This turned out to be a bit of an adventure. I began the project last year but ran into some trouble with the IGS/IA exporter for Blender, which crashes when I select viewer facing geometry. I set it aside, knowing I'd only need it when I was ready for final decoration of the route.
Which turns out to be now. So I had to get into 3ds MAX to complete this. Do not ever ask me where I got it.
In the Mojave, there are four seasons: Dry, Drier, Crispy, and Spring. There is a certain bleakness to it, no matter what time of the year. So the weathering is really a slow degradation. Even in Spring, not everything makes it. So we included some really desperate looking generic scrub.
The sagebrush (left edge) and Joshua trees are from the railsim. Everything else was created for the route, a small and medium version of these plants: Brittle Bush (yellow), Creosote (greenish), Indigo Bush (purple), White Bearclaw Poppy, and Verbana (pink). If these bright colors look ridiculous and out of place, then you are beginning to get a sense of why the desert is so magical in the Spring. Because they look like someone came in the night with a shovel and plants from the nursery.
I can make whole fields of these without breaking the railsim. This is also the last project I needed to complete before I can finish decorating the whole route.
We are all in for a treat!
Download the models and source at http://panamintcrossing.blogspot.com
Pax,
jK
. Very nice btw!