Train Station WIP #2 - The Train

Train Station WIP #2 - The Train!
Influence: http://www.artofben.com/ (Ben Mauro)

So, I started thinking about the scene and how foggy/steamy it would be. I decided that it needed to have some hot emissive materials for anything emitting light. So I setup the headlights and the interior lights to a 3Vector Constant material seperate from the Train texture sheet in Unreal. This lets me very quickly control the emissive light that is coming from the trains lights. It really REALLY helps when you start completing the scene and need to quickly adjust the lights. Much better than reimporting a texture that's for sure!


The train is covered in bolts / rivets. I loved that about Ben's concept. One because it just looks super industrial, and two for another more technical reason. In the engine, all those little bolts are going to add a very small hint of light/specularity and will really add that small scale of detail to the train.

I obviously took some liberties with the design. My favorite is his above connected train/passenger carrier, but I felt this one would fit the scene better.

I originally made this a 2048 but ended up scaling down to 1024 for the engine. There are some Alpha wires on the underside that help sell it if you are looking straight at it.

Fun model. Next blog will be the start of the world environement import into Unreal 3.