[WIP] Transport Miniverse
Hey Everyone!
Some time ago I created a series of mini trains for 3D printing in my free time and it was a ton of fun!
You can read a bit of backstory about that here:
Or check a few more photos here:
Few weeks ago during the 2022 Game Industry Conference I had the chance to look around at the Poznań Game Arena too, and I’ve just fallen in love with all those great indie games. Some of the developers were giving away free stickers and after grabbing the first few I had the urge to collect as much as I could. :D I guess childhood memories kicked in, does anyone else remember those albums with the collectible stickers?
So these little stickers got me thinking, how cool would it be to have my train series as colorful stickers!
But unfortunately the models were for 3D printing, STL files from CAD program, messy topology, no UVs, never been painted.
Anyway, fast forward to the boiling point when I could not resist anymore and I sat down to remodel one with UVs and textures.
This was inspired by the hungarian M62 Szergej. (These are my childhood favorites. I remember standing next to the train tracks close to my grandma’s house and watching these massive iron horses pulling 50+ fully loaded cars behind them.)
It's using this texture:
(I know, I know, so much wasted space, could be more compact. :) )
If you are a train fan, you can spot right away that the M62 locomotive has 6 axles and this one only 4.
The reason behind it is that when I came up with the first designs I made an art decision to fit all of the models to a 1x1 base plate. This limitation made designing quite challenging. I could fit all 6 axles under the train, but then the body/wheel ratio would be something that I don’t like. So… I did my best to make it look okay even if it’s wrong, focusing more on the recognizable silhouettes and main forms. And this example is not even close to what I had to sacrifice with my very long steam locomotive designs. :)
I am also not making a difference between the american and european couplers and every model is using the same, kinda cartoonish buffers. I made this decision to make the 3D printed models “compatible” with each other regardless of what locomotives and cars you put together.
I still have not ordered sticker papers to print the first test versions :) But what I did is that I exported it to Unreal Engine 5, out of curiosity, and quickly made a few more models around it.
At this point I was like, what the hekk, why not… And made one more locomotive.
It’s pretty easy to model and texture them with this art style. This one took me like 7-8 hours to finish. And this is a brand new one, there is no 3D print ready base model to work with, which means some of the time was spent on checking references, proportions, forms etc.
As you can see I was fine tuning the proportions and details until the very last step, and still made a few adjustments after recording these steps.
And this is where I am now:
Still not sure where this is going...
...but 2 things I know:
- I will remodel more of my previous models to in-game models.
- I will dig deeper in Unreal Engine (spent almost the whole last decade working with RED engine, kinda forgot what is what in UE :) ) and make them move, maybe even I will try to make a mock up video about how a game would look like what I have somewhere in my head.
I’ve figured I will make posts like this to keep record of the progress. Whenever I have something to show, there will be a bigger post about it. As for now I go back and try to figure out how to make DoF in UE5. :) This is Photoshop DoF on the last shot, somehow I can not make it work on the simple CameraActor, no matter how I change the parameters…
Replies
This is so cool!! Hahaha. Your models looks so nice. They are so cute, but densely detailed. Nice job!
Thanks @lucardo! I am glad you like them, they are really fun to work on. :)
And here is a little update:
First, I reviewed the tracks and their proportion to the locomotives and came to a decision to make them narrower. Originally for 3D printing it was more ideal to have them wide - or at least I like to think that - but for this version I think this more realistic track width is a better fit.
Here are before/afters:
I also finished the new oil tank car. I might tweak colors later a bit.
While I was modeling it, I was thinking about how to deal with color variations. I might want subtle color variations from the same type, or different paint jobs. If all of them are on the screen, that would be many tiny textures to load and a lot of materials.
So instead of that I started a bigger texture where I will keep all the variations, so the engine needs to load just one 512 texture, and with this little part here I am able to control which version should be used by moving the UV there. With the current texture layout I can have 32 different versions (4x8).
Not sure if this is the best solution, I did not work with UE in the last decade, but it's a start. :)
I think I will make a locomotive next.
great breakdown and lovely work!
Thanks @wirrexx! :)
A nice looking passion project that look like a lot of fun, great way of tackling things, glad you want to make a small video of a game "trailer"(ha), i was going to say that immediately(make a game). Then i thought wild west and more can be done if you wanted to add more.
Thank you, @iam717 !
We will see how far I can push it. :)
In the meantime I had an other idea and made a "quick" test.
Do you guys remember those car card games?
I printed out a bunch of train cards. From the 3D printing project I have a ton of renders to use, I collected their data long time ago, so all it took to throw them to the cards, print and cut them out.
Don't mind the design, I spent like 2.5 seconds on it, right now it's not important, just wanted to see if they are fun to play. And it's not bad. :) I think I will use the new train models to make proper cards as well later.
For now I go back to re-model one of these locomotives with colors and add to the "game". :)
These are great! The narrower gauge definitely is an improvement.
Man, seeing these (and the epic style ) makes me want to see these in some sort of railway sandbox game, just to see them chugging around ( a much improved ) SimCity 1 style railway system :D
Thanks, @JohnnySix !
I am a Transport Tycoon fan myself, I can see them running around between factories and mines when I close my eyes. :D
Finished a new locomotive and did some tweaks on the oil tank car.
Made a progress GIF again:
beautiful!
Download: Grasshopper Coloring Page
An unplanned byproduct of my hobby project is this... train coloring page. :D Rendered with Blender's Freestyle.
You can download the full resolution PDF (including the coloring guide) with the link above.
Feel free to share your finished versions here in the comments!
Keep in mind:
- Print out only the first page of the PDF
- If you plan to use water colors or markers, use proper paper.
Have fun!
omg, that's such a cute idea!
This looks great! I love the looks! :D
I was wondering about the customized UV layout that you could just add an extra texture map that you lay out the different color areas as masks. That way you could just set color in Unreal and even randomize those. Here is my crude example:
Instead having specific colors like such.
You could maybe make all gray texture.
and extra mask map with the different sections :)
Thank you, @Keimoj !
Fantastic idea! This would not limit the color variations on the texture! :)
I wonder if the same idea would work with gradients where you can set the colors in the materials?
Because right now this is not a gradient of one color, but a few hand picked values. I am pretty sure this could be done in Unreal. I will investigate this direction.
it's pretty simple actually
you need a gradient mask (left image) and a 1 px high gradient ramp (right image), you plug the mask into the UVs of the ramp. tada
Thanks @Neox !
But what I meant to ask is is there a parametric node where I could pick the colors without using texture? So the only texture I would use is the mask?
[BTW I just went through all the images about Airborn on Artstation on the other day. Lovely stuff! Hope I could play with the real game someday! :) ]
ah technically you could do that by stacking LERP nodes together. the more points you want the more complicated it gets. but it is doable
basically you lerp, color one and two between two points, then lerp the resulting ramp with color 3, that with 4 etc.
here is an example for 4 colors and adjustability for 3 gradient positions, as found on artstation, just save. copy and paste into your material editor. then add your gradient on the top connection point
https://pastebin.com/e9WYPkSv
Thanks!
By the way this way would be cheaper than using textures?
I can see the benefit to get rid of textures and have virtually unlimited resulotion with parametric gradients, but can this make the material so complex that it's not worth it at some point? When a lot of color variation runs on the map at the same time? Or material instancing will handle it?
I would say, this comes down to the usecase. Lerp is pretty cheap math and you dont do complicated things here. I would also say, the textures you will need are quite cheap anyways. So i guess it's more a matter of personal taste? I mean you could just go in and test this out just do a bunch of meshes and materials this way and another that way. I assume unless you are building something massive or your hardware goal is on a very low end, either would be very fine.
Compared to say whatever a current gen game does in their shaders AND their textures.
Haha I just hope that there is some merit from my suggestion :D I have no surefire option as I haven't dabbled lately with UE4/5 but I would think there is way to pull it off :) as @Neox said some stacked lerp function might work well. I'll have a look too.
de cukik OMG! so cute
Koszonom! :)
The Nohab is the next, the modelling is almost done. But there is always a tiny detail that I discover and want to add. :D
pretty adorable designs, nice work
Thank you! Glad you like them. :)
I am back with a short update. :)
First I spent some time to make some sort of brand, like a game name and logo so all of these could be marked with it and kept kinda organised.
After some thinking this is what I came up:
I keep the "topic" open, as later I would love to model other type of vehicles as well. :)
Then I had a little lack of free time, but slowly I finished the next locomotive, the Bulldog. As it's one of my all time favorites, I gave it a little more love.
I once again reviewed the train tracks' width and decided to narrow it a little bit more. This is how the fleet looks like now:
I think I will make a steam locomotive next. Or a quick grain hopper car. We'll see.
I've uploaded the previous coloring page to my Gumroad as well, you can download it for free - just enter zero to the price:
Grasshopper Coloring Page Gumroad
I've been busy with other thing lately, but here is a WIP screenshot about what next. Not locomotive nor car after all :D
Well... in the meantime, ideas after ideas, I went on a side track and designed these. Got the first sample recently.
Pretty cool to see my design on a tshirt. :)
Anyway, I will get back to the game idea shortly.
I also would like to show you guys the books that I bought in the past months for research. :)
This stuff is dope as f. NICE!!!
Thank you! :)
Like these mini locos and those t-shirts are mad, btw are they for sale? cos I'll certainly buy one maybe more :)
Haha, thank you! I am putting together a webshop for the t-shirts these days.
But you know, once you sell something you need the whole circus, company, taxes, etc...
Plus I don't want a t-shirt printing machine in my living room, so I will use print-on-demand services, but they are kinda pricey. The t-shirt quality is nice tho.
I will drop here the link once it's up and running if you are interested. :)
Your passion for trains is CLEARLY coming through in this project. I'm definitely a big fan!
Thank you! :) Glad you like them!
A new sample t-shirt just arrived today!
Little update on the roundhouse.
oh roundhouses are the sexiest things in the whole railroad system!
They are, indeed! :) Too bad they are not used - understandably - with modern electric trains. So that two over there just placeholder for now. :D
Hey guys!
Here is a progress GIF of the roundhouse. I've added/changed few things since the last post. I think that's it for now, the rest will be some work on the environment/ground eventually.
Had very little free time for the project lately, but started to block out the new locomotive.
Can anyone guess which locomotive inspired this one? :)
Probably I am gonna tweak the model here and there over time.
Video of the wind effect: https://fb.watch/lU5KEI8h33/
(The camera did not picked it up quite right, the 60fps video waaay smoother on the phone's screen)
https://fb.watch/m0OtAdboNx/
Created a Discord server if you guys wanna hang out and talk about trains and gamedev. https://discord.gg/r9RUZ4uyaK
Old vs New
I just keep redesigning things, but I will stop now and try to set up a webshop.
In the latest iteration I was exploring different backgrounds, to make them more relevant to the trains.
In the next iteration I will try to figure out how to blend them better together. Maybe some texture overlay would help on the train layer? Will see what works.
Got the test print in the meantime.