For most of my life, I have been interested in railroading and how it works. I have also been interested in designing and 3d modelling for a good portion. During most of the pandemic, this is what I did. A while ago, me and a few others decided to try and recreate most of the Reading Lines System, which spanned from Philadelphia to many points across the northeast. I have used Roblox (which is mostly known as a kids platform today due to their target audience) for my builds. I use Blender, a 3d modelling program, to model the assets, then import them to Roblox in somewhat of a plug and play system. In September of this year, I began creating assets. The first asset was a Reading G-1sa, a passenger steam locomotive built in the late 1920s, lasting until around the late 1950s. About a week into creating it, this is the progress I had.
 |
(Progress as of 9/22/21) |
 |
| (Progress as of 9/30/21) |
Over the coming weeks, I continued at a steady progress, finishing the model by the beginning of October. The main issue in this entire project would be reference photos and overall finding correct information of whatever is being modeled. I searched mainly Facebook groups containing people who actually used the Reading, and others who worked for it posting their insights and photos. Photos such as these :
 |
| (From the Friends of the Reading Railroad Facebook Group) |
helped greatly, as technical drawings from 1920 were not sufficient.
The next step in building the G-1sa was bringing it into Roblox, the platform that the game itself would be on. To make the locomotive itself pop and overall look better, before importing, I used Adobe Substance Painter, a paid texturing program, to texture the locomotive and give it an older grimy look.
In early October, I began importing the locomotive.
 |
| (First part of the locomotive imported into Roblox, 10/3/21) |
I continued importing the locomotive, and this is how it came out.
 |
| (Fully imported G-1sa) |
The next step of the process was to create the tender of the locomotive. I used the same steps as before, in the same order, to create the tender within 2 days.
 |
| (Tender in Progress) |
 |
| (Tender Completed + Locomotive) |
The static version of the G-1sa was now complete. The next step is to make the locomotive work, which will be written about in the next part.
No comments:
Post a Comment