Design of Building Interiors - Lights, Shaders, Night Textures, etc.

[PerryPlatypus]

As I am wrapping up work on the Shasta expansion, I have numerous objects with tracks that go through a large doorway into the interior of a building. Examples include a multiple-track locomotive shop, and several warehouses with a single track going inside. Given the limitations of ORTS in terms of lighting, what is the current consensus on best methods to create realistic building interiors using conventional .s shapes and DDS textures? Thoughts on best shaders, use of night textures or not, having separate .s files for the exterior vs. interior faces of the building? How about how to handle objects placed within the building such as forklifts, crates, etc. so that they also appear correctly in daytime vs. nightime? (I'm assuming the interior of all of these buildings have the "lights turned on" 24/7). Also trying to consider if it is possible to somewhat simulate the building interior lights "lighting up" the train when it's within the building? Maybe something like a transparent night texture lighting box (similar to the way people have made streetlights) that is aligned to the interior faces of the building?

[ossie]

Most of that is well above my paygrade I'm afraid Sean but if the "realistic building interiors" part relates to appearance rather than specific modelling techniques, I always thought Scott's Winslow Shops drop in was great. I've run in and out of there plenty of times and never thought it was at all hard on the eye. Warehouse wise, I just typed warehouse interiors into Google and there's a lot of large images of empty warehouse interiors there. Depending on where you sit on the AI art question, putting it to work on your interiors might be an interesting experiment and potentially save you some time.

Hopefully some of the modelling experts can help you out with the rest of it. Good luck!

[pwillard]

Fact is. ORTS needs a major lighting overhaul.

[CSRX]

Fact is. ORTS needs a major lighting overhaul.

Been asking for this for years, but it gets pushed aside for other projects that constantly get recycled and redone. Shrugs.

[SD40-2]

Sean,

While I'm no expert, I am familiar with how MSTS materials work. Assuming the inside of the buildings are lit 24/7, my suggestion would be to set the interior and whatever objects that go inside the interior to be Bright or Trans HlfBright, so they remain Bright regardless of what's going on outside. Night textures wouldn't do any good, as they only change over at night, and can stick out like a sore thumb in twilight.

This tutorial explains the more technical side of it: https://nekocoaster.github.io/steam4...ght_light.html

As for having a train becoming bright while entering a building, I can't think of anything that'd be able to do that. My only idea would be to have a invisible locomotive of some sort have ultra-bright headlights to lite up the real locomotive, but that'd be very complex.

[SD40-2]

On second though, I do know where a night texture could be useful. Outside each entrance, you could have a translucent plane for the night glow. The normal texture would be complete transparent, but the night texture would be a glow effect, showing the light "spilling" out of the building.

[dlfrenchmd]

Really like the Shasta Route, Sean. If you decide to use night textures, PM me and I can send some textures I've used for walls, lit floors, ceiling lights, etc. Putting objects inside ,for me, has required separate night textures for the objects, darkened below and lightened on top to create illusion of lights shining down on them. Mixed results. A few buildings like this in T&P and ATSF Belen-El Paso.
Dan

[rdayt]

I use day textures for everything that isn't lit. No textures in the night texture folder.
I use day and night textures for the parts that are lit. OR only uses night textures if they are available.
I find that setting "bright" or "half bright" are just too much. Lighting needs to be more subtle.
The depot attached to this post is an example of what I'm talking about. https://www.elvastower.com/forums/in...ost__p__318265
The windows are transparent on a day only exterior wall and the interior has separate texture both for day and night.

Randy

[baldwin]

There is also the horrible ORTS weather and collision system where rain and snow along with sunshine and shadows can be seen inside of structures and smoke penetrating solid surfaces.

[cuontv]

For what its worth Sean,

I like to use separate textures for the interiors and exteriors. Using an exterior texture for an interior almost always results in a interior that is just too bright for my tastes, even in a well-lit shop or warehouse the inside lighting is not as bright as the sun, there's always dim or shadowed areas. It's not to hard to copy the outside texture and dim its brightness value a bit and use it for the interior. On some projects I've gone a step further and painted in shadows or accented light beams on the interior texture to make it really pop.

Looking forward to your new projects,
-Tom