LRT Tram Tracks

[Clus 24]

Hello all together !

Short question to all ... shell I change the LRT Tram Track - Swells to the swells shown in the picture ?

The new swells are made almost the same way as @Ronyx69 did it with his awesome new train tracks. (great idea btw!!)

This way the swells are layed down more "even" compared to the prop method which I used ...

The idea/suggestion to change that came from @boformer

 

So ... what do you think ?

 

 

[boformer 3,169]

I like them! Can you add some close up screenshots?

[Clus 24]

Yes I can ... I am currently not at home ... so tomorrow ...

[Delta2k5 311]

On 4.1.2019 at 4:34 PM, Clus said:

Hello all together !

Short question to all ... shell I change the LRT Tram Track - Swells to the swells shown in the picture ?

The new swells are made almost the same way as @Ronyx69 did it with his awesome new train tracks. (great idea btw!!)

This way the swells are layed down more "even" compared to the prop method which I used ...

The idea/suggestion to change that came from @boformer

 

So ... what do you think ?

 

 

Love it!

As I also suggested on the Workshop it would be really great if those fit visually the tracks Ronyx created I guess the distance between his swells is a bit closer to each other  but I could be wrong just from this picture

[willham 10]

On 07/01/2019 at 17:33, Delta2k5 said:

Adoro!

Como eu também sugeri no Workshop, seria realmente ótimo se eles se encaixassem visualmente nas faixas que o Ronyx criou. Eu acho que a distância entre os swells dele é um pouco mais próxima,  mas eu posso estar errado apenas com essa foto.

If it were possible to make them usable by trains it would be great

 

[Clus 24]

Sry for the late reply ... haven´t had much time lately ... :/ Here are some pics showing the current process.

[Delta2k5 311]

Gimme! Good progress!

[Clus 24]

Thx ... I'll try my best to find a good compromise between tris and visuals....but don't expect to much. I am by far not as talented as Ronyx is...so this one won't visually come near his great train tracks. 

The fenceless tracks are still missing ... therefore I will release these new sleepers at first within that version.  After that I am going to change the already existing networks.

[Delta2k5 311]

4 hours ago, Clus said:

Thx ... I'll try my best to find a good compromise between tris and visuals....but don't expect to much. I am by far not as talented as Ronyx is...so this one won't visually come near his great train tracks. 

The fenceless tracks are still missing ... therefore I will release these new sleepers at first within that version.  After that I am going to change the already existing networks.

I know that struggle well - currently I'm working on some new fancy airplanes as I got not much to do at work. I think those won't fit anyway for lower-end pcs as it will be hard to optimize those (I'll use many submeshes on them for different configurations on takeoff, landing, flying and while on ground).

Ronyx has a great talent, especially on creating textures  but your work already looks great! I think one thing missing on your assets might be baked ambient occlusion (Your alias is already written in this word! )  which you could try.

I don't know which 3D program you are using, but it's quiet easy to do using Blender. After saving the generated texture with occlusion you could use it as a layer in PS over your diffuse texture and mix/match it.

[Clus 24]

Yeah.... the "main tris problem" is that these tracks are already high tris networks. I used a lot of different segments, especially within the elevated versions. Adding the "layer method" for the sleepers will increase the overall tris count a lot ... even a less detailed version, compared to ronyx's train tracks, will do that. But I managed to solve some problems within the first version yesterday which will help to reduce the tris count slightly. Compared to the vanilla elevated networks the tram tracks are twice as heavy as them.

 

And yes ... he's very talented especially when it comes to textures... Thats the thing I really "hate" when I am creating something. I am unable to take my ideas/thoughts in to good looking textures... :/ most of the stuff is "ok" but I am always unsatisfied with the results. Maybe it will get better over the time. I started all that last year in march and haven't had anything to do with 3d- or texture programs before that date. But I think that I did ok so far, especially with my limited amount of time to "learn" all these things ...

The focus was on learning the 3d program "basics" ... I am using blender btw. The textures are done in gimp...and for gimp I almost only watched a  tutorial video from the guy that did the six part series about cities skylines asset creation. I think I have to watch a lot more videos to improve my texture skills ...

Right now I honestly don't know how to bake some ambient occlusion on to the textures ... :/ I think that I even won't see the difference between an asset with and one without it ... :/ 

[Delta2k5 311]

On 17.1.2019 at 9:21 AM, Clus said:

Right now I honestly don't know how to bake some ambient occlusion on to the textures ... :/ I think that I even won't see the difference between an asset with and one without it ... :/ 

I'll give you a heads up on that topic as I'm in progress of baking some occlusion effect to my textures. Ambient occlusion is generated everywhere faces intersect each other, kinda self-shading which makes 3D details even more visible:

This is the aircraft I'm working on, viewed from the top:

There already is some shading at the engines, but you won't see other details which are there - at least there are some antennas and other stuff "hidden" while viewing from above. After enabling ambient occlusion in this view the same aircraft looks like this:

as you can see now every 3D detail is visible as they drop some soft shadow  this generated effect can now beeing baked to the textures using the following window (Properties/Render)

There are some settings you can play with - after a click on "bake" the occlusion texture will be generated.

[boformer 3,169]

On 17.1.2019 at 9:21 AM, Clus said:

Right now I honestly don't know how to bake some ambient occlusion on to the textures ... :/ I think that I even won't see the difference between an asset with and one without it ... :/ 

Two possible ways:

1) Model and texture the sleepers in Blender (highly detailed model with carved out details like screw heads), then use Blender to bake the AO onto the texture. Then use the texture for the layered fake sleepers.

2) Just use add some slight dark gradients in GIMP to fake some AO. Near the connection between the sleepers and the rails.

Don't forget that the usual viewing distance while playing the game is 50-500m. In my opinion, that's what meshes and textures should be optimized for, and I think what you've done so far is looking great from that distance!

I don't think that twice as many tris are a problem. Even five times as many wouldn't be a problem. You are forgetting that the props you've been using before also add to the tri count.

What's really important performance-wise is a highly optimized LOD mesh (no layers, just a flat surface).

[Delta2k5 311]

Just to mention it:

The fenceless set has been released by Clus on Steam