Hi! I thought I'd share a few shots of the current state of Fiskerton Station from my Nottingham to Lincoln route. Obviously Just Trains did a version for TSC and they might one day create a TSW version, but these are all my local stations so I thought I'd see how far I could get into building out a route. So far I've imported all the basic terrain and LIDAR data, laid out the full track and done about 50% of the signalling, along with a few bridges and level crossings just for reference. I've incorporated some of Nottingham and Newark from existing routes but they'll need building out a lot more before I'm ready to share anything there as it's from a completely different angle. I'm not really too focused at the moment but I built a Lincoln Cathedral to sit on the hill and thought I'd build a smaller (but interesting) station like Fiskerton just to explore the Blender to UE4 process, LODs, collision meshes etc. Obviously this is incredibly unfinished but it's based on a bunch of photos I took of the real station although yes there are some things missing at the moment. The foliage is a bit rough to say the least but I'm just trying to get some shapes right first. The next station will be a lot quicker due to the learning on this one... I have no idea if this route will ever get finished but it's been fun getting this far... View of the main ramp from the car park and new shelter: Floating above the car park, across the ticket machine and bike park The (empty) view towards Nottingham The other ramp and the old station house across the rails The leaning signal box, with steps recently removed and supports trying to keep it from collapsing
And I've just today started work on Lincoln. Just blocking out a few rough shapes, getting the basics of the station building and putting the cathedral on the hill. Not much to see yet, but we'll see. Was going to do more signalling work but Blender called...
Made a bit more progress on Lincoln Station today: Looking down the platform at night. Needs ticket barriers and a lot more roof detail The main entrance at night. The darkness hides some of the missing windows on this side... And still night, looking back up the platform. No seats, drainpipes, signs, machines... still to come... Suddenly it's daytime... The light shines through panels in the semi-transparent canopy at the moment but this might be a bit of a resource hog in the real game... Another couple of platforms, and a bit of a blank wall at the moment... And of course the Police are round the back... And finally a view from above showing all of the missing surroundings... Eventually the station will be properly textured and won't look this bad!
Ok, I still need to get the platform on the other side finished and all the generic platform numbers, stop markers, clock etc up but I'll probably leave Lincoln here for the moment and move onto something else in order to keep things interesting. So here's a last look at the station in its current state... I've tried to keep shapes as simple as possible and will need to do some extensive LOD work before it's properly ready but a few areas are detailed enough... Welcome to Lincoln Station: A look down across the canopy to the entrance and exit gates. Yes, the clock and signage are missing: A closer look at the entrance with information signs and main ticket hall: Looking into the entrance towards the toilets from behind the ticket office doors Looking from the entrance to the ticket machines and station entrance ahead: And looking back out to see the glass wall and large visual on the left: The ticket barriers and signage. The barriers are currently missing some EMR branding but I'm making a few general-purpose variations. Fun shapes to build, though:
Wow, looks awesome so far! Good luck with progress on it. And I'll definitely be following this thread for when updates come
So... I said I was going to leave Lincoln station alone, but I couldn't leave it in that state really. One more update then it'll be more signalling and blocking out bridges and major features. I spent too much time here making sure all the collision meshes were perfect, and instancing out various components as blueprints. This at least cuts the objects down below 1,000 but still could do with some optimising. Here's an overview of the station from the East end. Yes, the car park on the right is missing a wall but who needs that? Looking down across platform 2 and 3b towards the main building. An old livery 158 seems to have taken up residence: Looking past the ticket barriers to the updated and correctly modelled bridge. The sun continues to shine through the transparent framerate hog panels - I might address this if it becomes a problem. And those who know the station well might notice the diagonal braces are missing on the canopy. I think I may at this point be beyond caring, but we'll see: Coming down the steps onto platforms 4 and 5: Platform 5a with its incredibly attractive view: From the end of platform 4, a view of 3a. Why? I don't know: These signs do light up at night. No, you may not ask why a completely different rail company is being advertised on one of these: The ticket barriers now have full branding and proper light-up screens: Here's the main entrance, whilst trying to get run over in the middle of the road. I finally got around to modelling the bay window: From outside the exit. You may not go back in: Where to stand if an LNER train happens to stop here. So now you know:
Looking really good your doing a great job, could i ask how easy is it to get assets youve made in blender into ue4? The reason i ask is im used to using the editor in tsc but would love to be able to use the editor in tsw. Thanks
It’s pretty straightforward as long as you work within a few limitations. You can transfer content back and forth using FBX format, and most of the issues you’re likely to run into are pretty easy to fix. Any materials in your Blender model need to not have any scaling applied, so it’s best to remove any scaling/mapping nodes before doing UV editing. It’s best to have normals highlighted in Blender so ‘back’ faces show up red. UE4 is really sensitive to having the normals correct, so get used to applying all scaling and rotation (particularly after mirroring) and then using shift+N to correct normals. Things being backwards in Blender might not be obvious but in UE4 it’ll completely screw up lighting and surfaces. UV maps transfer really well as long as the material is kept fairly simple, but watch out for Blender adding extra UV maps in some situations. If things look distorted, check that there’s only one UV map for the object, or if you’re using another map for lighting then the top one should be active and what you’re using for texturing. I prefer to rebuild materials in UE4 myself and don’t let it import them - at least after the initial import. There are a few differences in how Blender and UE4 handle materials and although some stuff can be done automatically you’ll get better results if you handle it yourself and build up a library of useful textures. UE4 does handle reimporting the FBX file really well - just double-click on the mesh to open the editor and click ‘reimport base mesh’. But make sure you assign materials in the mesh editor - you can override these outside of the editor but it can get confusing. Make sure any complex shapes in Blender are properly joined/merged - UE4 has issues with z-plane flickering for things that are close together. If you can avoid placing things on top of each other too much then do. Use UE4 decals or signs with some depth rather than planes. Collision maps are pretty simple but have to be convex (UE4 will behave strangely if there are any concave areas), so go for lots of basic blocks rather than trying to create any complex shapes (which won’t work). If you have a Blender object called PlatformOne then an object called UCX_PlatformOne_001 will be automatically assigned as a collision map. You can go all the way up to (or beyond) UCX_PlatformOne_999 if you want, but that’s probably not a good idea. Exporting a bunch of smaller elements with their own collision maps is a good idea. Just sit them at 0,0,0 in Blender before exporting, though. Export meshes only, -Y forwards, Z upwards, smoothing groups enabled and it should just work. Have fun twisting your brain between the different control schemes when hopping between Blender and UE4… I’m sure it’s done something permanently damaging to my head…
Thank you so much i find this very useful and look forward to giving it a go, also looking forward to how your project progresses.
I forgot to actually share the route map for this route, so here it is for anybody who's interested... A couple of the Newark labels are colliding but they won't show up in-game anyway: One fun thing about this route is that trains run from Nottingham to Newark Northgate, but to do this they have to go over the flat crossing (only one left in the UK) and reverse down onto the East Coast Mainline, crossing the Westbound line too. I'm just hoping I can get the timetables and signalling set up properly for this!
I've been doing a bit more work on actually making a section of the route - so I'm starting out with Lincoln to Hykeham, as it's just the first short stretch that's completely custom (Nottingham end already has a lot of pre-existing Nottingham from the Midland Main Line). Here's a view from the station with a bit more of Lincoln blocked out: Approaching the footbridge and level crossing, with a really rough block so that I can model this later: Through the narrow alleyway between the car park and new building, with the footbridge by the river, multiple bridges and the Lincoln University Students' Union: Then on past the University to where the track divides: And finally down between the offices and accommodation blocks: Past the far bridge the rails curve sharp left, then join the old railway for the short run into Hykeham. More on that later!
That University needs a bit of work, so let's block it out properly using some basic shapes in the editor: And now we can export it as FBX and import into Blender: Hmm... just needs a bit of work but actually the shapes themselves aren't too far off. Let's add some detail and some textures: Ok, looks a bit better, although it's still pretty basic at the moment. It'll do for the time being, so let's import it back into the editor: Well, it's rough but it's better than it was before. I can always drop back into Blender to improve it, and then it's just a couple of clicks to reimport the mesh into UE4. Here's a different view of the library... obviously needs a lot of landscaping as it's not exactly looking in-place. Well, that'll be for another day:
Just one more thing for today... here's a quick overview of the things I need to either model properly or at least get something in place for (items in grey): The first thing we come to from Lincoln (apart from the church and signal box, which have reasonable stand-ins for the moment) is the footbridge by the level crossing. We already blocked that out so let's do a bit more modelling and texturing in Blender: Working out the shape was a bit interesting, but it's pretty close... Let's import it into UE4 and see what it looks like: Ok, that wood texture needs some work but it's in the right place. The backs of the stairs even connect nicely to the backs of the (unfinished) buildings. From the other side, it's a different look entirely, but looks exactly like it does in the cab ride video I'm referencing: A bit more detailing with track clutter, vegetation, and replacing that level crossing and we can move further down the track. Of course, not everything needs to be so detailed, but this is right next to the track so it's got to be fairly good. More soon!
