Moving on from rainy platforms, I’ve been experimenting with procedural snow materials. It’s taking time, but I think this is starting to get somewhere. Snowy areas provide a nice canvas to throw shadows on, so there are some trees off camera helping to add a bit of texture.
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WOW! GREAT ART!
(A little bit of smoke and the fog. The man next to the door. )
But this is a perfect photo! BRAVO!
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Thanks 
I will update with smoke / steam. I’m hoping to be able to start getting people in these pictures next month when I get my hands on a 3d scanner.
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Very nice.
I know nothing about trains… Why are the lanterns on the front white? What kind of material would they be made from?
Hi Mark.
The lamps at the front were used not to light the way, but to indicate some information about the trains, for example if it was an express train. This information was carried in the configuration of the lamps. These lamps came in a number of different designs and colours over time, and the ones in the picture are painted white (or slightly off-white).
Matt
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More inspiration! Great work!
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Thanks Robert.
@ontogenic Would it be possible to throw some motion blur in? It would sell the train in motion if that is what you want.
Also it looks a slightly like a miniature. This is mainly because the camera is much higher than a person, unless they are standing on a tower. Our brains are used to seeing objects from the limits of our height. It makes it feel small and doesn’t give the sense of size that a train has. It is a good angle if you want to see the whole model, but for a scene render you may want to have a lower shot along the train from the front.
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Hi @Haggis502 - thanks for the comments. Regarding motion blur, I’ve recently implemented a full rig for the wheels and movement, so I have some more recent posts that include motion blur there. You can see some of that on my instagram account as well ( Matthew Hurst (@railwayartist) • Instagram photos and videos.
For scale, agree with you on the human scale principle. I find there are several elements that lead to a sense of scale - positioning the camera where a human would be (I generally use about 5ft - 5.5ft); including relative scale objects (e.g. a bicycle) that people can relate to and then including lots of detail at the small, medium and large scales. Ultimately, the more you get these things in place, the more you can relax the first principle, but it takes a long time to get there.
Just to be clear I am not saying it is not good, it is awesome.
Appreciate that. In fact it makes me want to go back and revisit this scene - or a snow scene in general.