So I finally got the time to get into TSW modding myself, and I had my first go and changing some textures. As my first try, I wanted to do something simple. So here is my attempt. Since my first run on Sherman Hill, the scenery cars with european style licence plates really annoyed me. There are the usualy sedans with the yellow rear licence plates, but also this cement mixer truck, which clearly has EU licence plates. So I went ahead and replaced them with a Wyoming licence plates. I also removed the green "L" symbol on the front, because it felt too european to me. Before: After: The outline of the old licence plate is still visible for some reason on the front, even though I changed the bumpmapping texture as well. Maybe I'll need to edit the third texture file as well. I'll try it. Anyway, what do you guys think? I'm open for any suggestions or tips. I also plan to repaint the general sedans with the yellow rear licence plates, and see what else I might find. Then I plan on releasing it as an "US licence plate pack" or something, to remove the obviously european licence plates from the route.
Alright, I'll take the LIRR sleepers and real life Sherman Hill photos as reference and see what I can do.
Is this good? Or too bright? Or still not bright enough? (Worth noting that it's just the close up texture that's changet yet, the far away "impostor" texture is still the dark one.)
How about this? It's pretty light, but I feel like it's too white. Maybe I'll try darkening on the ballast just a tiny bit, as judging by real life pictures, it might be more realistic that way. Also, to continue on my licence plate topic, I changed the british yellow licence plate on these generic cars. Sadly the texture part of these licence plates are very small, so I can only do blank plates that still look acceptable. But I think it's still much better than the full white and yellow ones we originally had on them.
Continued adding Wyoming licence plates to the scenery vehicles, next one was this box van that previously just had an empty plate holder. Originally I just wanted to replace them on vehicles that clearly had european plates, but I suppose I might as well give US plates to all cars. I just wonder if all of them should get these colorful wyoming plates, or if it would be more realistic to have some less colorful ones as well. Do all vehicles in Wyoming have these colorful plates? Then another thing I really wanted to change was the ballast on the bridges. For some reason they were all black, so the tracks' gray ballast looked really bad on the bridge's black surface. So made the bridge ballast gray as well so it fits the tracks. Might tweak it a bit more later on because the difference is still visible, but it's a good start. I also replaced the blank sign on the electrical boxes with one that actually has some text on it. I tried finding photos of actual electric boxes from the area to have the same sign, but couldn't find any, so just made this generic one and placed an UP logo in the corner. Any suggestions or request as to what else I should try to change?
Yes, I also did some more research and apparently this is their licence plate design since 2016 or so, so I'm sticking with it as well. Maybe putting some older designs on older looking vehicles, we'll see. What you are talking about are the collectible signs, those I didn't modify. But just as you've said, yes, they are blank then you can approach them and put up a proper sign. On Sherman Hill, for example, it is a "private property, no tresspassing" sign. But these electric boxes are just simple scenery items, so they would always remain blank, which is why I decided to change them. And to show some other interesting stuff, I started retexturing some containers. The current ones felt too european to my liking, so I replaced the Hamburg Süd and Hapag-Lloyd containers with red and white K Line containers, as judging by railfanning videos, these appear quite often on the line. I'm not sure yet, but maybe I'll replace the ONE containers too. They are not non-prototypical, but feel like there is way too many of them and in result also make it feel too european. Don't know what to replace them with, but I'll see what else appears often and would fit the UV mapping.
I retextured some scenery buildings to make them more realistic and colorful at the same time, as I've found many of them were way too dark and gray. For starters, I've made this diner look much more like a real diner, and not like a run-down, closed shop. At first I wanted to base it on one of the real diners from the same location in real life, but I've found the devs have used this diner model at many places, so instead I just made it a generic one called "Family Restauran". I know the fake interiors in the windows are a bit meh, but I found it better than leaving them blank. This brick warehouse building also got a complete overhaul, as the original one is a completely run down and abandoned, way too dark and dirty. Even though they placed it in locations where it would represent much better looking buildings from real life. So it got cleaner walls and windows, and a greenish roof color that matches better with the buildings it tries to represent from real life. Near Cheyenne yard there are these abandoned old railway baggage cars in brown and gray. They are not there in real life, but I though they would look better in Union Pacific and Southern Pacific colors, like they were old, unused baggage cars from UP or something. This building I also found quite bland looking. I mean one of the signs doesn't even have any text on it! So I replaced the shopfront signs with actual ones stolen from some shops on google street view from Laramie, I think. The roof also got a bit changed, and I replaced the handicapped reserved parking sign with a snow removal area sign that's quite common in the area.
Thank you. I still plan to do a few things. For example, just replaced the sidewalk texture with something more american looking, maybe replace the advertisement billboards with something as well. But I'm thinking about uploading the pack soon.
Not yet. I tried it, but just couldn't find a shade that works well. And I noticed the light ballast color blends much better with the surrounding terrain textures. For some reason the darker the ballast is, the bigger the color difference is between the actual track ballast and terrain ballast texture, even though they use the same texture file. Anyway, below are a few pictures of my attempts, where I darkened and also made it a bit more brownish as well, but I didn't like the end results, looked more european than american. Also I looked at real photos and found pictures where the ballast is light, and also pictures where the ballast is darker. But I couldn't really replicate the darker one well myself, however depending on the weather/lighting it can be pretty nice and dark in-game as well (keep in mind that my pictures here are taken on clear weather at noon). So the current ballast might work well. Regarding the sleepers, just like the ballast, I could find photos of both with dark and light sleepers. But the dark sleepers seem more common in real life, so I reverted them back to the original dark ones for now. In real life they seem to be a mix between dark and light ones, I suppose as certain sleepers get replaced and the older ones are darker or something. Sadly in game I can't do mixed ones. Anyway I'll keep trying to find a good mix of colors, maybe I'll try to base it on the TS variant of the route, as that seems to use more of these lighter colored sleepers. Then probably release this mod without the sleeper/ballast recolor, and release the sleeper/ballast recolor as a separate file, so everyone can use the one they prefer.
Thank you. I have some more work in progress pictures. For starters, the pink ONE container is now replaced with a green Hub Group contrainer. Sidewalk texture is replaced with a more american looking one, with correct bumpmapping. And I replaced the original billboards as well with real advertisements, trying to find ones on Google that are either Wyoming related or were present at Wyoming at some point. I still have a few ideas left, but the pack should be done soon I think.
Thank you! I'm finally done with university stuff, so I could return back to working on this. I think it should be really close to release, as I'm running out of ideas as to what to replace. With today's batch, I think all scenery vehicle number plates are done. The Chrysler got a WY plate as well, while the pickup trucks got Nebraska and Colorado plates, just to mix thing up a bit. The white truck trailers also got WY trailer plates instead of the european one. The yellow excavators got a CAT logo on the back. I don't know if they're even CAT models, but well, it fits them I guess? This generic gas station model got the same treatment as the diner, recieving more colors and the empty clock on the front replaced with the Kum & Go logo. I saw that there are a few Kum & Go stations in the area in real life, so hopefully it fits. This building near Cheyenne yard had a unique billboard with a colorful "HAPPY ADOPTIONS" text on it. It was cute, but looked pretty unrealistic, so I replaced it with a D's 4 Wheel Drive sign, as this building right here is a D's in real life. Talking about billboards, as shown in my previous post, I replaced all the billboards with real ones. Thing is, there are 8 billboards in the game files, but for some reason I only saw 3 of them repeating. I wonder why the rest weren't placed on the route, when they're in the texture files. But of a bummer. I also improved on the abandoned baggage cars a bit and adjusted the bridge ballast texture. I was also planning on repainting the standard green garbage bins, so I went on Google street view and looked around the areas how they look like. In Laramie they are brown instead of green and have the logo of their operator on them, so at first I wanted to paint them like that. But in Cheyenne, I could barely find any of these brown bins, as most of them are green, just like in game. So what should I do? I think I'll just keep them green then. Also I still couldn't figure out where yould I repaint the number plates on the moving traffic cars. They might not be route specific, I'm starting to feel like. It's a shame if that's the case.
I'm happy to announce that the mod is now uploaded to Train Sim Community site! https://www.trainsimcommunity.com/m...s/i2017-sherman-hill-texture-enhancement-pack One thing to note, the recolored sleepers are not in the pack yet. I plan to add them as a separate file so it can be downloaded optionally. I'll add it to the download later.
