Been making progress on my Alco S2 revamp project and thought it best to put it in its own thread. I made my original Alco S2 model a couple of years ago but wanted to revamp it to bring it up to where I can export it into Substance Painter and texture it there. Here’s the Alco S2 revamp so far.
I’m in the phase where I’m ready to UV Map, add Seams and Color ID the model.
Rich
Nice loco. I like to see these models without textures, it’s great to see detail via mesh, not textures.
I would just like to ask, how will you cope with UV mapping certain objects that you’ve already created. It’s like those handles and all is just a link or you will apply uv map somehow on divided objects whih you will then join into bigger one? As this was always a tough decision, whether to do one thing, Unwrap and texture now or to finish the whole model.
But nevertheless I look forward to see progress.
if i were creating a model like this i intended to UV texture, it’d be in logical parts. basically like the real loco, so the doors would be seperate objects, the handles, the railing (although the top bar and up down bars would all be one objecct … the doodads holding the railing to the side of the loco another object) etc. this way it’s easy enough to UV unwrap any given object needed, while also allowing for duplication of parts so i’m modelling as little as needed.
How do I model? Since most of my modeling is hard surface projects my approach is pretty much in line with what Kelly’s wrote but I’ll go into a little more detail.
First thing I’ll do in a new project is import the wheels from a previous railroad model and scale any reference drawings to those wheels. This will help me keep my current project model roughly in size to my previous railroad models.
Using what I can find in reference drawings and lots of eyeballing I build the model in as Kelly described, “logical parts.” I do use Alt+D and Mirroring when I can to limit the number parts.
When the model is built, the fun is over and the next phases are as follows: cleaning up the hierarchy and grouping logical parts into collections, UV Mapping, adding Seams, and then to color ID all parts.
The next phase and last phase is grouping all those logical parts into bigger parts. This phase is more tricky to group enough logical parts into a bigger part but not so much that the islands become so small they’d be nothing more than a smudge of texture. And it helps to group by color ID if possible.
Texturing is done via Substance Painter. So I export the model into Substance Painter, and after fixing the usual artifact issues, I’ll texture the model and then export those textures only back into Blender where I assign the textures to their respective ‘big parts’.
S2 in Substance Painter and no artifacts.
About Substance Painter I just wanted to say a thing about that. I use the Steam version and purchase whatever smart materials, etc. that I need. But one thing I never see talked about is how others get around the artifact issues that seems to accompany every import into Substance I’ve ever tried. Having done countless hours of research into this and not finding anything on it I did hear a Youtube guy, Josh Gambrell, suggest a clue on exporting from Blender to triangulate faces. I can’t work with triangulation but I did concur that triangulate offending faces in Blender where the artifacts were an issue did fix the artifacts.
So the process is noting the faces where the artifact is in SP to visit the same faces in Blender and triangulate just them. That’s via Edit mode - Faces/Triangulate Faces or Ctrl+T. Then export the model or just the offending parts back to your export file and then reimport the file into SP using Edit Configuration. You’ll need to do redo Bake Mesh Maps but don’t worry, they’ll stay intact and the artifacts will be gone. Sometimes it isn’t a triangulation issue but reversed poly(s). Back in Blender just recalculate or flip the offending polys and export the parts and use the Edit Configuration feature as mentioned before and Bake Mesh Maps and it’ll be good.
Hope this helps.
Rich
Back in Blender and about 99.9% finished, this is the S2 with fictional markings.
What happens from here is the GP7 I did will also be made to have this road name and paint scheme they’ll be added to a scene I’m making in Blender with a coal mine. Still to make yet from scratch is a coal hopper.
Rich
Here’s the GP7 in similar paint scheme
edit: fixed issue with stripes
second edit: updated photo which reflects latest changes
Rich
@rgarber
Thanks for reply to both of you. Definitelly thanks for ALT+D, as that will help me a lot during building my model that I’m working on. Changing topology affects other objects, but iam able to move them separately and its not Shift+D that I used so far. 
I’ve seen too many people mention using Substance Painter. Is it that much better than Blender tools? It costs quite a lot for what I’ve seen it does. If it’s just painting mesh and texture maps. But maybe when someone makes money with 3D it’s necessity.
Btw. incredible model of that loco. Very nice texturing, especially I l ike those details of “wear off”
Thanks!
In regards to your question about SP versus Blender’s I’m going to say SP gives you better results but to learn SP, and get your model imported into SP and then purchasing SP smart materials from say Artstation and there are other places, it’s a 50-50 thing. For now SP has the procedurals down pretty good. There is procedurals making it their way into Blender of late and of course the node system is being enhanced all the time.
When I purchased SP there wasn’t as much available for Blender. And if you applied for a job doing this stuff it seemed most companies wanted to see SP mentioned on your skillset sheet. These days I don’t see it at all hardly. But as you say it still is expensive even if you go the cheaper route through Steam. I just happen to catch it on sale but I don’t see the SP stuff go on sale as much as I think it used to.
If I was learning SP today I would go a different route than I did. I think it would be better to download a bunch of free untextured models and learn to import them and then texture them. If you use your own models right off, the problem is you’ll only experiment so much. SP does more than just texturing. It can do a number of things and even watching a simple tutorial they’ll cover much of that. I probably can only do about 10% of what SP is capable of.
Hope this helps!
Rich
Have been working on a mining structure and its finished now. Next step is to build a hopper rail car to add to the scene.
Rich
Lastest project for the coal mine scene, USRA 55 ton coal Hopper
third edit: textured but no roadname added yet
second edit: newer version (not much difference)
edit: newer version!
Rich
Pretty much done now…
edit: Resized the end car numbers to prototype size.
edit 2: Last one, I promise! Had to put in a missing part. My bad.
Rich
Your attention to detail and (intentional) imperfection is so impressive.
Thanks for saying that! Made my day! - Rich
I’ve been talking about it for a good while now, finally started seeing it happen last week. Here’s the coal mine scene as it stands thus far.
Edit: 10/6: Dirt roads, small power station, power poles & junction boxes, wire added
Just a few more small details to add.
Rich
