VDK Tranports Inc.

[vester]

Thank you Willy.


One more black engine:


and one with a bit of color:


Two heritage units from Western Maryland. Now part of CSX.

[vester]

Did someone mention Chicago ?


Chicago Great Western


Chicago Northwestern

[mgb204]

As usual Arne, you are spoiling us with the number of livery choices. Really liking the look of this new freight train too, although it's probably a bit too American for me personally.

[vester]

Thank you mgb.


Have a long list. Might have to make a release or two before getting to the end.

... and at time some liverys comes in from the side, like this one:


Great Western (Railway of Colorado). More or less, a red version of the BN.
Sort of like the irony of the name, being a shortline of 80 miles / 129 km.


At the moment I am having a hard time getting the right orange color of the next one..... ?

[Simmer2]

Can't wait to try them all   

Nick

[vester]

Thank you Nick.

Someone said Milwaukee Road:

[c.p.]

Very nice   Vibrant colors, but not overly saturated.  (It can be difficult to get that balance right).

[Girafe]

This one looks good as well 

[Jack_wilds]

chiming in like a locomotive at a rail crosing... 

like the CNW green-gold scheme...

BUT...   

Luv the Milwaukee Road that turned out very good... 

[vester]

Thank you both.

Very nice   Vibrant colors, but not overly saturated.  (It can be difficult to get that balance right).

Its hard sometimes to get the colors right.
Due to the use of ambient occlusion maps, as overlays (one as soft light and one as multiply), the colors changes quite a bit due to these.
The AO maps gives the basic details on the trains.

The Milwaukee Road has been one of the harder one. If you look at pictures the yellow-orange colors on the trains varies a lot.
In the end I went back to sample the colors of my EMD F-units.

Talking about saturation, I might have to go over some of the mods to desaturate them a bit.


Here is another heritage unit:

Canadian Pacific

or maybe a bit desaturate version

[vester]

Double posting, sorry (nah)

I talked about AO-maps in the last post.
These are what I started out with:



Rendered them with a max plug-in called TexTools in sizes from 1024x1024px and some in 2048x2048px.

Adding a lot of details in Photoshop, I ended up with these base layers:



It has dirt layers at the top. Here there some areas where I rarely change the colors, the wheels/boogie and the tanks

There are two grey areas, on the first in the corner, on second between the two side panels to the right. Where all the wents are.
These are where I have my reference colors for each mod. I can pick up the colors for working with.

Also have one are with a grey (light 50 %) that I added to the AO maps, so it effects the colors, so I can get an idea what the final colors is going to be.
To get the correct colors I use an adjustment layer for Hue/Sataturation.
I compared the Hue/Saturation/Brightness with colors sample from pictures of the livery I am working on.
That can be quite tricky, as the light on the pictures and the ages of them, the same color varies.

Adding the two grey base maps to the model (without the dirt) sort of reminds me of this pictures:

Source GE Transportion. Their Erie plant, I think.

[Alan_Waters]

Adorably! 
I noticed that you have beautiful cars, not like in Maxis. Where are downloaded?

[romualdillo]

I like when you do this kind of update. It's very interesting to see how you work on your textures. Keep the good work! 

[vester]

Thank you both.

I noticed that you have beautiful cars, not like in Maxis. Where are downloaded?

Just quick response: Those are in the file JestarrTrainCars.dat, that can be found in Jestarr's Train Set (v1.0) by Swamper77.

[Alan_Waters]

Many thanks! Your train - the best I've seen for SC4! 

[vester]

Thank you Alan.

BTW: Not sure if this is the case, but maybe it would be an idea to do a search for Big Red Fish or BRF.
She (or at least I think it was) did some car requests. Not sure what was released or not.

.... and when we do talk about BRF, it was posts that BRF posted that got me going.

A big Thanks to her, Swamper and who ever told be on a request of mine, why don't you try to do that, yourself......!

Been working on a few mods.
There is request from Willy that has been fulfilled and then some.....
You could say his request has be fulfilled some where between 200 and 400 pro cent.

Any got a guess what the livery would be ?

You will have to catch an update during this weekend. Need to do a little modding.
Also I started to redo a some of the textures in an full size version.
Working on the texture in 1024x1024px. A few of them I forgot to save, before moving on.

Why I am working to get a full set of HD textures is for props later on.

[bombardiere]

Thank you for your show off you work mini tutorials. I want to try with the automata later, so I am reading all the info I can.

[vester]

Time for a bigger update. Starting out with Iowa Interstate:


and another IAIS:


and a heritage unit from IAIS:


A last unit from IAIS:

The last two is in Rock Island colors, as the IAIS is using a line which original was used by them.

Another regional line:

Florida East Coast.

and last two fallen flags:

Interstate Railroad.


Illinois Central Gulf.

Thank you for your show off you work mini tutorials. I want to try with the automata later, so I am reading all the info I can.

You might want to bookmark this earlier post as well.

[Gugu3]

They look great!

[vester]

Thank you Gugu.

Starting out today with another regional railroad. For this we will need to go far north:

Alaska Railroad.

And now to one of a favourite of many:

Denver, Rio Grande and Western, or just Rio Grande.

... and till today to a railroad that uses some of the tracks of the Rio Grande

San Luis and Rio Grande, one of the railroads of Iowa Pacific.

From there we have one from an operator of California Zephyr (as was DRGW):


and last, another in a Western Pacific colors

Sacramento Northern, a WP own RR.