly darker which would account for sun bleaching but a tree shadow blocking the noon sun.etc. Models are great but they still look artificial.

What are the steps to get too where you can alter a color and then repackage the asset for TANE? I would like to give it a try.
 
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What you have to bear in mind, Dick, is how far away you intend your model to be in the scene. There is no point in adding all that detail if the nearest you are going to be is 100 yards or more away. In real life we can be attracted to a house, for example. It is only when we look at it closely that we see all the repair jobs that it would require. We are all guilty of adding details where they are not really required, and then require several levels of LOD to bring the model down to a more respectable efficient size.

However, if the building is close to trackside and likely to be viewed 'up close' then the more detail the better.

The problem for the creator is that you always tend to look at an object 'up close' when making the model and strive for perfection.
 
We are all guilty of adding details where they are not really required, and then require several levels of LOD to bring the model down to a more respectable efficient size.
OP is not talking about detail in the mesh. The discussion is about adding realistic detail for the textures used in the asset. Increasing the detail in the textures involves NO performance penalty and can be very effective at providing realism. Increasing the size of the image to get more detail does involve performance considerations, but they are small compared to increased poly counts. Extra realism through additional detail in the images is something that should always be encouraged because it can make a big difference in a route at no performance penalty.
 
Yes, I was referring to textures to enhance the asset. The excellent house splines on the DLS are fine for background. But in a lot of towns the houses are close to the track since it was a central reason for the town in the first place as a stop on the railroad. The better texturing there is very evident.

If you are careful With the Environment settings the wash out of bright areas can be reduced without sacrificing other areas. There are some tanks that have nice texturing but they wash out easily. Environment can bring some back.
 
Something I do quite often when people are walking about in front of a building is to take two or three shots without moving the camera, then combine the unobstructed sections to make the one picture, it works in quite a few situations.

Yes, Chris, that often helps and I have done this too. the big problem is when people plant shrubs in their front gardens and you like the look of their house for a model! Some judicious cutting and pasting is then the only option. I will have to do this with my next mode,l of a rural cottage,

Of course, for a distant shot inclusion of the shrub on a "flat" model wouldn't matter and could enhance it.

Ray
 
If anything we don't need detailed house fronts, and instead more details for the back side of the houses and buildings. Keep in mind we're whizzing by in trains on tracks which are placed between alleys, along the wooded fences and back yards, and it's rare that we would catch a glimpse of the street-face of the building in high detail.

What we should do is actually clutter up the back of the house with shrubs, fences, and gardens to hide the cleanliness that we have on our routes. The problem is getting permission to photograph someone's backyard, or the back of some commercial properly is more difficult than snapping a pickie of the side facing the street so we have to wing it and make do with what we've got.

There was an article on this I think in Model Railroad Craftsman probably 25 or 30 years go on this which showed an example of a rail line up in New York State somewhere with the tracks running behind the main street buildings. I remember the article, but the magazine is long gone from my collection.
 
If anything we don't need detailed house fronts, and instead more details for the back side of the houses and buildings. Keep in mind we're whizzing by in trains on tracks which are placed between alleys, along the wooded fences and back yards, and it's rare that we would catch a glimpse of the street-face of the building in high detail.

What we should do is actually clutter up the back of the house with shrubs, fences, and gardens to hide the cleanliness that we have on our routes. The problem is getting permission to photograph someone's backyard, or the back of some commercial properly is more difficult than snapping a pickie of the side facing the street so we have to wing it and make do with what we've got.

There was an article on this I think in Model Railroad Craftsman probably 25 or 30 years go on this which showed an example of a rail line up in New York State somewhere with the tracks running behind the main street buildings. I remember the article, but the magazine is long gone from my collection.

John, I was about to post almost exactly what you have said. For the most part, as we travel along the rail lines, we see the backs of houses, but the texture is usually the same as the front. With Tafweb's (Terry Frank's) permission, I have re-worked the backs of his Edwardian houses, using good photo-realistic textures of actual houses in North London. The houses are the actual ones that are positioned along the very same line that I am working on. Since the line is now a public walkway I was able to take the photos easily.

Unfortunately this version of the Edwardian house did not make its way into ECML, and since ECML is protected, they can't be updated. There are some of my Victorian houses with the more realistic back views over the area of the Widened Lines and just south-west of Finsbury Park station.

In my own version of the route I have replaced all the houses. Thank goodness for global replace!

BTW, Terry's houses were created in UTC days, but for the most part they still hold up. There must be thousands of them in the ECML route.

Mick
 
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I always make sure that any buildings I make have backs which are not the same as the front, often by cutting and pasting doors and windows into a different position, perhaps altering the dimensions, or borrowing from elsewhere. I think this is especially important for shops where a shop front back (sounds odd but that is the only way to describe it) is the same as the street view.

I agree completely about clutter, shrubs etc. at the back but feel that this should be left to the use to choose from what is available or can be made. The same house can look quite different with a different shed, greenhouse, plants, fence, dog kennel, garden frame, and so on. Perhaps there's a need for more bits and pieces as well as buildings.

Ray
 
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