ray_whiley
Active member
Covering acres of space with scenery - which is why I have come to prefer Virtual Model Railways.
Ray
Ray
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Towns/built up areas. I really hate doing these as unless you accept the fudge of placing down a few random houses can become a real time sink getting scenery done on urban routes.
Re gradients - can't say these ever trouble me. If I have the profile I'll use that for reference but if not I'll just average it over 1000 - 1500 metres (maybe less in the hills) and set the gradient tool accordingly.
Finding small buildings is tough I agree, but I've setup favorites with my authors I use often and know pretty much what they've created. Dave Snow and some others have some really nice buildings which are small enough to fit here and there and not all those gigantic ones which never seem to fit well. Building towns and cities is painful, I agree. I think in part this is due to having to align up each and every building one at a time instead of having a single click to make all building the same angle and same height.
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My biggest issue with making routes is separated into two categories, Prototypical Routes and Fictional Routes.
First off the issue I find with making prototypical routes is that they require lots and lots of custom made content, and depending on how much you need or how long that custom content is made, it can really bog down your route progress. Another issue I find that while DEM's are a excellent way to get started on making these routes Cascade made a great point that DEM's don't really give you the correct track gradients and it causes you to make a lot of edits to the ground terrain to get the correct level of gradient.
Then the issue I find with Fictional routes, well its very difficult to start making one right from the start. I remember it took me ages to figure out what I was going to do with to start making on (Should I start the route in a more mountain setting, or a city setting, or a more rural setting). Its only when I got the route pretty well started is when the creative juices start to flow, and it makes building fictional routes a lot easier to build once you have a starting point.
Surely amongst all the available content on the DLS it would be possible to find content that matches the period and style of the route you are modelling? Certainly, in the real world all stations, for example, will differ in some aspects of their design and/or construction. But does this mean that you have to create every building, every fence post as it actually was in real life? If that was the case, you would never finish a prototypical route. At least with historical routes where all the original buildings, even the old right of way, have long disappeared, no-one is going to criticise your selection of content. [I stand corrected - there will always be a few who will]
I agree. With prototypical routes you have track plans, photographs, maps, etc as your starting point. With fictional routes you only have your imagination ... perhaps that is the problem? But the hardest part I find with fictional routes is knowing when and where to stop. [Hmmm ... it could do with another tunnel here ... how about I extended it a bit further to put in another junction .... it needs more river crossings .... etc]
EDIT: I think Philskene has the right idea for fictional routes. Start by limiting yourself to a set number (the fewer the better) of baseboards and don't extend.
Having a theme is helpful here and then sticking to it. A fictional route can be just like a prototypical route except it's landscape is made up, and with a backstory and theme kept in context of the landscape, will make for a very convincing railroad.
DEM gradients aren't necessarily inaccurate and is dependent upon the underlying data to being with as well as using a 10 m grid instead of 5 meter with it's higher resolution. The other thing too is set the track spline points over longer distances rather than at shorter intervals and then approximate the grade in between with a smoothed track and landscape. The points you use in your track are based on the track profile and by measurements on Google Earth, which I found pretty close to what I found on the DEM and on the original topographic maps I used for my surface texture.
The issue though with prototypical routes is as you said content. Even if we find something that's similar to what is in the real place, we feel we're cheated because we know it's wrong. This is especially true of areas we know very well, and for that reason I found it difficult to work on my own hometown more than once when I tried building it.
The buildings too. There's so much good stuff out there, but it's difficult remembering the assets without renaming them manually in CM at the time of the download. This issue will hopefully be rectified eventually.
Getting too hung up with details. ... At one point I found myself putting rose bushes in the yard of a house six blocks from the nearest track. I don't know why. Nobody was ever going to see them.
You know they are there. You see them. You are the artistic creator.Getting too hung up with details. Once I get started I find it hard to stop. At one point I found myself putting rose bushes in the yard of a house six blocks from the nearest track. I don't know why. Nobody was ever going to see them.
It is almost as if you believe that you are creating a real world so everything, and I do mean everything, has to be perfect. You have to be a practitioner of the art of deception.
I use lo-poly assets (where available) for objects that are far from the track and only use the hi-poly assets close to the track. My favourite set of scenery houses is by sirgibby who has created 35 different houses with most of them supplied in normal, lo-poly and hi-poly versions. Most of these are already built in to TANE.
Other deception tricks include using the same buildings but orientating them so that a different side is seen from the tracks each time. Use of foliage to provide camouflage for lack of detail. Using textures to replace foliage in more distant scenes and to highlight gullies and streams.
I think you may have missed my point. It's more of an OCD thing with me.
Possibly, but it is always far too easy for anyone, OCD or not, to get carried away with the detail - I have been there, done that and I do not consider myself to have OCD.
It is not just the wasted time and effort simply because no one will ever see it that far out from that track, it is also the effects on frame rates and performance. This will be less of a problem to those of us who have the "latest and greatest" gaming rigs but for many (most) of us without that advantage, the techniques I included in my previous post will allow "the details" to be there without the penalties.