New Program, New Project

[shicoe30]

Very nice! Good to have another modeler on board!

[thecanadianrail]

Well good luck then!

oh also here are some GP40's that i would like to see

CN GP40-2W http://www.railpictures.net/images/d1/2 ... 513820.jpg (zebra, northamerica, website, If you decide to do the widenose version in CN)

ATSF GP40-2W http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _GP60M.jpg

Rocky Mountineer GP40-2W http://trainiax.net/drawings/paint/rmrgp40-2w8012.gif

BN GP40-2 http://www.qstation.org/Paul_Anderson_I ... GP40-2.jpg

D&RGW GP40-2 http://www.railpictures.net/images/d1/6 ... 585160.jpg

BNSF GP40-2 http://www.railpictures.net/images/d1/3 ... 112970.jpg

SP GP40-2 http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_whSaIClL27A/T ... 2gp402.jpg

[bsrrco]

The santa fe unit is a GP60M not a GP40-2W & also i would like to throw a few GP40P-2 ideas your way please

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... x?id=16599
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... x?id=16600
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPi ... x?id=12483
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoPi ... x?id=29520

[Chessie8638]

Secondly, I'd like to model the details specific to each roadname, rather than simply repaint one model again and again;

Thank You.

[RAILSOHIO]

I would love to see a non-dynamic brake version of the GP-40. Your wip looks Great!

[Giuseppe]

A hastily thrown-together test render showing the locomotive and trucks (which are not actually finished or "attached" to the locomotive as of now.)

Testrender.jpg

Cheers!

[shicoe30]

Very nice!

[Toripony]

3D modeling is time consuming but 3D locomotive modeling must be like work! I have no problem paying for rolling stock models as long as freeware repainting is allowed. Nice work so far!

[Chessie8638]

Very nice! Looking forward to more models from you.

[Giuseppe]

Alright, a little more progress...

Render_9.jpg

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to work on the trucks yet (to add traction motor cables, air lines, etc.) but I should be able to soon. One question, though- at what point should I begin "unwrapping' the model for texturing? Should I wait until the entire model is finished, or would it be more efficient to go ahead and texture the trucks now?

Oh, actually one more question- exactly what is "shadow baking?" As far as I can tell, it is a way to "fake," so to speak, ambient occlusion so frame rates don't drop too much. Should I wait until after unwrapping to bake shadows, or do it beforehand?

Thanks and cheers,
Giuseppe

[thecanadianrail]

I would recomend at this point making a copy of what you have now, so in the future you can make the different models without too much troubble. From what i have seen most people will do most of the work on the loco and bake it to see what it looks like. if it looks good they move on to "unwrapping"

[BNSF650]

Man that is some really nice work.

[MaineLines]

That's a great looking model. You need to un-wrap the model before you can shadow bake, and I would suggest un-wrapping the truck seperately. With that amount of detail you might even want to break the truck into a couple of textures. Un-wrapping and Baking are usually done on a per texture basis.

[Giuseppe]

Well, I've been pretty busy lately and haven't gotten a lot of modeling done, but I did start playing around with normal maps in Blender a little while ago and did a bit of an experiment with the engine door latches on the GP-40:

Normalrender_1.jpg

Normalrender_2.jpg

In the renders are two lighting setups to show the way the shading works- pretty impressive, huh? No 3D modeling or color textures on the latches, just flat rectangles with normal maps.

Anyway, I'm hoping to get some more work done on the Geep this weekend, starting with unwrapping/normal mapping/texturing the trucks. I'll finally be able to put all those high-resolution photographs to use.

Cheers,
Giuseppe

[Kali]

Oh, actually one more question- exactly what is "shadow baking?" As far as I can tell, it is a way to "fake," so to speak, ambient occlusion so frame rates don't drop too much. Should I wait until after unwrapping to bake shadows, or do it beforehand?

You got it right. Do it after unwrapping so all the shadows end up in the right place on the textures - engines don't have seperate shadow maps ( at least if you're using the recommended shaders! ). It's also a way of faking higher detail. You can do it all by hand too if you want, at least the detail parts.

RE: payware vs freeware - don't forget you have to support payware afterwards! I am leaning towards Donationware ( IE, if you feel like giving me something, go ahead but it won't make you any more special! ;) ) if I was ever to do something that started to resemble a job, I think that's the best of all worlds.

Looking good though! put me down for a widenose one too :)