Shiny tanker

As a final act tonight a quick render of the 102t tank was made after putting on the last of the fiddly texture bits that have taken most of this weeks modelling time.

It's all very plain at the moment with just the main colour areas laid out and ready to start having things dulled down and some of the finer details drawn onto the textures. The render has shown up a few little errors that will need to be addressed but luckily nothing too major. Various other parts that are shown at the moment are there as markers to allow final parts to be lined up.

It's a little disappointing that some the items that have been added don't show up in the render, guess we'll have to take some track side pictures a little later to show what's going on! Fairly obviously the next task is finishing off the bogies alongside adding depth and detail to the body textures and getting ready to bake the shadows.

That bloated feeling.

It's audience participation time!

Having had a quiet week with various things sapping time away from the modelling there's a sparkly ex-works 102t tanker (without bogies) sitting here. As the paint has gone on thoughts have turned to what people want to see in stock packs in terms of dirt and weathering while not bloating their system too far.

Presently thoughts have been along the lines of ex-works, lightly weathered and filthy versions, which obviously creates three versions of each model. As we intend to include both loaded and empty versions (with physics to match) that then increases the number of individual items to scroll through to six per model and then naturally any other variable doubles the numbers again. Obviously this isn't so much of an issue for those of you who just use included scenarios and those you've downloaded from elsewhere, but for people who use the scenario editor you can end up with a long list very quickly even if you use the available filters.

We'd really like to strike a balance on this one and would really appreciate your thoughts. Please add a comment to this post, pop something onto the Facebook page discussion or drop us a line using the contact form on the website and we'll try and make as many people happy as possible!

Hazardous Stuff

With Easter over and family and garden time spent we're now back on with the Class A bogie tank.

Currently the major blocks of colour are being laid out ready for extra details to be drawn on and the weathering added. Alongside this there's the bit I most enjoy, creating the labels and decals. It's a strangely relaxing task with a little bit of problem solving to get things looking the way they should.

As a quick taster, here's the 'hazchem' board for the wagon, do you remember the days when London had an 01 std code for the entire Capital?

Unfortunately the compression of the image via Blogger hasn't done the artwork justice, don't worry it's not really that mushy.