In my next adventure in modeling content for TSC, I'm looking at making power lines, some call them transmission line or even high voltage lines. While there are many different examples of these towers all over the world, my focus will be on the older medal types used in the US. The first four models are models I made for Trainz a while back. The rest of this pack will be new models. I'm looking to make about 10, maybe more if I can get good reference pictures. I am a bit concerned about the polys counts on these monstrosities. I'm looking for any content creation thoughts, tips or tricks folks might have on the topic. Lod levels? Overall poly counts? Texturing tricks? The first model on is always the hardest.
The first powerline model has been cleaned up and it is ready for exporting into TSC. While I still need to do some testing on this model, I have the tower model set to come in the game at 4 levels of LOD. The main outline of the tower will pop in view at 1000m. At 700m the straight crossmember will be drawn. At 550m the diagonal crossmembers will be added. At 450 the insulators will be drawn. This may all change after testing. This power line will have 6 main wires and 2 smaller wires on top. In the research I've done on the topic of power lines, I'm told the top 2 smaller wires are for protection against lightning strikes, and serve no other purpose. I also found out that you can count up the insulators on any given tower, each insulator is equal to 11KV of power. Count up the insulator to figure the total KV power in the wires that the tower is carrying. I never knew that. More soon.
I am looking forward to seeing these pylons. I have your other streetlight / telephone pole packs and am busy installing them on my route. They look great. Thanks! Wayne
I was successful in getting the first power line into TSC by using the same blueprints as the power poles. I did make a thicker wire for these powerlines. I made a few adjustments. First, I was able to get rid of 3000 polys on the model. There was an edge on each insulator that wasn't needed. She still is a hog at 47,000 polys however. The good news is there are not many towers in any particular scene...unless you are at some kind of electrical sub-station. I'll worry about that later. I also lowered the LOD levels even more than I originally suggested. It look like I might be able to lower them even more... if needed. Too my surprise, when I imported the model I found that the normals (faces) on the insulators where backwards! How and when did that happen? Anyhow, I'm going to call this done for now. Next up "Big Bertha".
