Lighthouse on the Rocks

I've now started to use all the ideas I've had (most of which are on this blog somewhere) and put them all together in one route. That was always my intention to have a single route where I could freely drive many types of vehicle.

The latest asset I created over lunch today was a little animated lighthouse. This was for my coastal area, and works well placed amongst the rocks.

The light beam node has simple linear rotation, and uses a basic AddATex shader to create the light itself.

Route Update

A quick screenshot update showing progress on my route. I haven't had time to build any new assets, so for the time being I'm simply populating the level. Originally I was going to plan the route layout. Boring. I found it was much more fun using the powerful tools to create the level and 'wing' it as I went along. Who knows what it's going to end up looking like?

Coastal Waves

Here is an example coastal area. The beach and water are simple terrain textures, and the waves are animated scenery objects. I opted not to use the default RailWorks water as it looks too realistic and didn't really fit with my art style. The clouds here are simple (but rather large) viewer facing quads.

Runway Loft

My runway was created as a loft so that I could have a variety of lengths and curves if need be. This following runway asset was possible using the start, middle and end geometry of the loft.
The start and end geometry (the number 09) are the same asset, whilst the middle geometry was simply a pair of runway lights (this was so the lights appear on the left and right side of the runway itself).

How to...Create "Editor-Only" Assets

There is a blueprint available for use called the Editor shape blueprint, that will only be rendered in editor mode. I've used this blueprint to help with the selection of an awkwardly shaped asset. My new clouds are simply huge viewer facing polygons, and therefore I wanted to create a visible bounding box around the cloud asset to help with selection.

Firstly I created a generic bounding box.

I then referenced this IGS in a "Editor shape blueprint". No visible friendly name is required here.

In the scenery blueprint for the cloud itself, I simply reference the "Editor shape blueprint" for the bounding box as a child object. So wherever a cloud is placed, a child object (the bounding box) is also placed.

Editor Mode:

Drive mode:

Air-crafty

Ok, so here is a quick update on what I've been up to recently. I'll go into more detail about some of the assets seen here at some point in the near future.

I've created a new type of vehicle for RailSimilarity to populate the skies.

It's a driveable vehicle, with flashing wingtip lights and animated prop.

To make the flight more convincing, I have also created a loop out of an invisible track for the aircraft to 'fly' along. I used the gradient tool to modify the track to allow a short section of the loop to be at ground level (covering the runway), and the remainder of the loop up in the clouds.

A new runway asset and I now have a working airport in my world.