Just A Wish For Reality

I stole this picture... Loved the dirty tanks in the foreground. Oh, how I wished more assets took on the characteristics of reality like this. Too many fine models are painted solid bright colors, popular in the Auran early days. "Perfection is the bane of reality".

Damn I swear that looks familiar, but where lol. But yes, dirty is good, sometimes. :hehe:

I couldn't agree more. Railroads are filthy and full of trash and oil and grime. I much prefer weathered loco's to those just out of the wash bay...

At first look, it looks common, but it really has some unique features. I haven't noticed one in any of my Trainz travels. I'm trying to remember if I have even seen one with pipes along the bottom. I would think that would be common enough in the real world, but whether anyone has modelled it, dunno.

The bridge was in another thread. I do not remember which one. Someone was, I believe, asking if there was a model in the N3V world. Lovcation possibly near Boston.
I was more attracted to the tanks and their condition.

Well location wise you got the first letter right. then add athurst.. That's Bathurst NSW. Pipes are a later addition. :hehe:

Adding noise, aka dirt, is one of the more difficult things to do and not something that happens with a few switches and sliders. I give the folks credit over Jointed Rail for doing this with a lot of their models. They have established, what I think, a level of quality that others should aim for.

Oh the bridge model... I responded in the other thread. There are similar rail bridges, not road bridges, that will work be putting a road on top of the bridge track. I've done this in a couple of places with success. The alternative, not mentioned in that particular thread, is to replace the track with a road. I did that with one of the Russian steel bridges to produce a road bridge and that worked quite well.

Actually I did exactly that, found a rail bridge that was close enough in appearance and laid the road on top, with a near perfect fit, thanaks.

Absolutely agree that weathering, both heavy and light, is essential to good models for any game, unless intentionally made to look 'clean'. You don't want to overdo it, too many super heavy weathered items can make the scene look just as fake.

Unfortunately it does take a bit of work to get weathering to look right, especially in 'generic' form (ie if you repeat the same object, you don't want the weathering to be too unique otherwise it is obviously being repeated).

Even very basic weathering, along the lines of dirt/dust/soot can help. But adding a bit of 'grunge' texturing (generally in the form of photo textures overlayed over the rest of the textures) can really make a model pop. This isn't specifically photo texturing, but simply photo overlays on existing textures.

A good example of this is actually the closest wagon in the photo (ex Victorian Railways JX cement hoppers). The dirt on it is very generic, minus the graffiti, which makes for good reference for weathering up such a wagon. A model weathered up like this would look reasonably good repeated a few times in the train, even if you have 2 or 3 different versions with slightly different weathering and different logo positions as shown in the photo.

These are also relatively lightly weathered wagons, compared to some wagon types (and compared to how they looked when painted VR wagon red, where the cement streaks/etc contrasted heavily with the paint!), but definitely not perfectly clean!

That said, it is very handy to have a few clean traincars, and similar, mixed in. Most railway companies will repaint wagons 'regularly' (amount of time changes depending on their repaint schedule of course ), generally after specific types of maintenance. On the VR from memory it was about every 5 years for most wagons, but it does mean you get cleaner wagons mixed into a lot of trains.

Regards

If you go here you will find a useful guide on weathering using layers in your paint program. Although it is an MSTS site the method is applicable here as I have used it. One still needs a bit of skill of course.

That top pic reminds me of Bradford, Pennsylvania...town in the north west region of PA. If you like to model areas combined with oil refineries, old buildings, Victorian houses, rivers, woods, hills and lots of trains, that's the place to go. The home of the world famous Zippo lighter museum.

I agree with Zec pointing out that scheduled repaints lead to one or two wagons that “pop” out and look vibrant among the rest of the consist. Even if a wagon is textured to be ex-works, there will still be very, very light signs of weathering often clumped around certain areas. Unless the wagon is literally only minutes out of the works, there will be a tiny bit of accumulation of dirt on the running gear and hinges or other crevices. IMO these add to the realism.
https://flic.kr/p/2iCQS8Q

I’m not sure what the N3V IM editor does but if it possible to upgrade the material to an FBX and give the object a whole new proper UV map, much of what was made can be salvaged.

JimDep said:

That top pic reminds me of Bradford, Pennsylvania...town in the north west region of PA. If you like to model areas combined with oil refineries, old buildings, Victorian houses, rivers, woods, hills and lots of trains, that's the place to go. The home of the world famous Zippo lighter museum.

Click to expand...

And Mr. Drakes first oil well. Sometimes we forget about Google Maps. It offers you the ability to actually "drive" down the the streets and see an entire town from (your own car). If you are seeking the traditional America, the entire northern tier of Pennsylvania offers a visual synopsis of an era.