Creation Sharing Diary Of Creating A Route - Toronto Subway Opening Day

Okay, one more diary update before I start preparing for my business trip. I was able to replicate the acoustic ceiling tiles that were originally in the centre area of the platform, and added a few other details, and while there's still some detail work to be done (modelling the emergency power cutoff panels at the ends of the platform, and seeing if I can get working analogue clocks, for instance,) I'm happy to say the platform-level experience is getting rather immersive!

No new progress on the Gloucester train, it's really just parked there for eye candy.

Truth to tell, I'm kind of hoping that Dovetail might provide some kind of super-basic template rail vehicle for us to work off of, by the time I'm ready to work on that part of things intensively, but that's probably wishful thinking.

Now I really need to step away from the computer after tonight, or I won't even get my luggage packed!

 

on which software do you model your train?

 

I'm making it in Blender, version 2.80.

 

Why not Blender version 3.X or 4.X?

 

quite simply, I've been using 2.8 for years, and while I would like to learn the ins-and-outs of the more recent versions, I felt this project, as a whole, would be complex enough for me to benefit from leaning on my familiarity with the older version. After all, it works well enough.

 

Well, here I am in the middle of a long weekend, and back from that business trip. I've been processing some unrelated bad news, and It's been too hot for anything too ambitious, so I've just been doing a bit more model work on the Gloucester (GCRW G-1, if you want to get technical.) I like the way Blender's glass shader looks, but I wonder how close I can get to replicating the look of them in the Editor. The headlights are the window to a loco's soul, after all. Well, apart from the windows, I suppose.

 

As far as I know, glass shader with no refraction (which is what you would usually want for a glass plane) is just a Fresnel blending between full transparency and full reflectivity so there's no reason why it shouldn't work here. Though you might want to add a bit of tint to this just to make sure the glass is even visible head-on.

Here is an example from UE5:


The real challenge though would be getting a nice and sharp reflection onto it.

 

Just wow. A huge thank-you to moofers#8902 for pointing out this excellent utility! this will save me so much time in placing and aligning roads and buildings! Obviously in my case, many of the buildings will have been built too recently to act as guides, but even so!

(Here is how the proxy buildings look around the Berwick Ave. tunnel exit, for instance.)

In other news, I've been working with the Gloucestershire Archives in the U.K. to see what engineering drawings by the Gloucester Railway Carriage & Wagon Company we can dig up on the G-series subway cars, and should have some news by the end of the week. It is my hope to produce the most detailed and accurate model of the Gloucesters that has ever been made for a train simulator. (For one thing, if I don't do it, I can't imagine who else would. )

 

Well, over the course of the last couple weeks I managed to get copies of many of the original design drawings for the GRC&W Co. G-1 subway car! I'm not at liberty to show any of them on this forum, but here's a look at one of the passenger seats (haven't done the cushions yet,) now done entirely to spec!

Those curves on the base took me longer to get right than I'd care to admit. 77 vertices total. This has all made me very optimistic for the future of this project, provided I can work out how to spawn (or place) my subway cars (A&B unit semi-permanently coupled pairs of cars, actually) at whatever stage of completion they happen to be at in any given moment, for testing things like coupling, and the human interface stuff (windows, doors, throttle movement etc.) and eventually simugraph stuff for propulsion and braking. I suppose I just don't have a clear notion of the workflow. Hopefully I don't need to build the full network or make a timetable first, as that could get complicated fast.

On a personal note, I've realized today that I need to spend most of the labour-day long weekend getting my sleep schedule on track before it makes me sick, so my output might not be what it otherwise would. Stay safe and healthy, everybody!

 

Pity they don't make subway seats like this anymore... those Dunlopillo cushions were comfy!

 

Well, I should have done a bit more research about some Blender building and road assets I spent a fair amount of money on. In the end, it may not be possible to bake out and export the textures from the procedural materials they use. I haven't completely given up on using them, and may even explore my options for getting a refund, but lesson learned, I guess. Feeling glum and a bit cheated, but I've only myself to blame really.

Oh well, here's some progress I've made on the door partitions (or whatever they are called,) which I think came out nicely, but still need glass in them. Also put in a few more of the seats, and put a hot air grille on one of them.

 

Bit late to this but, hard lesson about procedural materials huh? Anyway, every game engine and 3D modeling package supports some way of doing procedural material effects but the thing is, it's always a bit different so it's easy to re-do materials based on their general principles but it's also hard to copy them 1:1 without understanding what they do.

What you should really look for when getting assets (if you aren't happy with taking them from routes or making something yourself) is if they have standard PBR textures, which is what ultimately allows them to be taken to any platform or game engine while looking almost exactly the same.

Of course everything has it's pros and cons so while PBR textures are damn near universal, they can only represent so much with limited resolution so for certain things, you might want to layer a procedural effect on top anyway (like noise with brightness variation) to get the desirable look.

Sorry if it sounds a bit strange as I'm really one-shotting this answer instead of re-writing sections to best get the point across.

 

You're quite right. I just have to keep in mind that it's the final material in the editor that's going to be what counts, in any case. I've actually been having some good results with a blender add-on called BakeLab2, so I should have a nice road texture to use, knock-on-wood.

Might even be able to use the dynamic wet- and snow-covered-versions, if I can bake them out seperately. I don't know if it's been documented anywhere how we can set those up to the weather manager yet.

The building assets from the same asset pack may prove useful, as well.

 

Under Content/Environments, there is a Material Parameter Collection called "EnvironmentSettings", which contains all of the values from the weather system so you can use it to make make material changes based on current weather.

MPCs used to not work in the previous editor versions but now it's been fixed.

 

Thanks! I'll be checking that out once TSW5 is done downloading. (Should have unchecked more of my DLCs.)

Edit: yes, that said TDW5 before. My bad.

 

Went through and corrected the scale and dimensions of a few things. The window cutout is in the correct position and overall shape, but the sill isn't properly built out yet. Apparently the section I'm currently modelling runs vertically from the cantrail to the solebar, not that I really know what either of those words mean.

 

Up to the wee hours shoving vertices around. popped the interior into the TSW5 PC Editor for a quick inspection. Now off to bed with me.

Oh, and Blender will flip normals on objects that have been mirrored, if you join them; because it considers it as an un-applied scaling of -1. So you'll want to apply scaling transforms first. Silly Blender.
P.s. I still have a job! I'm just enjoying a long weekend.

 

Been a complicated week, with many things keeping me from doing anything much with the route. I have just about got the diamond crossover at the south end of Eglinton worked out. the tracks aren't playing nice where they cross over yet, so for the actual crossover part, what's probably going to work is making two parallel tracks, crossing them over at the right angle, using the crossover tool, nibbling off the ends by bisecting them repeatedly, dragging the result into the spot I need it at, and rejoining it with the existing switches. Then I just need to flesh out the platform assets, track markers, and station blueprint; add some signals, then do likewise for the next station down the line, and then I'll be able to start seeing about getting my subway cars working. Simplicity itself!

in other news, I got a new 4K HDR TV which will also be my computer monitor, as the old one broke last Thursday. Figured out how to reliably re-import .kml file with adjusted placemark locations, while only briefly worrying that I might have deleted all my landscape tiles (I hadn't.)

 

Well the trick with transplanting the crossover worked!

I haven't yet made a Ribbon Loft with the concrete-pillar type rail ties that should be in this section. As for the glowing track, re-importing the sections in the tunnel should fix that, if I can work out how to keep the switch animations (that I don't even have set up yet.) Still, a nice little chunk of progress for my long weekend. Happy Thanksgiving to all the Canadians out there!

 

A night shot, from the other side of the crossover looking north to Eglinton. Maybe I'll start putting some tunnel lights in next, if I don't feel like sorting out the Ribbon loft changes or switch animations just yet.

 

I've been having some tribulations with baking the lighting for the tracks in this tunnel, particularly with the switches. I posted this elsewhere, but I'll cut-and-paste it her in my route diary on the off chance someone else can shed some light on the problem, no pun intended:

Well, using the built in "convert to mesh" option in the context menu of the relevant NetworkRenderProxyActor seems to have the desired effect, looking properly lit after baking...

except for the blades of the switches, which are movable, and don't seem to expose a mesh component for baking that I can tell.



And that's literally all the time I have to spend on it tonight, unfortunately.
p.s. the switches are animating nicely, I was watching a different switch than I was toggling on the map :/

 

I've got the crossover looking about right, at least when it comes to the static and stationary actors. I won't show you the switch blades because they're lit up brighter than a Christmas tree.

I think my problem lays in the fact that I can't get movable actors to receive occlusion properly at all because they can't take baked lighting, but I'm not sure if the problem lies with the PC Editor, or my lack of experience with lighting movable objects in UE4. I took a poke at some points in a tunnel in a Dovetail route, but had no immediate insight into how they managed the trick.

So it goes, two steps forward, one step back...

 

As far as I know, indirect lighting for movable objects in areas with baked lighting is calculated using volumetric lightmaps. Basically it's a grid of points that stores desired brightness values for each spot in the scene (with a specified density) and the values from these points then get interpolated to create lighting for the movable objects.
https://dev.epicgames.com/documentation/en-us/unreal-engine/volumetric-lightmaps-in-unreal-engine

This approach is however suceptible to light leaking. For example if one point is near a wall in a dark room and the other one is on the other side of it, the brightness values get interpolated between the two and the movable object recieves bright lighting when it gets close to said wall. Solutions are either making your walls thick, increasing the grid resolution or (and that's usually done) create a large black box around the area that you want to bake and remain dark.

 

That would be the best way to handle movable object lighting, and was my assumption as well, but after further investigation I'm noticing that all the level maps for existing routes seem to be using the older "Sparse Volume Lighting Samples" method instead. It might even be that the Editor and/or TSW don't properly support the (somewhat) newer "Volumetric Lightmap" method for whatever silly reason, which would explain a fair bit, though why they would then leave it as a selectable option is an open question.

Also, most of the lighting samples are being offset upward to the surface of my terrrain for some reason. I can tell because they are in the shape of my station geometry, just repeated aboveground. Still no progress getting the moveable actors to look any more occluded, either. :P

 

So I have identified the source of the unoccluded movable / skeletal meshes: It's the TOD4 Skylight component.

It isn't specific to TOD4, though; Skylights in UE4 are unshadowed. As in, they cast no shadows whatsoever from what I understand. So no dynamic occlusion from the Skylight. Isn't that fun?

Possible solutions include the use of Distance Field Ambient Occlusion (maybe?) or using a trigger volume in my tunnel to disable or zero out the Skylight, which would certainly work; but that could be tricky to set up, and would not be my preferred solution.

Still, that's more than I knew yesterday.

 

Well I suspect these Sparse Volume Lighting Samples would be giving some kind of occlusion to movable actors and skeletal meshes in my tunnel... if they weren't being offset vertically!

It looks very much like they are snapping to the landscape for some freaky reason. Any thoughts?

 

Sometimes working with the editor while trying not to mess up any progress since my last backup feels a bit like walking on broken glass. Also, I think I may have placed the track too low in this section. (80's music fans may get the reference.)


Also, here's what happens when I toggle the bAffectsWorld flag for my TOD4's Skylight between True and False rapidly:

**FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING!!**
|
|
V




​

Have a Happy Hallowe'en, everyone!

 

Hope everyone's been having a good weekend.

I look at the progress some of you folks are making, and I'm frankly astounded. As for me, I'll just be happy if I manage to finish laying all my track and make a decent start on the signals before the end of the year.

As it is, I've had a pounding headache from a bad head cold all day, so I've kind of restricted myself to putting in some vegetation around the southern end of the last open cutting on the route, where there's a park. It hasn't been enough to make my headache any worse, and It gave me a chance to play around with Foliage Editing Mode for the first time. May put a few tracks in around there later, if I'm up to it. Time for some hot chocolate.

 

Nice place for a picnic

 

For my next trick, I'm going to try to make a usable dial face for the ammeter in the cab of the Gloucester G-1 from this:


It seems to be graduated in units of ten, reading from 0 to 70, with the markings continuing to 75 (typical current draw would have been about 56,000 A.) My current theory is that the upper part reads:

AMPERES
X 1,000​

and the bottom would be the manufacturer and logo, which I will likely omit due to not having a bloody clue as to what they may be. Any info would be appreciated!

 

...and here's what I came up with for the dialface texture. Not sure the typeface is 100% what they would have used back then, but I think it's fairly representative. By the end of the weekend, I hope to be able to show it off to you all in a mostly-completed cab! Anyways, progress is progress, whatever the pace.


Actually, now that I compare it, the numerals are maybe a hair too big. That's for tomorrow to worry about, though.

 

Well, obviously not done with the cab, but I am done with the cab for tonight. Anyways, this guy looks as tired as I feel.

 

Got a few more details around the top of the cab interior roughed in. Also, ironed out a couple of kinks in how I import the street textures from a blender asset pack. These are dummy buildings, and certainly not period-accurate, but they do give a better sense of what the player can expect to see while exploring on-foot in the immediate environs of Eglinton Station. That's all for now because something is making my Windows 11 installation LOVE the bed when it tries to copy large files, as if I wasn't having enough "fun." :/

 

Been a busy week for me ('tis the season!,) but I have taken a few hours out of my weekend today to do a little bit more on the Glocuester's cab interior. I tweaked the dimensions of the windows slightly to more closely match the design drawings I'm working from, and I've added the large screws to the corners of the gauge panels on the left side.

I think I've found a good trade-off between detailing with geometry (screws,) and letting the material normal maps do the heavy lifting (panel lines and rivets on the left wall.) I kind of guesstimated the position of those rivets, not sure if I'll have to revisit. I also need to double-check that the normal mapping works as expected on a skeletal mesh. Reference photo is on the right side (B&W.)


I'd also like to give another shoutout to K. Kolasiski, whom I think is the person behind AwesomeBump, which I've been using to convert heightmaps into normal maps.

 

route data and backups migrated to the zippy new drive!

Well, I'm feeling a little burnt-out working on the cab, so my latest plan is to pivot to modeling some characters and clothing for a while, as my Toronto of 1954 is going to need some people in it! This will include male as well as female subway operators, in what I feel is an allowable nod to modernity. From the TTC website: "In 1973 the Commission declared that hiring could no longer be discriminatory based on gender. That made way for Edith Asboth, the TTC's first permanent full-time woman operator."

I'll probably use the MakeHuman Plugin For Blender (2) addon, and possibly MakeClothes2. Haven't investigated whether seasonal variations are best handled by whatever spawners DTG use, or in the construction scripts of the pawn blueprints themselves, but I'll suss it out eventually.

One quick shot of that nice picnic area you've seen, but now with a road (correct width, incorrect texture for now,) as well as an updated texture for my 4-lane roads. (Slightly improved sidewalk. As an aside, the yellow centre-stripe would not be invented for another few years!) I wouldn't expect too much more news on the plugin until well into the new year, but we'll see!

 

Oh, and Happy Holidays!

 

Well, we're into the new year, and one of my Christmas presents (from myself, lol) was a book covering the history of the Gloucester cars, written by someone I've been corresponding with at the Halton County Radial Railway museum (where the two surviving G-1s are kept.)

I won't get more specific about this book, so as to avoid breaking forum rules about promoting products and such, but it has almost all of the information and illustrations I need to "do justice" to the route, in the historical context I'm aiming for, including photos of the truck assemblies, and even a diagram of the signals of the Davisville subway yard!

On the other hand, I realized I needed to ease off on working on the route for the sake of my own private life and sanity, so progress will be slower for a while, though I'm still determined to see this thing through. I've drawn up vague plans (all in my head, so far) on substituting the mesh of my G-1 cars in other rail vehicles just to get something moving, which I would consider a useful milestone. Probably more difficult than I've imagined, particularly given DTG's continued lack of documentation on setting up rail vehicles (I check the forum periodically, but by all means let me know if I've missed anything in terms of documentation.)

Another obstacle has been creation of human actors for my route, partly due to some uncertainty of how to make something that works as a driver pawn, with the TSW5 player's head, and partly because I get a little uncomfortable working with organic forms in Blender. Kind of an uncanny valley thing? Nothing I can't push myself to overcome, though.

So that's where I'm at. I know at least a few of you are still interested in this route, and I just thought you'd all appreciate an update.

 

Hey! I never post here but just read about this project on the dev diary and I wanted to express my support and admiration for this project. I live about an hour drive away from Toronto and I love seeing any Canadian content get featured in some way or another. I hope this project continues on!

 

This is really great, I’ve lived in Toronto at two different times in my life and rode the Gloucester cars as a kid in the 80’s. Great to see this in progress!

 

Just caught the Roadmap video. Thanks DTG Alex and DTG Matt for the shoutout, and words of encouragement! It helps more than I can say! I was wondering all day why my ears were burning (as the saying goes.) I only wish I'd been watching live. Heck, if I'd known, I'd have rounded up some better screenshots for everybody! I feel more motivated than ever to keep this project, well... on track!

p.s. I really should figure out how to use discord. I still need to study the examples we have from the game, but maybe I can get some pointers there on some of the next steps for the G-1 models, getting them set up with seating, user interactions for thing like windows (I assume they'll need more bones) , and with with simugraph, if anyone's puzzled that out yet. That and couplers.

Watch this space!

(Edited to add: ) DTG Alex ...and not 5 minutes further into the video there you are, addressing my thoughts already! That was eerie, but in a good way. Very happy to hear you're working on those mini-tutorials!

 

Yes, it was great that this project finally got some recognition. I never thought you would still keep on it, given the fact how long ago it was started!

In the January roadmap article in which your project is mentioned, Alex said that they're maybe up to provide a Class 66 example, to help understanding simugraph. That would be very helpful for us. Maybe an accompanied masterclass would be great, DTG Alex (even if it would be just 20 minutes or so and covers the basics like you just did with Lukas).

There are two very helpful places on Discord you should join, 1.) The tsw-modding channel on the Train Sim Community Discord Sever and the 2.) the Train Sim Modding server, which has more channels for dedicated stuff. I've placed an invite hyperlink for both which is valid for 7 days. So you can join these servers once you got a Discount account.

For a long time, I were as you and didn't know that these places do exist, but once I figured them out I got to know that way more modders and people interested to change TSW content are active there as here in the PC Editor Forum. You really should become a part of it and chances are a bit higher than here that somebody will able to help you out.

 

I am super excited for this, keep up the good work!

 

Well I want to thank everyone again for their support. There is a small amount of progress in the cab to share, primarily on the gauges and some of the panels at the rear of the cab. I had hoped to do a great deal more, but I managed to catch the flu just in time for the weekend

I figure it's like trying to learn the piano; as long as I can put in a little effort on a regular basis, I should get there in the end. Stay well everybody!

 

Incidentally, here's a look at the earliest incarnation of the project. It was originally to be set in the 80's, when the Gloucesters were still out making the rounds, and made for Microsoft Train Simulator. This video was captured around 2005.

 

So the PC Editor thought it had me on the ropes by making me lose the scenery work I did on that open section near Rosedale Station. Well I decided to blindside it by putting in station proxies and laying track from Union to Dundas! Bet it didn't see that coming!

I'm in it to win it, baby!

 

Progress is slow, and real life tends to get in the way from time to time, but here's my current plan for the route going forward:

1. Finish Loft descriptors for wood-tie and concrete-pillar-tie variants of track (and switches)
2. Finish Laying all track and adding proxy tunnels
3. Start with signalling on the route, enough to make a test service up-and-down the route
4. Get the Gloucester into the game as a proper rail vehicle, or at least modify an existing rail vehicle to test route for clearances at platforms and tunnels, accuracy of track gradients, speed limits, platform section locations and that sort of thing.
5. Everything else, such as scenery and NPCs, in whichever order I feel like doing it.

I'm under no illusions as to how much work it's going to be, particularly getting the Gloucesters done to the point where they have working Simugraph, controls are all set up with Virtual Human Interface (is that right? I can never remember the proper name) components and animations, couplings work and are modelled properly, and the spring bumpers and pantograph safety gates are properly springy; but that's step 4, and I'm still at 1 and 2. For now, here's a (very) early look at the new track type for stations and tunnels:

 

A little mini update from me as I head into a long weekend. After some investigation and much meditation, I think for my underground lighting solution, it might be easiest just to have a trigger volume that turns off the SkyLight, assuming the TOD system lets me. Anyway, here's the cement-tie track variation about 95% completed:


And I have 100% genuine, bonafide platform markers at Eglinton now!:


Now I just have to figure out how the heck I wound up with these on my map, and how I can get rid of them:

...I think maybe they're from the Training Center (?)

Well that's all for now, happy National Flag of Canada Day tomorrow for those who celebrate!

 

Now here's a real milestone! It may not look like it yet, but this is the first signal on my route! In real life, it is (was) signal
N308 (X8), or as the PC Editor calls it, "Custom_Signal_property_C_1 ref: {FC82E68F-4D3C-B37B-1A8E-40A5F7B12C8C}." Reference photo is on the left.


It seems most of these signals that I remember so well have been decommissioned and/or removed in favour of little 3-light ATC signals, from the more recent cabride videos I've seen. So it goes.

Many thanks to cActUsjUiCe for his Youtube tutorial on signalling, here:

So far, I'm happy to say that nothing external to my route and the DTG core BPs are referenced in my plugin, besides some vegetation from the training center. As you can see, I'm not monkeying around!

 

The more I look at cActUsjUiCe 's video tutorial, the more confident I feel about getting my signalling working as it should! I've got the blueprints for building the components started nicely, in the construction script of my SignalView. I'm not sure if this is strictly speaking where it should happen, but as I understand it, by looping through the HeadTemplates variables, with appropriate offsets, I should be able to assemble any configuration of signal.



I'll still have to figure out aspects, but I think I just need to watch that video again. Also, I hope to animate the bulbs in the lenses brightening and dimming while turning on and off realistically, possibly with UE4's matinee system.

Real-life distractions lately include (but are not limited to) a minor earthquake today (where I live, not in Toronto,) and a dentist's appointment tomorrow. I'll keep everybody posted!