Blasted Rock!

masontaylor

Assetz frae Scotland
Along with the buildings for the Kyle line, I've been spending quite some time experimenting with rockfaces. When the railway was extended from its original terminus at Stromeferry to Kyle between 1893 and 1897, it was the most expensive stretch of line ever built in the UK (at an average of £20K per mile) because so much of the route had to be blasted out of solid rock - 31 sections altogether. These rock cuttings lend the route much of its character, but pose a problem for creators using Trainz, which doesn't yet offer an inbuilt facility for capturing their steep sides and narrow gaps. Splines ought to be the answer, but to my eyes their unnaturally repetitive textures stand out far too clearly to look convincing.

What I'm trying to create instead is a batch of large rock chunks which can be assembled and overlaid in different ways to create a more random, natural impression. I have quite a good source of actual rock texture from the exact location, although even that is causing problems because it varies so greatly in colour, making the matching-up of the chunks more difficult than it ought to be. It's likely to be quite some time before I'm totally happy with what I've produced, though I'm almost convinced by the short section here....

Rockface1.jpg
 
The work you've done so far looks pretty decent! Keep going, I need spline models like yours ! :D

Finding this thread is fortuitous indeed. :wave:

I am modeling a Utah desert scenic route through Long Canyon and the branching canyons north northwest of Moab. I have found a couple of the Rock Arch models on Google 3D warehouse that I'm going to skin and export to Trainz 12. I am looking for someone that would be interested in either modeling some of the formation features from The Arches National Park, Bryce Canyon, and maybe some cliff faces (splines) with Utah-Arizona textures. :eek:

I am thinking of re-skinning some of SirGibby's cliff faces, but would rather create some more endemic looking work rather than fudge his models into looking like Utah rock-work...:p

If you would be interested in this project, or showing me what apps youre modeling in, I would really appreciate your help. I am very good at modeling terrain in Bryce 7, and am sure I could export from there to Sketchup and then into Trainz, or Blender to Trainz. I can also learn whatever app youre using if needed.

Let em know either here or in a PM?
 
Hi! Thanks for that - I was certain it would be useful to someone else at least.*

I use Gmax, which took some learning to begin with - a couple of false starts over a two-year period, but now I'm very comfortable with it.

As I mentioned above, I've tended to find that cliff splines as such look unnatural, because the necessary repetition of textures calls attention to their artificiality, so I'm trying to approach the problem from the opposite end by making sets of parts which can be assembled differently each time you extend them - overlaying and overlapping even a few sections gives far greater variety.

If you have some textures to hand and would like to see what they'd look like applied to what I've already done, then I'd be very happy to do that for you: PM me about it, and we'll see where we can go from there.

m
 
Back
Top