Vintage Downtown Buildings and Apartments.

[jpetersjr]

Not mine. KDKA is said to be the first commercial station but there were at least two other "broadcasts" prior to KDKA's. it;s in the article I linked.

But my station is WTAD in Quincy Illinois. Going strong for 87 years!

What does the station look like?


Also, working on a vintage train station for the set, a large one.

[jpetersjr]

First progress on my new Union Station for Railworks. A train station for the set.

Union Station.jpg (190.93 KiB) Viewed 218 times

Union Station B.jpg (210.61 KiB) Viewed 218 times

Union Station C.jpg (123.19 KiB) Viewed 217 times

[jpetersjr]

Final progress of the Union Station before I put it into the game.

Union Station.jpg (192.5 KiB) Viewed 215 times

Next, I'll be sizing it, set where it will sit in the game, and then I'll put it into the game to be with the rest of the set.


What do you think of it so far?

[jpetersjr]

Good news, got the Union Station into the game and it looks great.

Union Station 1.jpg (119.85 KiB) Viewed 201 times

Union Station 2.jpg (91.29 KiB) Viewed 201 times

Union Station 3.jpg (99.16 KiB) Viewed 201 times

For a while needed a special train station to go with the metropolis scene, now, we have it. A big train station for a big city.

[mdurdan]

[jpetersjr]

First render of the new 23 story office building for Railworks.

NY Office Building Render 1.jpg (89.97 KiB) Viewed 164 times

Another render of the building.

NY Office Building Render 2.jpg (118.21 KiB) Viewed 163 times

Another render of the building. Where I have the red at the moment is where the doors will go on each side.

NY Office Building Render 3.jpg (98.42 KiB) Viewed 161 times

This building once finished will come in several different versions and at the moment will be the biggest building I've created for Railworks yet. Not much done on it yet, but a start.

[jpetersjr]

A new render of the building, the building is slowly coming along.

NY Office Building Render 4.jpg (107.62 KiB) Viewed 160 times

Some slow progress. Began on the windows on the main building.

NY Office Building Render 5.jpg (124.32 KiB) Viewed 159 times

[jpetersjr]

Some slow progress on the building.

NY Office Building Render 6.jpg (180.13 KiB) Viewed 147 times

A little more progress.

NY Office Building Render 7.jpg (157.18 KiB) Viewed 143 times

Some more slow progress.

NY Office Building Render 8.jpg (159 KiB) Viewed 141 times

[mdurdan]

Copy and paste would help speed this up quite a bit and will be exact for accuracy

[jpetersjr]

How do you copy and paste in sketchup??

[mdurdan]

Hold shift, click every face you want to copy, look around the building to make shure you have all the right faces and none of the others and just hit edit , copy and paste where you want

[railbard]

A big city building housing a TV or radio station would basically be just that, a big city building. You might put a marquee style sign (big) or station call letters in a neon or other sign on the roof, some antennas, that kind of thing. A modern TV/radio outfit would have satellite dishes on the roof, possibly a microwave tower of some sort.

If the TV/radoi studio were a little more suburban or rural, it would have its own building and the big tall tower located close by.

[jpetersjr]

The copy and paste operation is working very well.

Here's a little more progress on the building.

NY Office Building Render 9.jpg (157.84 KiB) Viewed 105 times

The top two floors will be observation floors with the gated in balconies.

I will also do a version with a radio station. Can you find me a picture of what a radio tower looks like?

[GreatNortherner]

Hi,

This building is another great choice for a model! If you keep going like this you'll soon have an entire early 20th century downtown in RW!

If I may add a bit of constructive criticism, this model looks like it will have a massive polycount (many thousand). That is, if I interpret the screenshot correctly and you used the SketchUp draw tool (lines & rectangles on faces) to add details to the facade. Generally, every object should use as few polygons and textures as possible -- especially since RW uses quite a lot of high detail rolling stock, so the graphics engine has quite a lot to deal with anyway.

What you could do to avoid having to add new lines (faces) for all the windows and also to avoid breaking up the facade into individual 'segments' is to paint all that on the texture. This way it would suffice if a single rectangle is used for the entire facade, with a brick texture with a few painted on windows that tiles across the facade tile so that you'd get multiple floors and rooms. You would end up with less than 100 polygons on that building, with the same amount of detailing.

Cheers,
Michael

PS: Here's a small-scale example of what I mean by "windows on texture" vs. "windows as 3D parts":

Left: windows only painted on texture, 2 triangles. Middle: windows as faces, created with SU draw tools, 22 triangles. Right: the same, but with windows extruded inwards (push/pull tool in SU), 46 triangles.


Now imagine that on an object that has hundreds of these wall segments and you can get a picture of the polycount you'd be looking at.

[jpetersjr]

I've figured out how to do this, did this with the train station, but this only works if I don't want to make multiple versions of the same building. Since I will be making more then version of this with different brick textures. I make the windows completely flat and not sunk in some to save on poly there. Also, I've made all the columns on the side of the walls 2d to save on poly there. As well, I've deleted every floor line from all of the 2d columns on the sides of the walls to save poly there.

I am interested in seeing how some of my buildings act in a scene when many are used if someone would be willing to test them for me. I'll send all my new buildings over to that person so they can test them as well.


As well, a little more progress.

NY Office Building Render 10.jpg (205.58 KiB) Viewed 94 times