Rail Similarity

Editor Video - Creating Mountain Roads

2010-01-17T22:26:00.005Z

Here is the video as promised. The final route is a little rough around the edges, but the process remains the same.

Mountain Pass

2010-01-17T08:19:00.003Z

A couple of videos showing the new mountain pass. The tools in RailWorks make this so easy to do. Main tools used here are the 'snap to track' terrain tool, and the loft offset tool for creating those wall crash barriers.

When I get a spare moment, I'll blog how I created this route in more detail. I'll also follow with high-res screenshots.

Vintage Cyclist

2010-01-12T07:00:00.005Z

This was an idea I was playing around with last night. This is an old mesh I built a while back to experiment with lo-fi character design.

The old fella is a slight change to the original art style; I think the original characters on here, although simple and easy to re-skin, were not very strong character designs.

I quite like the style of this new 'vintage cyclist'. There are no smoothing groups, with the character model faceted. Once again, no skinning here, just simple nodal animation.

I think it's got legs.

Waterfall Scene

2010-01-04T13:40:00.005Z

Here is a brief glimpse of the new waterfall asset I created over lunch. I'll follow later with more details on how it was created.

Sandy Plains

2010-01-04T08:26:00.006Z

A quick desert scene. The blobby shadow underneath the fir trees work well pinning them to the terrain.

Fir Tree

2010-01-03T09:25:00.000Z

Another year, and another post. I had a bit of spare time over the holidays, enough to build a new tree. This fir tree has no stencil shadow, nor cel shaded outline. This was due to the use of transparency. I could have put the outline in the texture itself, but it looked too harsh and solid.

This shows the simple structure of the new fir tree. The tree uses the simple TexDiff shader with transparency to create the branches/needles.

Farm Videos

2009-10-28T23:31:00.001Z

A couple of farm videos, as promised.

On the Farm

2009-10-28T13:40:00.004Z

My Farm. You may notice a whole host of older assets, the picket fence, the voxel sheep etc. All fit perfectly on the farm. I have three overlapping driveable loops around the farm. Once again I've used invisible track for this to make the paths of the vehicles appear more random. Currently I have AI tractors driving on two of the loops and the player driving on the other. I'll upload some vids to Youtube later tonight.

Farm Assets : Barn and Tractor

2009-10-27T23:59:00.000Z

Another themed area I wanted to include was a farm area (hence the tractor). Here is the tractor shown in the editor this time, along with a new asset for a barn. I think I'll need a windmill asset soonish, animating nicely in the wind.

Cycling through Sunflowers Video

2009-10-27T20:40:00.003Z

And here's a quick video showing the new sunflowers.

Sunflowers

2009-10-27T20:28:00.004Z

During le Tour, you will always see the classic shot of the peloton riding past endless fields of sunflowers. To create that shot in RailSimilarity I'd need to get dirty with the procedural flora (grasspack.ace) and terrain textures to create myself a sunflower.

Here's the classic shot.

To recap, the procedural flora (if enabled of course) is a bunch of code created cruciforms that get placed on the terrain in the near-ground. They alpha out (fade out) over a short distance to keep the performance overhead down. Each terrain texture (the texture on the ground) can have an associated flora texture if desired.

Initially I created a simple terrain texture for the ground. This will be visible underneath the procedural flora. Remember that this will also be the texture that will be visible once the flora fades out in the distance.

Then I modified the grasspack.ace to include my sunflower. This will be the texure that gets mapped onto those little procedural flora cruciforms. This looks crude, but once it has the correct alpha channel and mapped onto the cruciforms, it works a treat.

Tractor

2009-10-23T21:56:00.002+01:00

I used to love tractors when I was a kid. So, you could say that I'm an ex-tractor fan. Sigh. I got a chance to finish a new vehicle earlier. Ok, here is a render of the tractor for my rural area.

Editor Video - Creating 'le Tour'

2009-10-20T21:59:00.008+01:00

Another editor video, this time showing how I created the Champs-Élysées route in RailWorks. This route is created within RailWorks using the in-game toolset. I've also created my own bespoke assets for the route and imported them via the supplied tools.

The steps in the video are :

- Go into Editor mode and create a circuit loop of cobbled road. This is a scenery loft and NOT a track loft. This is only used for the visuals, and the vehicles will not drive along this loft. This scenery loft has crash barriers populated along it.

- Place the Arc de Triomphe in the middle of a roundabout.

- Lay a few sections of scenery loft outwards from the roundabout, this time without any barriers populated along the length.

- Place a line of trees, copy them and place on the other side of the road.

- Lay a complete loop of invisible track. This is the track that the vehicles will actually drive along. Having this track seperate from the cobbled road allowes you to create a path where the vehicles do not always drive down the centre of the road. The invisible track is visible in the video to help with placement, but once you are happy with the layout, it can simply be made invisible through a texture swap.

- Position a collection of vehicles on the invisible track. I wanted gaps in between the cyclists, so I created an invisible vehicle. This invisible vehicle allows the entire group of vehicles to remain coupled together, but allowed for a visual gap between some of them.

- Populate the route with real 3D buildings and place some fake 2D buildings in the distance.

- Place the Eiffel Tower.

- Position lots of clouds in the sky.

- Go into Drive mode and click on the group of vehicles. Start driving the vehicles.

- Press '1' to see the game from the 1st-person view.

- Et Voilà!

Cycling Video 3 & 4

2009-10-16T20:52:00.004+01:00

Two more videos, showing the cyclist on the cobbles of the Champs-Élysées. This time joined by other cyclists. It's worth noting the the other cyclists (the non-player controlled ones) are AI controlled.

Paris Skyline

2009-10-16T20:14:00.003+01:00

Here we have a few shots of Paris. I played with the scale of the buildings and landmarks until I got the skyline I wanted. There are only a few unique assets used here, but used over and over a lot. Once again simple but effective. Hopefully I've captured the Parisian style.

Paris Cafes

2009-10-12T21:41:00.005+01:00

I spent a few hours over the weekend creating two buildings to represent the shops and cafes of my Paris street. Once placed in the route, despite their simplicity, the two buildings seem to work well allowing huge areas of the city to be blocked out quickly.

Cycling Video 2

2009-10-11T11:41:00.002+01:00

Video number 2 of the cyclist riding up the Champs-Élysées. Complete with 1st person view :)

Cycling Video

2009-10-10T18:16:00.002+01:00

As promised, the first video of the cyclist in Paris.

le Tour de France

2009-10-08T21:15:00.004+01:00

As mentioned in a previous post, I have made some progress with my road-race assets. You might recognise my take on a famous French landmark.

The new assets in this scene are a cobbled road loft, a monument and padded crash barrier. The asset for the padded crash barrier was created as a pair and populated either side along the road loft using population geometry. Simple really. Videos to follow...

Bicycle, Bicycle

2009-10-06T22:05:00.008+01:00

Here's a sneak look at what's next. It had to arrive at some point, but finally a cyclist is soon to appear in my RailSimilarity world. The current plan is to create assets for an entire roadrace over the coming weeks. I've even given him a set of Mavics.

Editor Video - Creating an F1 Circuit

2009-10-05T14:05:00.014+01:00

I've created a very basic movie showing the construction of a simple racing circuit using the RailWorks toolset.

The steps in the video are :

- Enter editor mode and create a section of track
- Close the loop of track, remembering to use the weld tool.
- Using the offset tool, place two lofts along sections of two of the corners.
- Place a driveable vehicle on the track.
- Spray a new terrain texture down
- Modify the terrain shape
- Enter drive mode, and drive the vehicle along the track
- Enter editor mode, and add some more assets
- Enter drive mode once again and marvel at your new route :)

For this example, the track happens to be tarmac, and the locomotive happens to be a racing car. As I've said many times before, we don't need to restrict this simulation to locomotives on rail track. Use your imagination.

Aeroplane Video

2009-10-04T21:17:00.004+01:00

Here we have the aircraft, setup as a loco and driving along an invisible track. The track varies in gradient and altitude to give a more convincing 'flight' path.

Truck Video

2009-10-02T19:24:00.005+01:00

A video showing the articulated truck driving the route. The truck and trailer are setup as a loco and wagon. This allows the two to be coupled and uncoupled correctly, and allows the articulation seen in the video.

Lighthouse on the Rocks

2009-09-24T21:55:00.005+01:00

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

2009-09-22T20:25:00.009+01:00

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

2009-09-16T07:00:00.001+01:00

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

2009-09-15T13:20:00.007+01:00

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).

Right-click on the following link and choose 'save as' to download a blueprint of the runway loft.

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

2009-09-14T12:38:00.001+01:00

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

2009-09-13T13:27:00.000+01:00

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.

Dam Wall

2009-06-19T21:31:00.033+01:00

I've just built a new asset for a dam wall. This will easily allow me to have different areas of flat terrain at varying heights, and will allow impressive views from the top.

The dam consists of 4 assets:
-the wall and railing; created using a loft xsec
-the wall and railing end caps; positioned using start or end geometry references
-the wall supports; the middle geometry asset reference
-the pipe outlet; a clutter asset positioned by hand

The Middle geometry and Start (and End) geometry.

The pipe outlet. This asset has scrolling UV animation applied to get the water to appear to flow out of the pipe. I've also cheated by having two layers to the water. The inner layer does not animate, but has a specular material applied. This provides the base colour and highlight to the water. The outer layer has a simple additive material which has the scrolling water surface.

The complete loft.

I've also created a new particle effect which creates the bubbles at the base of the pipe outlet.

Animated Level Crossing

2009-06-16T07:26:00.001+01:00

I was thinking recently about how to create an animating level crossing. Currently the codebase will need extending to get the crossing barriers to activate with an approaching train.

Here is my dirty hack (solution).

This is an entirely art based solution using LOD functionality. As we all know, the LOD code will swap geometry depending on distance to camera. So I've created a level crossing, where the gates are closed in the nearest LOD and open in the distant LOD. Currently, the gates pop between the open and closed positions, but many more LODs could be inserted between these two current LODs to make the gates move more smoothly.

Thinking along these lines, there could be many other uses for the LOD functionality:

- Static people, who start waving as the train or camera gets near
- Grazing cows, who look up as the camera or train gets near

I'm sure there are other uses than simply using LODs to swap different resolutions of geometry.

AI traffic

2009-06-15T20:04:00.003+01:00

Over lunch today, and with the assistance of a Random RailSimmer, I created my first AI traffic in RailWorks. And it's easy.

Previously in RailSim, I'd always shied away from anything other that the art assets because I feared it was too complex, but after a quick read of the Wiki, I found it very powerful and easy to set up. I now have multiple AI vehicles whizing about the route.

Also, as you may gather, things have calmed down in work after an understandably hectic period. I now have the odd lunchbreak and evening free to concentrate on my own projects once again. So things will start to pick up on here after a very quiet period.

Road Update

2009-06-08T21:58:00.004+01:00

I've created a slightly improved road and road junction asset.
Previously the centre white line would break up as the polygons would intersect over the road junction. I've created a new cross-section which has the centre white line overlaid as polygons rather than a white stripe in the source texture. Now the centre white line polygons intersect cleanly without breakup.

Sports Zone

2009-05-13T08:34:00.003+01:00

Been very slow on here recently, due to working all hours. So very late last night, I decided to build a couple of new assets for myself.

The simple stadium and statue will be used in a recreational area/zone of the route. Looking at these shots this morning now makes me realise I'm gonna have to create a driveable blimp to hover over the stadium.
I'm quite pleased with the stadium at night. Using a simple 'Tex' material for the interior ensures it always looks lit regardless of the environment lighting. The floodlights and their glows are illuminated at night using 'night nodes'.

Road Clutter

2009-05-05T22:18:00.009+01:00

In the middle of a very busy work period, I decided to give myself the first night off in many weeks. And what do I end up doing? Some new Rail Similarity assets. I sometimes feel like I'm married to 3DSMax.

I've spent the last few hours knocking up these new clutter assets for the road network. Once again, simple assets and quick to make. The 'zebra crossing' beacons flash on and off using simple animated textures. The markings on the 'zebra crossing' are a simple quad overlay using transparency.

I've included a 3DSMax render to show them in their full glory.

Spring Cleaning

2009-04-14T22:14:00.003+01:00

The more observant amongst you might notice that I've re-skinned the blog. I was fed-up with the standard blog layout and wanted to make use of more screen space. The only way to do this was to go deep and dirty into the HTML.

I've hacked and butchered the HTML (and learnt a few new bits of syntax along the way) and the layout is now finally complete. I may still play around with the artwork and colour scheme, but the layout will not change any time soon. Hope you like it.

Road Network

2009-03-28T08:07:00.019Z

Recently, I have been trying to improve the complexity of the road layout by adding junction assets.

With rail track, this is a simple problem to solve, as the junction assets consist of two elements; ballast and rails. With roads however it required a bit of experimentation to come up with junction assets that would work correctly and provide the 'clean' look I was after.

Here is the cross-section for the road junction asset. The junction asset must contain two nodes called 'Ballast' and 'Rail' (both case sensitive) for it to render correctly across the junction. In my road junction asset, you can see the 'Ballast' asset represents the tarmac, and the 'Rail' (not used in this case) is simply hidden below the road.

With a very subtle hump in the centre of the road (see the cross-section above), the road polygons cleanly intersect one another without any z-fighting issues.

I've also placed small 'filler' assets at the apex of the internal corners to help with the visuals. This is the result in-game.

Eastern District

2009-03-24T05:50:00.009Z

Here are a few screenshots to give a flavour of the Eastern District. The only new assets here are the overhead banners stretching from building to building. These simple assets are double sided and mapped so they can be viewed correctly from both the front and back.

And at dusk...

And here is a similar shot showing the monorail cutting through the centre of the cityscape.

Tower Blocks

2009-03-23T22:04:00.008Z

I've also been busy building a few er...buildings. Tower blocks more precisely for the Eastern District in my route. Once again these are very simple assets, low polygon count and low texture resolution. These will be used in the centre of town, where neon signs and billboards will be the dominant features.

For the banners and fake logos, I've used a cool free font (called Massive 10 K) by Keisuke Asami. It seems to perfectly suit the style I was after. So thanks Keisuke Asami for the work on the font.

Monorail - Maglev

2009-03-23T21:43:00.013Z

I'd always planned on creating a monorail as that type of vehicle would allow a higher viewpoint/perspective of the route below.
I'd seen some cool photos/movies of the 'Maglev' and a work colleague suggested I make one. This is my intepretation of it.

Once the main engine was built, to build the passenger cars (and I'll make no secret of this) I simply sliced the back-end off the model and mirrored it to create the passenger car. I won't be putting text on the sides of this loco so it didn't matter that the mapping was mirrored front to back. It's a very dirty and cheap method, but works perfectly in this instance.

The track was a simple loft cross-section asset with the concrete support posts setup as population geometry.

Distant Buildings

2009-03-23T20:29:00.004Z

As I don't intend on building a vast huge sprawling route (this route will be small and detailed), I needed a cheap asset that I could place in the distance and give the illusion of distant objects. This seems to work well. I opted for a scenery object rather than a loft because I wanted night nodes that would illuminate the windows at night.

Here is the single asset. It's a single polygon and uses a texture with transparency.

Screenshot update

2009-03-12T21:10:00.004Z

Been busy recently so just a quick screenshot update. I think the next major job will be to sit down and plan the route to give me some idea on what assets are needed for where.

Seasonal variations

2009-03-05T13:20:00.002Z

Just a quick test to see how things look at night-time and during winter. Below are three screenshots showing the same scene at different times of day, during summer and winter seasons. The path and snow-mounds are part of the house model, so it makes for easy placement in the route.

Characters

2009-03-03T21:14:00.014Z

Here is a render of some of the characters I've been working on. So far, I have created an old man, a couple of business men, a cyclist and a girl.

I'll be the first to admit, I'm not an animator. I don't know how to 'rig', paint vertex weights, or even create a realistic looking character mesh. I believe that whole area is a skillset in itself and if you've ever seen my animations, I think you'd agree that I'm wise leaving all that complicated stuff to those animator boys.

For Rail Similarity, I wanted a very simple character mesh, one that I could easily re-skin over and over, and one that even I could 'animate'. I chose a very old school approach, and made it from segmented nodes.

Because of their blocky appearance, the end result almost makes them look like papercraft (Pepakura). I must try making one of these characters out of paper at some point.

Once I'd mapped a single character mesh, the re-skins themselves were very easy to create. I'm pleased with the variety I can get from the single mesh. I have cheated though by adding a simple accessory to a few of the characters; umbrella, briefcase, balloon.

Here they are in Rail Simulator :

Night-time update

2009-02-24T23:36:00.006Z

Just a quick update to show how the experiments with 'night-time effects' are going. This effect uses a simple additive material applied to the night node of the house. The night node gets switched on or off depending on whay time of day it is.

I particularly like the effectiveness of the wall light on the side of the house. Once again. it's a simple effect, with the additive floor glow sliced in half and placed part on the floor, and part on the wall.

Truck update

2009-02-22T20:26:00.012Z

The road truck is now setup and working as a driveable vehicle in Rail Simulator. I've also taken the base mesh of the road truck and created a racing truck from it. Removal of the roof aerofoil and a quick re-skin made it a very quick job. I now need to do a proper skin for the truck and trailer instead of the placeholder. Here's a max render showing the two truck types.

The articulation between the truck and trailer works a treat as can be seen in this screenshot from the game.

You may also notice, that I've added two 'small' exhaust pipes behind the cabin on both truck types. These have smoke emitters attached which were easily placed and linked as children in the asset editor.

I like trucking

2009-02-17T21:34:00.007Z

I like trucking, and I like to truck.

Earlier today, over a coffee and a biscuit, it suddenly dawned on me that Rail Simulator would be perfect for articulated trucks. Think of a simple loco towing a single wagon and you've got the truck and the trailer.

Imagine selecting your truck, then reversing the truck into the trailer park to pick-up your trailer (using the couplings) before you then drive off in your truck with your trailer in tow.

Screenshots of Suburbia

2009-02-14T22:01:00.002Z

I thought it was about time for me to create a few screenshots showing a more complete scene rather than showing more individual assets. Working without any schedule, it's easy to start to drift into creating random assets, and I find creating these little scenes every now and again helps me to focus. It also allows me to experiment with the setup/placement of assets, and it highlights which will be the easiest method for creating the routes efficiently.

You may notice a few characters in the screenshots. These are intentionally 'blocky' for two reasons: they match the art style, and they are generic enough to allow quick re-skins to create the variety that I want. I'll post more details on characters very soon.

I've created a 'fake' platform loft which I've placed alongside the road. This is used to control the spawning and placement of characters on the pavement. I've created a another loft for the pavement purely for the visuals. Creating a 'platform marker' along the nearby section of road allows the bus to pull up, and the passengers get on or off the bus.

Fruity fruity

2009-02-11T22:43:00.007Z

I've also created a smaller fruit tree as an animated scenery blueprint. This tree has the same gentle swaying animation as the larger tree, but with additional animated falling fruit.

Each tree has around six static fruit positioned around the base. Another fruit is animated to fall from the treetop to the ground using a simple looping animation.

This asset is really effective once multiple trees are placed alongside one another. In Rail Simulator, the 'auto-animations' all start on random frames, so in this case the fruit all fall at different times (and NOT all at the same time). Some of the falling fruit can be seen in this screenshot.

Train and trees

2009-02-09T21:45:00.012Z

Just a quick update the show the Class 166 amongst the trees. I'm pleased with the trees. Simple, cheap but effective.

You can't see it in these images, but in-game the trees sway gently in the breeze...

Tree

2009-02-09T21:19:00.014Z

I'm now starting to think about assets other than the vehicles themselves. I'll create a number of items of foliage to add a bit of variety (trees, shrubs and hedges). Here is a tree to show the style I'm adopting for the trees.

The upper dome of the tree has and inner and an outer part (both elements using transparency at the bottom edge). The inner element is simply a smaller dome with inverted face normals and has a darker texture applied. I've also added a few stray leaves again using transparency. I've also applied a few keyframes to these trees to get them gently swaying.

The in-game tree should be very similar to the one seen above in the 3DSMax mock-up with one exception; the in-game stencil shadow will be a more simplified shape.

At the moment, I'm tempted to try the voxel approach for the hedges. I'll obviously show any progress with this idea on here. I'm also thinking of creating the hedges as two asset types; lofts and stand-alone assets.

Train - Class 166

2009-02-09T19:59:00.000Z

I've finally got around to creating a locomotive for my world. This is the first vehicle I've created with bogies (as all the other vehicle blueprints I've used were referenced as fixed axle vehicles). It's slightly more complex setting up the bogies but nothing too difficult.

Now that this loco is complete, I realise in hindsight that I chose a tricky loco to stylise. As the real train is a simple tube with very little in the way of features, I found it difficult to add character to this super-deformed model. I've simply exaggerated the headlights, body width, shortened the length (by a long way) and gave the loco a beefed up exhaust. I'll add more in-game screenshots later.

Aliens have landed...

2009-02-04T12:58:00.016Z

They have finally landed. And they are stealing our sheep.

This UFO is a driveable vehicle, on a track (but this time the track is simply lowered below the terrain so that it's out of sight). I could of course create a new track which is invisible, but it might get messy when trying to find and select an invisible track should I wish to edit the placement.

I created a new 'flying' sheep which has a simple bobbing animation on it. This new sheep is linked to the UFO via a child reference in the vehicle blueprint. I could then easily adjust the height position of the sheep.

The UFO has a simple animation applied to it (it simply rotates and bobs about a bit). On the UFO itself, the lights flash using simple texture animation and the abductor beam below has additive alpha and simple scrolling UVs on it to move the dust particles upwards.

It's very simple, but works very well when animating in-game. I'll probably post more images when I get the time.

Now if only I had a crop circle...

Voxel Sheep

2009-01-29T22:32:00.003Z

These are the latest addition to my ever growing browser book. As you can see, I've used the 'faked' voxel technique (described here) for their wooly coats, and I'm pleased with the result.

And another screenshot showing the new egg yolk sun texture.

Clocks

2009-01-28T21:05:00.004Z

I've been playing around with the environmental assets of my RailSimilarity world. I've created new stylised artwork for the following assets: cloud layers, sun, moon

To make my job easier I modified the 'time scaler' function in the 'Time Of Day' blueprint. This value simply accelerates or decelerates the day cycle (the transition from day to night and back again). The default value for this is 1, but I've set mine to 500 to speed things up a bit. So much so, the sun and moon speed across the sky in a comical fashion, and the stencil shadows move dynamically across the terrain.

And as Rail Simulator supports realtime clocks (which tell the correct in-game time), as a little side task I created myself a clock asset to place in the route. That way I could easily see the in-game time of day as I was experimenting.

The sky at 5:33pm

The sky at 9:32pm

Racing Circuit Screenshots

2009-01-27T21:35:00.004Z

And here are a few in-game screenshots showing the Lotus out on the track. Notice the twin exhaust particle emitters.

Formula 1 - Lotus type 49b

2009-01-27T20:28:00.004Z

Here's a fun little racer for use in Rail Simulator. Once again, the vehicle was very quick to build and the petrolheads amongst you will have spotted that it's based on the Lotus type 49b. Here are a few renders taken from 3DSMax.

The racing track lofts for this vehicle were detailed in a previous post. The plan is to include this racing circuit as a small section of my route, complete with grandstand, pitlane and of course a Dunlop bridge.

How to...Use the Offset Tool

2009-01-22T20:56:00.021Z

This tool allows a loft to be 'offset' by a set distance, and placed in parallel with an existing loft. This is very handy for getting multiple lofts in perfect allignment, even when the original loft has complex curves in it.

Method

- Place a loft in your route
- Using the 'select' tool, highlight a section of loft
- Now click on the 'offset' tool
- Two new gizmos appear either side of the original loft, at a specified distance (which can be changed)
- Choose a new loft from the browser book
- Click on either of the two new gizmos (left and right of the original loft) depending on which side you wish your new loft to appear
- The new loft will now appear in the correct place

Your new loft will now be placed at an 'offset' distance from the centre of the original loft and will follow for the length of the highlighted section of the original loft.

In this example I wanted to create a simple racing circuit using a road loft.

I have also created a loft to represent a rumble strip to be placed on the inside of sharp corners. This loft also has 'start' and 'end' geometry pieces to cap-off the ends of the rumble strip.

Winter screenshots

2009-01-21T22:20:00.003Z

Here are two screenshots showing the seasonal texture variants. Notice how the mounds of snow appear on the roof during the winter season.

How to...Use Seasonal Textures

2009-01-21T22:08:00.010Z

Rail Simulator supports seasonal textures, and it's a fairly straight forward idea to swap one texture for another depending on the season.

For example a brick wall might have two textures;

"brick_wall_01.ace" - the default texture
"brick_wall_01_wi.ace" - the winter version

In this example, the wall should be mapped using "brick_wall_01.ace". If any seasonal variants are required, the seasonal textures should be created in the same folder. Please see the DEV area of the Rail Simulator website for more detailed information.

Then once your wall asset is exported, the default textures AND your seasonal texture variants will be compiled. NOTE: If any additional textures are added, then the IGS for the asset must be re-exported to pick up these new textures.

In my previous post showing a concept image for a winter house, I wanted to change the outline colour depending on season. In this case, simple seasonal texture swapping was used.

See below. The black texture on the left is called "outline.ace", and the white texture on the right is called "outline_wi.ace". In any season other than winter, the outline is black. In winter, the outline is white.

However, we can also do something cool if we consider a material with TRANSPARENCY.

In the following example, the house has a mound of snow on the roof. The texture for the snow mound has two seasonal variants:

"winter_snow_mound.ace" - default texture
"winter_snow_mound_wi.ace" - winter version

Here's the clever bit.

The material for the snow is a simple 'TexDiff' shader but with the transparency flag in the shader set to TRANS.

The default texture is created so that it is fully transparent (fully black). And as it is used on a TRANS shader, it will appear invisible in the game. In any other season other than winter, it will look like this.

The winter version of the snow mound texture is an opaque white snowy texture (not transparent). This WILL appear in the game.

So we now have a method of making geometry appear and disappear depending on the season.

How about
- Hay bails only appearing in the summer
- Snowmen only appearing in the winter

You get the idea.

Winter house

2009-01-20T23:02:00.006Z

Here is the first render showing how the buildings will look in this art-style. I've also just been playing with an idea on how to improve the look of the game during winter.

Rail Simulator supports texture swapping for the 4 seasons, and there's no reason why with some clever texture naming we couldn't re-create the following example.

The house on the left (Summer variant) has the black outline with no snow build-up. The house on the right (Winter variant) now has a white outline (black outlines wouldn't look good in the winter), with a 3D build-up of snow on the roof.

More tugboat screenshots

2009-01-18T21:48:00.003Z

Here are a few more screenshots showing the tugboat on the canal.

Canal and tugboat screenshots

2009-01-17T21:33:00.011Z

The tugboat is now in Rail Simulator as a driveable boat. I'm pleased with how quick I can get new driveable vehicles into the game.

Adding the reflective water to the water loft (as seperate objects) was also very quick and easy and it creates a far more interesting water surface. I think the only thing now missing from the canal is a shopping trolley.

I've included a few screenshots here. More will follow soon.

Tugboat images

2009-01-17T08:21:00.010Z

I decided on a little tugboat for the water based transport. I found it very easy when modelling the tugboat to get a lot of 'character' into the boat. After all it's such a small cute boat to start with.

Here are a few 3DSMax renders of the tugboat.

Because the cel shaded technique is very simple and it can be applied to any 3D engine, it allows the effect to be renderable in 3DSMax. Here is the boat with mapping and shadow baking (pre-lighting) applied taken straight from 3DSMax.

The canal

2009-01-16T22:28:00.002Z

At the moment, the plans are to make the canal lock a static asset i.e. it won't be functional at all. Obviously when I place the gates in my route, I'll place then in the open position.

Here is a 3DSMax render of what it will look like (lacking the in-game reflections of course.)

Canal lock gate

2009-01-16T21:12:00.006Z

Here is a 3DMax render of the gate. It's difficult to see from this image but if you look at the foot-planks, you'll notice that I've made this gate symmetrical. This was done intentionally so that the same gate asset can be placed on each side of the canal (with one of the assets rotated 180 degrees).

Canal loft

2009-01-16T20:48:00.006Z

Onto something a bit more interesting with water based transport. Once again the same principles will be used; this time we swap the train for a boat, and the rails for a canal. Underneath, it's still a vehicle moving along a path.

I wanted reflections on my canal loft, so I ended up doing things slightly differently. Unlike the default Rail Simulator assets, I created my loft with no water shader assigned to it. The loft was simply a hollow channel.

Once this empty loft is laid in the route, I can place a number of 'scalable' water quads over the top to fill my canal with reflective water.

How to...Animate Scrolling UVs

2009-01-16T19:44:00.013Z

This describes how to scroll UV co-ordinates on a material in 3DSMax using the Rail Simulator tools. Once a polygon or groups of polygons are mapped with UV co-ordinates, these co-ordinates can be scrolled. In this case, the texture doesn't change, it simply 'slides' across the surface at a given speed and in a given direction.

Examples of this type of animation would be:

- The lavaflow from a volcano down a mountainside
- Waves at a beach
- Falling water in a waterfall
- Scrolling text on a dot matrix board

This feature is ony supported on some of the simpler shaders (for example TexDiff, AddATex).

To get this working, browse the material roll-out and find the 'UV Special Effects' area of the material. Simply tick the 'Scroll UVs' button, and specify a scrolling speed in U and V. Which values to specify for these two speeds depends on how the polygons are mapped in the first place. Try it out for yourself.

Animated traffic cones

2009-01-13T22:43:00.014Z

Using the technique described in a previous post, I've created a simple traffic cone with a nice flashing light on top.

The flashing light was a 4 frame animation; frame 1 being ON (the flash), and frames 2,3 and 4 being OFF (each one was a fully transparent texture). I wanted these extra 'OFF' frames to extend the time over which the light was 'OFF'.

It looked great initially, but once I'd placed a number of these down in the scene it looked a little odd as they were all flashing in perfect sequence.

As a quick solution for this, I created two identical cones, but varied their animation setup so that they animate at different rates. Here are some screenshots.

How to...Animate Textures

2009-01-13T21:46:00.017Z

Rail Simulator supports animated textures. Animated textures refer to a series of identically sized frames or textures which the game will load and display frame-by-frame. Some examples of animated textures would be :

- traffic light sequence
- flashing lights on a police car

The process is fairly straight-forward. The engine relies of the fact that the frames are named sequentially, and once the material is set up to animate, it will loop through these sequentially named frames at a given speed.

Here, in this example, we will setup a simple 4 frame animation.

1. Intially create the sequence of 4 frames and name then as follows:
XXXXX_anim1.ace, XXXXX_anim2.ace, XXXXX_anim3.ace, XXXXX_anim4.ace etc (where XXXXX is the texture name).

2. In 3DSMax, assign a simple shader such as TexDiff (or AddATex for glows) to the relevent polygon or mesh. Then in the material, point the texture slot to the first texture XXXXX_anim1.ace. It's important to point to the first texture so the game engine knows where to start the sequence.

3. Still in the material editor, scroll down to find the "UV Special Effects" area, and tick the "texture is animated" button. Also insert the correct number of frames for your animation in the area marked '#frames' (in our example this would be 4). Also choose a frame rate in the 'frames per second'. In our example we'll choose 2.

4. Export the shape.

NOTE : The export process will only compile the textures that are referenced in the scene IGS file. As we only reference the starting frame (XXXXX_anim1.ace) in our IGS, only this single frame of the animation will compile. If we view this in the game, we will see the first frame OK but the other frames will be represented as "MISSING TEXTURES". There is a simple solution to this where we can simply force the missing textures to compile from within the blueprint editor. To do this, navigate to find your textures in the blueprint editor and one by one right-click on each one and choose the 'export' option from the rollout. Once all the textures have been compiled, the shape will be ready to be viewed in-game.

Voxel track ballast

2009-01-11T21:56:00.019Z

Here's a quick idea I had taking the previously discussed voxel technique and applying it to the ballast in Rail Simulator. This creates a more realistic looking '3D' ballast, especially if you notice the area around the sleepers where you can even make out individual stone chips.

Here's a simple animated GIF to show the ballast with and without the voxel effect applied. In the following example, I've only created the voxel effect around the sleepers (and hence why it's the only area of the ballast that changes in the image). Obviously if this was going into a route, I'd apply the voxel effect to the entire ballast section.

Voxels in Rail Simulator

2009-01-10T21:03:00.009Z

Following on from the 3DSMax 'voxel' tutorial, here are a few of those elements exported as a single scenery asset in Rail Simulator. For the purpose of the example, I've only created a stencil shadow for the cube.

After closer inspection, I was particularly pleased how the stencil shadow worked over the 'voxel layers' of the terrain.

How to...Create Voxels

2009-01-09T20:06:00.010Z

Over the years, I've always been fascinated by Voxels.

Many moons ago, before the time when 3D engines could render a gazillion multi-layered triangles per second, things were pretty basic. 3D terrain would always look flat, basic and angular. At the time, Voxels were used as a neat way of adding detail (roughness) to an otherwise flat polygonal landscape. See these examples over at Eric Chadwick's site.

Here is something that I was playing with a while back (but I think it's relevant to show it on here). This technique does NOT use actual voxels, but is similar in appearance.

Initially I mocked up the technique in 3DSMax to test how it would work. Below shows two simple quads, the first with a simple grass texture (which we will call the base layer), and the second quad with the same texture but this time with areas removed using simple transparency (which we will call the voxel layer).

Now imagine taking that base layer to represent the terrain, and stacking lots of those voxel layers on top of one another to form a column.

If small gaps are placed between the vertical spacing of these voxel layers, when looked from this angle it's easy to fool the eye into thinking that these elements are connected. This simple illusion allows this technique to work.

This technique can be applied to almost any surface, even spherical. When considering a spherical surface, the voxel layers are actually concentric spheres increasing in radius. Remember in 3DSMax, the 'PUSH' modifier can be used to create these layers.

Here is a little scene I created in Max, to demonstrate how those simple 'faked' voxels can easily be created in any 3D engine. Using multiple layers of polygons and transparency, this cute effect can be created.

Screenshots

2009-01-01T15:34:00.049Z

These in-game screenshots are all captured within the Rail Simulator engine.

Route screenshot (NIGHT)

2008-12-24T21:16:00.004Z

I just created this shot to show the route at night.

Route screenshot

2008-12-24T21:09:00.006Z

Here is a quick screenshot I've assembled to show all the assets positioned together.

Those distant buildings are simple lofts. I've created three house line lofts so that you get a nice parallax effect when moving past.

I don't really have any overall plans for how the route/world will be structured. I'm just designing assets on the fly, and placing them where required.

Cablecar update

2008-12-24T09:23:00.002Z

The super-deformed cablecar is now built, unwrapped and textured. The thing I'm enjoying most about this art style is the speed at which assets can be created. Low resolution models and low resolution textures also speed up working in Max, and because of the small amount of data, loading the assets in-game in speedy too.

Who needs next-gen ;)

The route

2008-12-17T20:28:00.004Z

Rail Simulator has a cool 'train-jumping' feature. This feature allows the user to be driving along using one vehicle, spot another vehicle somewhere along the route and click on it, to instantly 'jump' to the other targeted vehicle. This allows the user to easily jump around between vehicles in the world.

So now imagine a route with multiple forms of transport.

My current plan is to build a small world (all in this cutesy art style) with multiple forms of transport within the route. Imagine driving a train along the track spotting a cablecar high above and instantly being able to jump to that cablecar. Then piloting the cablecar high above the ground to spot a bus down at road level. Then being able to drive that bus...you get the idea. I think it'll be fun.

Night-time screenshot

2008-12-16T22:50:00.003Z

Here is a simple night time screenshot. I want to see how I can develop the night-time effect whilst staying true to the art style. I chose not to have any graduations on the floor glows leaving them with crisp edges.

Cablecar network

2008-12-16T22:27:00.010Z

I starting thinking about the 'track network' for the cablecars. I'll only need a single cable to hang the cars off, so the track loft cross-section will be a simple circle.

Here you can see the track loft (the cable), with the cable supports positioned using the middle geometry function in the track loft.

I've also played with the shape of the cable car to make it look more deformed.

How to...Cel-Shade

2008-12-15T21:15:00.010Z

As mentioned in an earlier post, this technique has been around for many years. This simple idea will produce an outline around your object, and can therefore helps to produce that cel-shaded look.

The basics
The cel-shaded outline effect can be created by taking a copy of the source shape, assigning a flat colour to the copy, increasing the size ever-so-slightly, and flipping the face normals. I'll explain.

The process
Take a simple source asset.

Take a copy of the shape (3DSMax refers to this as 'cloning'). We'll refer to this new shape as the 'outline object'. Now increase the size of the outline object slightly. The larger the outline object, the thicker the outline will appear around your original asset. [3DSMax has a cool modifier called 'PUSH' which is perfect for this job. 'PUSH' doesn't simply scale the geometry, it actually pushes the individual faces along the direction of their face normals and therefore retains the overall shape.

Apply a black material or texture to the outline object. For our example we'd like a black outline, but any colour can be used depending on your requirements.

Now this looks pretty useless, until we flip the normals on the outline object so that the outline object appears inside out. Job done.

This principle only works because your outline object does not have a 2-sided shader on it. You need to be able to see 'through' the nearest faces of the outline object.

First screenshot

2008-12-12T13:03:00.009Z

Here's a quick screenshot showing the buses in position on the new (very clean) road loft.

Just for the purpose of this screenshot, I've given the road loft a huge paved run-off to cover the default green grass terrain texture as the texture obviously didn't fit the art style of my route. Eventually I'll replace all the terrain textures to be in keeping with my art style.

It's already unrecognisable as a modified Rail Simulator.

Cel-shaded bus

2008-12-11T22:43:00.004Z

I've now tried out a cel-shaded style for the bus.

Here I'm using a simple dual-pass shadow-mapped shader (main texture in slot 1, and shadow-map in slot 2).

The method for creating the black outline has been around many years since the days of the original 'Quake' modding communities. I'll document it here at some point for those who aren't aware of how it's done.

Here's an in-game shot from the asset editor.

Super-deformed cable car

2008-12-09T12:59:00.010Z

The super deformed cable car.

The cable car's 'passenger view' might be a fun way of viewing the level high above the roof tops.

Why trains ?

2008-12-09T12:04:00.003Z

Put simply, the Rail Simulator 3D engine supports the movement of vehicles along a path. However, there is no reason why we should restrict this to trains.
Consider these fun ideas:

Cable Car
The cable car could be suspended high above the ground on a network of suspended cables. The cable car would move along the cable under the players control.
Canal Boat
There could be a network of canals. The player could move the barge along the canals.
Monorail
Similar to railways, but with a more spectacular viewpoint.
Tram
Similar to railways, but with a more confined viewpoint. This would allow very detailed cities to be built close to the player viewpoint.
Bus
This would use a similar environment to the tram network. Again, very dense detailed cities with lots of roadside furniture.
Roller Coaster
Again, similar to railways, but with a more spectacular viewpoint.

Cute super-deformed bus

2008-12-05T21:15:00.019Z

The super-deformed bus. It's still created from basic polygons, but it's been stylised to add character. There is no reason why the entire route could not be created in this style.

Why photo-realistic ?

2008-12-05T19:50:00.011Z

Up until now every Rail Simulator add-on I've come across has been photo-realistic in appearance.

If I was creating my own route for my own enjoyment, I'd go for something completely different. Something more off-the-wall.

With a bit of creativity, the Rail Simulator engine can be used to render a variety of art styles other than 'photo-realistic'.

How about super-deformed ?
How about cartoony ?
How about cel-shaded ?