I know lot of people are going to use the assets available to us for their routes, but for those who want to make routes as they are in RL how are you going to be getting your assets. for example my plan to do Skegness to Grantham, I don't want to be using ingame assets when it comes to doing my stations and bridges as the route won't look right and 3ds max is way out of my price range, not sure if blender can make things like railway stations.
I currently use a combination of blender and substance painter to make assets. It works well even if both are definitely a challenge to get productive in. You can make all kinds of things including stations in blender, it's a great tool. I've so far made three low-detail buildings in it and am working on an entire station including underpasses, platforms, canopies and an entrance hall. That's a different beast, it takes a long time if like me you're not used to the tool. I think to get it fully done I will have to invest at least another 30 hours of my time, having probably around 60 behind me already. And that's cutting reasonable corners with some of the details I honestly wouldn't worry about getting 3ds max.
I think your underestimating blender. Don't get 3ds max. Not worth it. Blender is undeniably THE BEST 3d modeling software. Use something like substance painter for texturing and its good. Don't pay for software that can be done better by freeware. That's what I'm getting at anyways.
thanks for the info, I've never used blender or any other software like it. creating 3d models will be all new to me.
If you want to learn Blender for asset modeling, I'd look at a beginner tutorial in 'hard surface modeling', such as those from Josh Gambrell and 3Dnot2D on Youtube. The famous doughnut tutorial from Andrew Price (Blender Guru) is great, but more sculpting and 'soft' modeling. He does do other fantastic tutorials, but those require a little familiarity with Blender. Have fun with it. Blender is used by 3D artists the world over, games, film, TV etc. It can deffo 'make a station'...
