Shildon Tunnel BA side

This weekend I managed to find a few hours to put together the tunnel entrance at Shildon (BA side)
In 1839 work was started on the Shildon tunnel and was opened on 10 April 1842

An interesting fact:

Wikepedia, says that the world's oldest railway tunnels lying beneath streets are the Cobble Hill Tunnel and Murray Hill Tunnel in New York City.
They were originally cuts dug in 1844 and 1836 respectively, but weren't roofed over to become tunnels until the 1850s.
Shildon is clearly older then either, and as neither still has trains running through it, Shildon should claim its place as the world's oldest railway tunnel under a settlement.

1024/512 size texture that is not final, but at least it is squared up and ready for the graffitti to be removed.




A view to show the polygons.



I tried to avoid the visual butterfly effect by off setting the split on both sides, the eyes are drawn to the impressive entrance.



regards

Derek

BA progress

For a week now I have been without the internet so not been able to update the blog.

Over the weekend I spent some time on the main Station at Bishop Auckland.

The station is the whole reason for creating the route, however I have held off making it due to lack of information.

However thanks to a UKTS forum member who sent me a link to some wonderful flickr images by pinzac55 some progress has been made;

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28403871@N05/3332800687/

I took this image and distorted it as best I could to make it look like it was being viewed straight on so it could be used it as a template.

Once this was done I created a brick texture from one of my photos of the old hippodrome in Bishop Auckland.

The building is less than 100 metres distance from the station and is constructed from the same type of brick. I know it is not important where the brick texture comes from but I thought it would be a nice touch to use a Bishop image. (Nice to see research trip come in handy too)

I then added some corner stones from another photo and placed with a slight drop shadow.

The orginal photo is great for reference but it could never be used as a texture even if I had the rights to use it, I therefore had to recreate the orginal details in a higher resolution.

The Brick surround I created by making a long strip brick texture and applying that to a box in 3DS max (with lots of segments) and then adding a bend modifier.

The texture is currently looking a little flat regarding lighting, however it will evolve once I start on the rest of the station and only truly come to life once I bake shadows.

I sunk in the doors and middle windows into the geometry to see how the texture would look on the model.

There is still a long way to go however I hope to show the completed model in a couple of weeks.

Derek

Who's house?

OK this has taken me a little over 4 hours to make but the texture will be used for a number of houses at Wearhead.

I often create the texture before I make the model, this is the case here.

As you can see only the top left part of the texture has been worked on, the rest is all wonky.

I'll work my way around the texture as I create more houses. Each part of the texture will get corrected/cloned/mirrored etc.

I am using 256 pixels as the height of my buildings, any less would not hold up to close viewing. Even close up this house looks crisp enough for what I need. Station buildings will be at least double the rez.

I made the front and side wall in the texture, the rest of the windows I cut into the model, I sacrifice the variety on the house to get more variety in the whole scene. The top model has 200 polys (400 triangles)

The plan is to have all the houses in this small village all using 1x1024/1024 sized texture, this will hopefully keep any loading glitches down to a minimum.

derek

Just when you thought the bridge was over...

Hi,
As I have hundreds of assets to make I am looking only to spend a few hours per scenery asset.
This morning was the first test, 2 hours from start to finish.
One side on photo was enough to create the texture for the whole bridge at Wearhead. I did mirror the arches to save on texture space.
The texture size is 1024/256, which is ok seeing as the end of the line is just behind the camera.
I will also look to create an animated object that I can place below the surface of the water to simulate shallow rapids. The route follows the river the whole way so it is important I get the river looking intresting.



The bridge at Wearhead.

Update image with added rocks.

derek

North by Northeast

Hi,

Sorry for not posting for a few weeks, but I have been rather busy. (More on that soon!)
It was with great pleasure I managed to head off back north for the weekend to gather the much needed reference pictures for my route.

I left London and the family at 10pm Friday night. North circular, M1,M18,A1 BOSH!

Three and a half hours later I arrive at my brothers house for a beer before bed. (well, sleeping bag!)

7am start to the day heading into the dales, it was a wonderful drive, full of dramatic skies and rolling hillsides.

I took close on 2000 images, mostly of bridges/buildings and trees over 2 days but I thought I'd share a few of the views I encounted.

First up the view from West Blackdene bridge looking down the line to St John's Chapel.

Next up the view a mile down the line at St john's chapel.

Further down stream (looking south) just before you get to Eastgate I took this shot.

Arrived at Witton Park around 2pm.

I spent the rest of the day taking shots of Bishop Auckland buildings.

A few beers with the older brother, then up at 8am to head off down the other branch lines, first up the 2 miles to Shildon Tunnel. The First train of the day was still a few hours away. I walked through that tunnel once as a kid, a stupid thing to do, but it was just one of many stupid things I did!

After a trip to see dad I drove upto Coundon station and walked the 2 miles to Binchester taking pictures of views and the various stone bridges along the way, below is a view from one of them.

After that I wondered around Bishop some more taking pictures of King James and Cockton hill schools as well as other key buildings.

I have enough to keep me busy for many months and I look forward to sharing them with you.

regards

Derek

Speaking of bridges..

While doing my research I came across this wonderful photo of the Flying Scotsman squeezing under Cockton Hill Bridge on the 10th of September 1967.


Derek

The bridge is over

Just a little update today, Had the day off yesterday, this morning I blocked out the old metal bridge from the station approach road over platform 4 to the station Rec.



Managed to get a few good pictures of it so it is fairly accurate with all the support struts going in the correct directions. Yes I know it is just pushed into the far wall... but all that will be fixed once the builders have had a cuppa.
Just need to texture it correctly now, hope to get it done later this evening.

Derek

p.s. Excuse the strange titles of blog posts, most are lyrics from various songs, this one from BDP.