Coming Soon: Great Northern Depots

[GreatNortherner]

Colleagues,

Soon I will upload a first set of prototypical depots from G.N.'s Montana lines. Included will be the depots from Brady, Carter, Chester, Cut Bank, Ledger, and Power. Also included will be a section house modeled after a prototype in Washington. I will try to setup the Cut Bank depot so it can be easily used as a replacement for the crude default building for all other Marias Pass routes - but all buidings will as well be included in the next relese of the GN Hi-Line route.

Some of the buidings are quite detailed, Cut Bank and Ledger having the highest poly count with ~1500. All buildings will come with night and snow textures, and will be free for use, redistribution, and reskinning.

When time permits, I will also continue my G.N. Montana elevator modeling efforts, by now I have pictures of nearly all old wooden elevators of the towns reached by my route. Quite a lot of elevators, though.

Also, I will upload a shape file patch to all of my old models any time soon, I redid most models with Paul Gausden's latest SketchUp plugin to eliminate the headlights-error.

Some screenshots of the depots:

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/110814.jpg
(The three buildings on the right, from top to bottom: the section house, Carter depot, and Ledger depot (with interior and half opened door)

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/110815.jpg

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/110816.jpg

Cheers!
Michael

[GreatNortherner]

Three more depots...
Only few are left, then I have modeled about all depots of which I found prototype information (pictures) so far.

From left to right: Conrad, Summit, Valier
http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/110847.jpg

Cheers!
Michael

[eaglefan9727]

Those are some nice buildings. Great job. I could find a home for a couple of these stations if not all in my upcoming route project.

Eaglefan

[rpicardi1]

Looking good.

A hint on using snow textures; Consider creating something like snow drifts and piles to fit on the roofs and around your structures. Granted, it is a seperate object, but, not only will one texture work for the snow, you won't need seperate textures for all of the textures in use for your structure. Structures look so much better with piles of snow on and around them in the winter setting on such a northern route.

You can also cheat on night textures and eliminate them if your windows are seperate polys that can have their materials set to SolidHalfBright. Unlike night textures, the locomotive headlight will illuminate the structures properly at night and your signs, windows, and interiors, will be properly illuminated at all times.

SRV Ron

[GreatNortherner]

Dear Ron, thanks a lot for your suggestions!

Yes, separate snow drifts/piles are a wonderful idea. Thanks, I will give it a try! Especially as I already considered adding some along the tracks like 3DTS did on Donner Pass.

I will have to see if and how I can assign "Materials" in Google SketchUp, as far as I remember Paul Gausden wrote it was possible. Cutting down the Textures folder's size would be nice.

Michael

[GreatNortherner]

They have been uploaded.

I did not get around to making the modifications Ron suggested, it would simply be too much work now. They are, however, stored safely in my To-Do list for the route, so maybe I will eventually update these buildings. On my newer buildings I do implement the changes. For the time being, maybe someone can enjoy the Montana depots even with their little flaws (or, to be precise, not perfect lighting.)

Also, please feel free to reskin/remodel, if you want I can also send you the base files.

Cheers!
Michael

[eaglefan9727]

Hey Michael,

Thank you for uploading these stations for other route builders to use if they want to in their upcoming routes. Ive been looking foward to these stations the first time you announced them. They should be a good addition to my next route project. Thanks again.

Eaglefan