Railworks America

Going to be uploading some old projects of mine that never got released to the community because the route they were being built for has long since died and shown no progress of being finished.


So here's the first pack to be packaged up and released. In this set we have several 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air's, a couple 1965 Peterbuilt Longnose Semi's and one 1967 Chevrolet Impala Police Car.



Hope these come in handy.



...Cheers...


Big J


I have several more packs of unreleased items that I'll be packaging up and sending your way, so keep an eye out for them.

When I was a kid, I loved a series of "books" with pages made of crisp, lightweight but sturdy cardboard on which appeared trains, boats, and, yes, cars to cut out and paste into models that featured more folds than curves ... rather like these "models". Thanks for the nostalgic moment.

Alright, the 55's are up, have fun with the Bel Air's.

More like "forgettable" if these images are accurate. These cartoonish objects might do in the far distance, but up close? I'm aware of the fact that "Big J" has a lot of fans, but I'm also entitled to my opinion, no?

Well then, Old Guy, why don't you show us some of the things you have created for Railworks, so we can have a good laugh and insult you, as you seem to enjoy doing to others.

Old Prof wrote:More like "forgettable" if these images are accurate. These cartoonish objects might do in the far distance, but up close? I'm aware of the fact that "Big J" has a lot of fans, but I'm also entitled to my opinion, no?

these are 100x better than the default cars. What the hecks your problem. At least he tries, and succeeds.

spartantrain32 wrote:

Old Prof wrote:More like "forgettable" if these images are accurate. These cartoonish objects might do in the far distance, but up close? I'm aware of the fact that "Big J" has a lot of fans, but I'm also entitled to my opinion, no?

these are 100x better than the default cars. What the hecks your problem. At least he tries, and succeeds.

im sorry, gotta speak on this though... sorry J

100x? I think that must be an extreme exaggeration don't you think? Like im all for anyone creating anything for the sim and putting in the effort to do so but I think you might need to get your eyes checked if you think they are that much better than default. im not saying I can do better but unfortunately I have to say that im with Old Prof on this one.

I have to admit that a 50's car is much more difficult than a 60's car and I had a harder time with these then I did with the 60's models. Well, there won't be anymore 50's cars, the rounded body parts are much to difficult to get even close to how one wants it to look. I find a 60's car much easier to get at least mostly close to the real thing.

I think they are pretty good but the color needs to be toned way down. Perhaps a shade of weathering to dull them a little so that they don't jump out at you so much. I think that is what the problem is.

I indeed think that's one of the problems with them, when I get a new computer, or whenever I can get these to open in Crafter again I want to update some of all of my models, if anything learn how to repaint them so I can do a better style paint job on them.

One of some new ones I want to do is like some of these in the modern era, old and rusted.

Its not the body work thats bad, its the texturing. You should see if Mike can show you how to shadow bake models.

BNSFdude wrote:Its not the body work thats bad, its the texturing. You should see if Mike can show you how to shadow bake models.

It's not easy to explain. You need to do a lot of fiddling about with a screen capture tool and you have to understand a lot about how 3DC unwrapping works (and doesn't work), and especially how to get around the problems it has with curved shapes. You also need to be fairly adept at using Photoshop (it's taken me years of trial and error - I started way back when Microsoft's Combat Flight Simulator, the original one, came out). It takes a lot of time and patience to get a decent emulation of shadow baking in 3DC.

Apart from the texture maps, the other problem looks to me like it could be the choice of shader. I'd recommend using TrainSpecEnvMask.fx for a car, so as to get a realistic shine with simulated ground/sky reflections, but again, you need to understand some other things, like how to use smoothing groups in 3DC and how to use the alpha channel in an .ace file to adjust the level of shine and to get the shadow-baked areas to display more realistically (something I learnt after the Connie was released - it's one of the things I want to redo after the FEF-3 is finished).

Perhaps after I get my new computer I can take some time to figure out the texture problem and hopefully figure out the alpha channels and get it to shine.

Right now with this junk computer I can just barely do a model, but I especially can't do anything with an alpha right now because it crashes 3D Crafter every time.

Just wanted to say I appreciate your efforts, J. Some of your works (semi's, houses, 60's cars) are helping me fill the spaces on the Alleghany sub.

I was thinking you might want to try making some '70's cars; they were pretty boxy if you stay away from the sport models. AMC Gremlin, anyone? lol Cutlasses, Vega, Maverick, station-wagons, maybe a Cadillac or New Yorker. Easy colors like charcoal, brown, cream, royal dark blue and black (a Gremlin would need to be bright orange, though, lol). Oh-oh, I just thought of something... this game needs a VW Beetle! That would be a lot of curves though. But a VW Thing was pure box!

I wish more people were trying to make freeware for us all to use. DG is never going to make this kind of stuff for us.

70's vehicles coming up later, but as of right now still have a lot of 60's to fill in. Bug would be just about impossible for me, but perhaps I might be able to do a VW van later.