Moving forward...

Tonight I wanted to talk about a few of my projects and where things are headed. With the insulated boxcars in testing and the chip hoppers soon to be released, I have now changed my focus to two, new, major projects. The first project is more of a shift to contemporary railroading and consists of recreating 89' DODX flat cars with various military loads.

Military trains have been a big part of railroads throughout history and two of the biggest events that happened during my time with the railroad involved our entry into two different wars, Afghanistan and Iraq. Traffic boomed for the crew change point I worked out of and leading up to and during the initial invasion of Afghanistan, we were tasked with quickly moving a whole division along our route. I wont go into specifics of who or where we moved things since I'm not necessarily keen on having the FBI show up at my house but I will say that we shuttled multiple loaded and empty trains a day and due to this our pool of crews stayed depleted for several weeks. The number of trains we moved daily was absolutely insane, in addition to all of our regular traffic.

Anyway I've posted a few screenshots of the models. So far I have two different loads in the works but I've only posted the first for tonight. This load will consist of three Stryker IAVs configured for transport. This basically means the vehicles are stripped down of anything that can be lifted off of them, most importantly any kind of weapon. Also different portions of the vehicles will be covered with tarps. So far the geometry for the flat car itself is mostly done though the loads still require a lot of work. To say this project is a challenge would be an understatement since I am wanting to provide the highest quality loads I can. There has to be a big effort to balance the poly count and the detail but lot of the detail work will be left to the diffuse and normal maps. These cars will also be much higher in polycount than anything else I have done up to this point, roughly doubled. I am hoping to bring these in somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 depending on the details.

The first pic includes the unloaded flatcar. Which will be provided in a set of both loaded and unloaded cars and also a Stryker scenery object to place at your local base or port, if needed. This is an early version of the unloaded car and still needs to have the camber added to the body.

 Tires are a really big part of these vehicles so I've put in a lot of effort to make them pop. So far I'm really pleased with the results which consisted of making a high res model and baking textures and normal maps down to a low poly version.

 Chains are also a big deal with any military load so I've been experimenting with that heavy duty and busy look that the loads have when chained to the car. If I remember correctly, I still need to add two additional pairs of chains.

So at this point this will be a long running project in which you will see a car released one at a time. I wont ever give an estimated release date, all I can say is stay tuned!!!

The second project I will be working on will involve finishing up the U18B I started way back when.

A large part of this model is done, including most all of the geo, UV work and even textures. After sitting on it for a while, I have noticed several areas that I want to revisit and improve. You know, one of those deals where I went back and asked myself, "what was I thinking when I did that." One major area I want to work on are the trucks which, once again, will involve making a high res version and baking down to low. Its a really time consuming process since you are doubling your work but I think in certain areas its well worth the effort.