Watercolor paintings as object textures?

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

A few months ago, while looking for photos of old trucks, I found a 1950's sales catalogue with watercolor pictures of the "latest" range of Fargo trucks.

I wondered if it was possible to make a decent-looking 3D model from a painting, especially since these images only showed the trucks from one viewpoint (oblique view from the front/side). As you can imagine, the mesh work and texture mapping was quite a challenge, but this is how it turned out. If anyone likes it, I'll try to upload it to the DLS.

~ Deane

p.s. the background setting is from George Fisher's lovely Cattaraugus Creek layout

 

[jadebullet]

Holy crap that is awesome. I will take some of those. Do you have any plans on making anymore because I definitely would be interested. Great job.

 

[gfisher]

Very nice truck. Way to go.

 

[grogstop65]

Beautiful work!

 

[lornyk5]

Looks great, please upload:wave:

Lorin

 

[Euphod]

I like that better than most textures, actually! Please do make more, and upload as well!

 

[seeseeme]

Great work Deane, you can put me down for some

Craig

 

[colhad]

Very nice Deane, a different way of texturing vehicles. I do think it looks very picturesque.

 

[JimDep]

That's a neat technique, Deane. You can load lots of sugar beets in the back 1950 or so truck! Fargo .... is that a fictitious auto maker?

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Thanks guys. It's definitely a retro look isn't it? I'll revisit the catalogue and see if any other paintings are suitable for the 3D treatment. Jim, no Fargo isn't a fictitious name; I don't know much about American branding, but I think it was somehow related to Dodge. I do remember seeing Fargo trucks even on Australian roads back in my childhood.

For this one, I've added an engine sound and nightmode for the head- and tail-lights (never done either of those things before, so this is new for me). As static scenery, everything works but as road traffic, nightmode doesn't function. Apparently that's a known shortcoming of '04 and '06 where you need a special script to make nightmode work on road traffic. Unfortunately I don't know nuffink about scripts..so the red-necks will just have to drive around with the lights off at night.

I've sent it to the DLS, which has mindlessly stripped the Era and Region information from the config (fallout from TS2009 ??). I have reported this, so we'll see if Lionel can fix it before it gets released.

~ Deane