I Think I'm Turning Japanese

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

My first locomotive featuring Baked Textures.

A rare sight - a two headed beast of burden on a 1% grade with 4000 Tons of coal in tow. The first locomotive has the (still being tweaked) baked texture maps (still missing all the finer details such as rivets and seams) - the second locomotive was all done the old fashioned way - by hand. Once you start baking there's really no going back. The baked texture work really doesn't come across all that well in the video but it does when you're in the sim. You no longer have to manually darken the stuff under the boiler - or - worry about parts that transition from light to dark - it's most obvious on the large pipe that feeds the cylinder and transitions through the running board - which is all shaded automatically now. Can't wait to go back and hit my old Mountains and Consolidations with a much needed overhaul.

LOL - the Consolidation dwarfs the Mikado in both size and tractive effort.


Beasts of Burden - 1.0% Grade - 4,000 Tons of Coal



Regards,
Scott

[slipperman]

Hi Scott,
Great video! Those locos have a wonderful sound and the drifts of steam look very realistic, but I'm waiting for the day when Open Rails gets the steam loco exhaust right!

Cheers,
Ged

[scottb613]

Hi Scott,
Great video! Those locos have a wonderful sound and the drifts of steam look very realistic, but I'm waiting for the day when Open Rails gets the steam loco exhaust right!

Cheers,
Ged

Hi Ged,

Thanks !


Yeah - I think our two biggest shortcomings on the ORTS Development Team - are a particle physics guy and an environment guy. Sure wish someone would turn up - as I don't think either aspect has been touched in years. Fingers crossed.

I can't take any credit for the sounds - that's all Derek Miller.

The smoke texture is by Marc Nelson.

Regards,
Scott

[conductorchris]

What Ged said - great video.

The baked texture is really strikingly better, although I can't put my finger on any one thing and your texture was already really good.

You are using reshade. It is interesting to see my hopper cars in reshade . . . it really highlights the color differences between the various black cars. I don't think it looks that good (referring to my work here, not yours). Especially running behind your locomotives. I'm not sure what my lesson is to do differently. Also interesting to see the lighter gray which we use in place of black and how badly it stands up in reshade.

Christopher
Christopher

[scottb613]

What Ged said - great video.

The baked texture is really strikingly better, although I can't put my finger on any one thing and your texture was already really good.

You are using reshade. It is interesting to see my hopper cars in reshade . . . it really highlights the color differences between the various black cars. I don't think it looks that good (referring to my work here, not yours). Especially running behind your locomotives. I'm not sure what my lesson is to do differently. Also interesting to see the lighter gray which we use in place of black and how badly it stands up in reshade.

Christopher
Christopher

Hi Christopher,

Yeah - many of the baked details are subtle but they do pop in the sim. The more obvious signs are on my pilot deck where the ladders and pipes cast shadows on it. I've actually been remapping much of my locomotive to better leverage the baking process. For the effect to work - you need texture real estate used only once - you don't want to use the same pixels to cover more than one object - or it won't work. So all the large surface areas are being moved to virgin texture locations. Smaller parts and edges I use texture swatches sparingly.

Yeah - I use ReShade - since I've been playing with foliage color - made it a bit darker - I'm running ORTS brightness at 150% or max - I think I forgot to change it and left it at 140% in the vid.

Don't sell yourself short - I really like this set and run them all the time. I take great liberty with my locomotive colors as there really not that realistic - I use many contrasting colors so the details pop out. That - and you can't tailor your textures for every environment a user may choose to run. I need to change my entire ORTS setup when I switch to something like Train Simulations Mullens Pass - as they used a much brighter world pallet and my normal settings don't look good.

That said - I don't know what you use or your experience painting - as I've said countless times - layer types are your friends - once you get the hang of the available types you can use - it opens a whole new world. I use PSP and if say one of your source photographs were washed out - load it as your base layer - than duplicate it above and then (in PSP and PS is similar) - change the layer type to "Multiply" - it then multiplies all the pixels below it by the factor of the Multiply layer - adjust transparency to taste. Personally - I would take whatever photographs were being used - make them greyscale - then apply the color using "Soft Light" - which has a look I like. Sometimes I need six different layer types all combined to achieve the result I'm looking for - you have to play. If you use PS or PSP - I included examples of both in that USRA Box Paint Kit I uploaded a while back.

Regards,
Scott

[conductorchris]

Thanks. I do use photoshop. I've never really used "multiply". I was actually just trying to fix an issue yesterday where it might have been useful in the way you describe. I started using "soft light" after seeing what you've done with it.
Christopher

[pwillard]

Keep in mind that Paint.net has a lot of the same features and native DDS.

[scottb613]

Hi Folks,

Countless hours of texture work - thousands of rivets, hundreds of bolts, all shaded - she's getting close. Baked textures using PovRay. All in the bare naked untouched light of ORTS plus ReShade (which is rare for me).


Mike1 by Scott B, on Flickr


Mike2 by Scott B, on Flickr


Regards,
Scott

[lineman]

Wow!!!

[scottb613]

Hi...

LOL - thanks - I need to stop running it - it's at the point now it's more fun to run than work on...


Still some more stuff I want to accomplish.

Regards,
Scott