The Siskiyou Line

[BoostedFridge]

Thank you all for the kind words!

Boosted,
What your doing just with the ground textures is very impressive. Variety, placement and care is what I see. Your tilting the grass assets to get them to conform to the slope as well. Such good stuff here to see. I saw this post this morning and I immediately, spruced up a "bare" area of my own in your honor. What your doing is not super detail it ...it is super "nature", such smooth transitions between textures, I can tell your painting on the ground.
Love it!
MM

Thank you Miner! You are too kind. I sometimes get carried away trying to get each asset on just the 'right' angle, offset, or scale, when most would never spot if a corner of grass or bush was 'floating'. When it comes time for the beta release I just hope that it all passes the 'eye test'!

I know from experience, that what Boosted is doing, takes a lot more hours, but in the end it's worth it.

You're absolutely right Eric. When I started on the scenery I used to 'rush' areas just trying to get more miles complete, only to revisit them later to get them up to the standard of the rest of the route. Its slow and steady for me now. Your Donner Redux was a great source of inspiration, and techniques for me!


Progress in the Sacramento River canyon has reached the area near the former siding site of Small. Below is the 'before' picture of what will be the SP's 16th crossing of the Sacramento River. I hope to have this area complete by the weekend.

Bridge at MP324.99.jpg

[BoostedFridge]

Another half mile of scenery completed in the canyon so far today. I took the opportunity to take a break, and do a little photo run up from Dunsmuir.

Today's consist is the hot eastbound 'OABRT' TOFC train, powered by a trio of Ian's GP60 repainted by GenericZack. Many of the trailers are riding on Thebigroyboyski's excellent TTX Frontrunner model.

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[VITORMARQUES]

Wow, better and better...

[BoostedFridge]

Update time!

Its been a while since my last update. My other hobby (drag racing) has been eating up most of my spare time for the past two months, so time spent on TS and the Siskiyou have been scarce. I have several weeks before the next race, so I intend to get as much done on the route as I can in this time.

On the southern end of the route I have completed scenery up to the siding at Small, in the Sacramento river canyon. Between Small, and the next siding at Mott, I have many hours of terrain smoothing to profile the slopes of the canyon to contour smoothly to the river, and three levels of roadbed snaking uphill. After that process I can place trackside scenery. The plus side to this, is the next 2 miles of scenery will cover almost 7 miles of track due to the double horseshoe curves.


At the north end, on the Siskiyou Line proper, I have completed scenery up the 'west' slope of Snowden Hill. I also began signalling the line with Rick Grout's wonderful semaphores. This process revealed some flaws in how I had originally laid the track, which has led me to redo a large section between Snowden and Hornbrook. I'm still not completely satisfied with my terrain textures for arid hills in this area, and may have to make some more textures to properly represent the area.

Rest assured, this route is being worked on, and will be completed. It will just take however long it takes to complete the task properly. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the screenshots.


The bridge across the Sacramento River at MP324.99. Compare with my previous post.

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A photo by Robert Morris of a train crossing the bridge, followed by my attempt to recreate the scene in TS.

Mossbrae IRL.jpg

Mossbrae TS.jpg

The site of the former station and spur at Shasta Springs.

Shasta Springs.jpg

The 'west' switch at Small siding, looking south.

West Switch Small.jpg

[Tomcat]

Looking good! I like that last shot quite a bit.

[ET44C4]

The way the scenery blends in with the ground textures make this route one of the best I have ever seen. Amazing job

[LandN]

Looking forward to D/Ling it.

[buzz456]

Interesting about your technique on the route. I do a kind of rough run through on a stretch then go back and fill in the blanks go do something else and then come back and fill in some more detail. I like driving a train up and down the route and stopping every now and then and adding stuff until I'm pretty happy with the results so a particular stretch is a wip for quite a while.

[ErikGorbiHamilton]

Looking Good Boosted!

[BoostedFridge]

Interesting about your technique on the route. I do a kind of rough run through on a stretch then go back and fill in the blanks go do something else and then come back and fill in some more detail. I like driving a train up and down the route and stopping every now and then and adding stuff until I'm pretty happy with the results so a particular stretch is a wip for quite a while.

I find that compartmentalizing my tasks helps me get the scenery down most efficiently. Whenever I take a break for a 'photo run' , I end up driving the train for a few hours!


I start by 'smoothing' the terrain. Depending on how good the DEM resolution is, and how close the roadbed is to embankments and cliffs, will determine how much work this is. This canyon has been a real pain, and I end up having to adjust all the tile vertices one at a time. Tonight it took me about 90 minutes to smooth out 3/4 mile of terrain along the tracks.

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Once the terrain is neatly in place along the tracks, and the embankments are fairly uniform, I do a 'rough' terrain paint on the area. If I have already figured out the textures that suit an area the best, then this is pretty quick.

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Then its time to add the trackside scenery assets. I use an LOD of 10 for the assets immediately beside the track, and an LOD of 6 or 7 for assets further away. This can be a slow process in areas like this where the terrain is uneven, and there are multiple embankment angles by the roadbed. The constant curves of the track don't help either. These variables made me use fairly small scenery assets here, and the smaller the asset, the more of them I have to place and position. The time spent smoothing the terrain makes this much easier then it could be otherwise though.

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After the ground assets are down, I add 'accent' terrain textures to help blend the scenery assets in, and bring out the 'feel' of an area.
Next I'll add more distant scenery, 2d trees in this case. Asset blocks are very useful for this. Once they are in place, I again paint around the trees, and add more textures to help blend them in.

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This is what I call about 80% done. I still need to add 3d trees along the tracks, other detail assets like rocks in the river, and trackside debris.

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Its a slow process, but I hope you agree that its worth it for the finished result!

[JohnS]

Wow! There's a small 4.5 mile route that I want to build but I've tried to start several times but I don't know what I'm doing. You're doing great work. So much talent on this forum.

[Tomcat]

It is definitely worth it!

Seems like we all work in a similar fashion. While I rough out an area I may wind up driving it 4 or 5 times just looking for anything that doesn't seem right or seems a bit bare, and quite often I wind up 20 miles away going into the editor every mile or so to place an asset or 10. And much like Buzz, any particular section is a WIP for quite some time... some sections have been a WIP since day one. In any case, keep up the great work, go slow and most importantly have fun!

[Ericmopar]

Looks great, you're doing a fantastic job Boosted.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

Looking great indeed!

I can imagine your pain and despair trying to smooth out all those DEM scan lines. Is mountainous area with narrow valleys more affected by them?

[BoostedFridge]

Thanks all!

I can imagine your pain and despair trying to smooth out all those DEM scan lines. Is mountainous area with narrow valleys more affected by them?

Depending on the 'resolution' of the SRTM data, yes.

1 arc second loses detail on elevation changes closer than 30 yards/meters, and consequently the DEM is 'averaged' out and not good for canyon floors, Or rail grades carved into canyon walls. 1/3 Arc second (which I am using) is accurate to within 10 meters/yards. Where it falls short is when you have the canyon walls covered in trees right to the river at the bottom. The satellite radar shows the forest canopy as the ground level and then 'loses' a narrow river. 1/9 is available for many waterways in the USA, but in this instance, when I merged the two DEM types together, there was so much of a 'jump' in elevation where they joined, that I decided to just manually smooth and contour the river bottom. Much of the fine adjustment that I am doing now is the result of me being heavy handed with the 'lower' tool during the track laying process here