Progress at the Steelmill...!!!!

[lnghairedwizard]

Still so much detail to add but I thought I'd throw together what I had resonably finished for some screenshots...

Backing towards the Furnace building aka the Meltshop.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Longhairedwizard/Minimill%2011-18/FurnaceBuilding.jpg


Notice the Ingot cars....the metal is sent to the Continuous Caster to be made into Slabs but if it goes down, the metal can be teemed into these Ingot molds or they can be used to supply other mills.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Longhairedwizard/Minimill%2011-18/TeemingAisleentrance.jpg

Here we skip over to the Scrap loading aisle....the scrap will be taken from the gondolas and loaded into a clamshell bucket to load into the Electric Arc Furnaces (EAF).
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Longhairedwizard/Minimill%2011-18/ScrapAisle.jpg

A close up the the Electric Arc furnace.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Longhairedwizard/Minimill%2011-18/ElectricArcFurnace.jpg

Here we are back at the Teeming aisle entrance.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Longhairedwizard/Minimill%2011-18/EnteringTeemingAisle.jpg

A couple of views of the Teeming aisle with the EAF's to the left and the Continuous Caster (Concast) in the background.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Longhairedwizard/Minimill%2011-18/MeltshopWide.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Longhairedwizard/Minimill%2011-18/Meltshoppanoramic.jpg

A ladle full of molten steel waiting to go up to the Casting deck.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Longhairedwizard/Minimill%2011-18/LadleofSteel.jpg

A closeup of the Continous Caster or Concast. The metal will flow from a hole in the bottom of the ladle to a large bathtup shaped vessel called a "tundish"...from there it flows out the bottom into a water-cooled mold that oscillates up and down to prevent the steel from freezing or sticking to the mold. As the outer skin of the steel hardens, it flows out of the mold through cooling sprays then into a series of rolls that gradually bend it to a horizontal state...it is then cut into slabs via oxygen torch and either allowed to cool or sent directly to a Reheat furnace to be raised back up to a uniform rolling temperature. (This model is just started..mostly a skeleton really)
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Longhairedwizard/Minimill%2011-18/ContinuousCaster.jpg

Looking back towards the Teeming aisle entrance at the Furnace deck.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Longhairedwizard/Minimill%2011-18/FurnaceDeck.jpg

We're now entering the Hot-rolling mill building where the slabs will be rolled down to strip steel that will be rolled into coils for shipment.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Longhairedwizard/Minimill%2011-18/HotRollingmill.jpg

A closer look at the millstands...
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Longhairedwizard/Minimill%2011-18/MillStands.jpg

Here is the Reheat furnace...still needing its piping for air and fuel as well as other detail.
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Longhairedwizard/Minimill%2011-18/ReheatFurnaces.jpg


More to come...

Bill Bzak aka Longhairedwizard

[evilkat]

Thats amazing Bill can't wait for its release, If you done this much detail on this, I'd like to see whats in store for your next refinery release :-)

[CARex]

Stunning William!!
What’s the poly count/file size on this behemoth??

Have a sparkling day,
Bob

[bessemer]

!!!!!WOW!!!!!!

[SCL-A-Line]

I Bow before you

[jovet]

"WOW" is right!!! Very impressive, feels like you're actually there just looking at the pictures alone!

[GrandTrunkFan]

Bill, you need to make some vehicles for freeware release! :P Kenworths *drool* :p

[Noisemaker]

Excellent work! And still love your refinery on the ol' Canton Route.
But this steel mill looks like 10 times the size, and probably the poly's as well?

Going to need a 8Ghz laptop with a 2GB Video card for this one. :7

[lnghairedwizard]

Although I havent actually tally'ed up the polys on the mill vs the Suddenly refinery.....I'm quite sure the refinery used 5-10 times the number of polys.

Rich Garber really liked the Spherical Gas storage tanks and used quite a few of them...and spherical objects/parts in a 3D model use quite a few polys)

Bill Bzak

[oakpalms]

Bill, Your details are amazing! It has been a while since you posted the jpg files--can you give us any updates?

Bob Edwards

[maiatcat]

Has Bill given any indication whether or not this steel mill will be publically released?

[Noisemaker]

Good to know Bill. That's reassuring indeed! :) I know on my old lappy, going by the refinery was just a painful 'slide show' and had to 'look the other way' many times. Even on my new super-duper Dell, the refinery's a bit 'jumpy'. So it's those tanks then! I always thought it was the intricate piping all over the place. ;)

[lnghairedwizard]

Most of the actual "3D" piping is very low-poly (only 4 or 6 sided with "smoothing" added). alot of the piping is done via TGA (transparent texture) or even a regular bitmap type texture which is only a couple polys but looks like about a 1000 or so. Likewise, the safety railing, stairs and caged ladders are all TGA.

Bill

[Noisemaker]

Good to know as well. I know nothing of the graphical side of these objects, just what looks good. ;) One thing though I did want to ask you is 'what about animated smoke from the stacks?' Would that be hard on the FPS and poly's? But seeing how the train engines have it, and your flame towers are animated...? The smoke, though looking great - reminds me of cotten baten kinda just hanging there. Have you done this for the Foundry, or would it be too hard and demanding on video to do?

[lnghairedwizard]

RE:"One thing though I did want to ask you is 'what about animated smoke from the stacks?' Would that be hard on the FPS and poly's?"


The smoke you see coming from locomotives is done, I believe, using what are known as "particle effects"...these can be used to create fire, smoke, dust, splashing water etc. Unfortuanetly, scenery objects seem to only be able to use motion animation effects such as windmills spinning, cranes moving back and forth etc. Someone did do an animated smokestack that had a thin, twisting line of smoke that appeared to rise by using rotation, but I'm sure it was a very "regular" effect and wouldnt be appropriate for the irregular plumes of smoke seen from Powerplants, Refineries and Steelmills.

It IS possible to hide a piece of track on your route, then create an invisible locomtive (just a simple shape alphaed out or below ground) with its braking and power settings altered to get it to move at a snails pace and with the smoke set to come out at the height of the smokestack your trying to animate. You put the track under the smoke stack in the Route editor and place the SFX locomotive on the hidden track as an AI train in an activity and when you play the activity...you will have smoke rising from that smoke stack. The problem here is that the locomotive has to be moving to produce the smoke (albeit at a very slow pace) and will eventually move far enought away from the smokestack that it will become apparent that the smoke is coming out of thin air as opposed to the top of the stack. One can create a very short path will waiting point and multiple reversing points to stretch out the effect but it will eventually cease at some point. Another problem is creating smoke coming from multiple stacks of a factory. A steelmill or refinery might have 5-100 smoke stacks so you would have to place alot of hidden track and have several SFX AI loco's running at the same time.

This would affect performance some.. but might be worth the trouble on an industrial switching activity in the middle of a steelmill or refinery with smoke and steam rising all around and flarestacks acting as beacons on stormy weather or night/evening activities.

PS-I'll be posting some progress shots of my Blast furnace taken from the sim in the next few days. You will see marked improvement and progress!!!:)

Bill Bzak