Riding the skytrain everyday commuting to work, I have plenty of time to take in my surroundings. I was having trouble thinking of another portfolio piece until during another commute it just hit me, lol. So here's what I've got sofar! Currently sitting at 400k. Downres and bake later.

haha, nice.
Can't see too much for overall flaws in your likeness,
I would though make the top portion on the the window a tad larger.
But my memory might not serve me right.
Oh skytrain, how I detest your everyday rides cramped and smelling like ass.

Who calls a monorail a skytrain... |:

Give me a real train in the sky and ill be happy!

looks good man, got any photo reference? And are you going to do the exterior as well?

looks like some solid modelling.

Do they really have 3 seats next to the doors like that? So that only one of the seats can be used at any one time? I've never been to Canada so it would be unfair to say its wrong, but it looks wrong to me.

Adam

Originally Posted by Muzz

Who calls a monorail a skytrain... |:

Give me a real train in the sky and ill be happy!

looks good man, got any photo reference? And are you going to do the exterior as well?

That's what they're called in Vancouver. Just how it's called The Tube in London, The Metro in Washington DC, etc.

the spaceing is a bit wider but yeah, thats what they're like.
though its not really any worse than the 30,000 people trying to squeeze off and on the tube in London st every stop...

Heya Peter, looking good. What's the plan with this? Just model and down res it to something simple or push it further with some proper story? Seeing it open like this, viewing within the train, makes me think you could do this scene much like from Spiderman where the train has come to the end of tracks, and is hanging off by 1 or 2 cars. Destroyed Vancouver in the background

Thanks for the feedback, guys!

@ kickzombies: The likeness inaccuracies are small, but there are quite a few of them. Lots of the minor detailing like the air vents are placed in places that makes sense to me, but I'm not sure if they're there on the actual skytrain. Also some beveled edges to make the model more attractive that aren't actually there in real life.

@ Muzz: Us crazy Vancouverites call a monorail a "Skytrain" lol. There are parts which go above ground, some parts go underground so it's really not that inaccurate of a nickname to me :P And I never put much thought into modeling the exterior as well, but that's definitely something for me to think about. Thanks for the idea!

@BadSpleen: The seats are actually positioned like that, based on some reference pics I googled. I think what looks wrong to you is my proportions. In the model the three seats could probably fit 2 skinny people or 1 overweight person. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

@ScudzAlmight: Something tells me you haven't been to Brentwood, Lougheed or Broadway during rush hour. Sardine can goodness I tell you. It's hard to look around at the details without looking like you're checking someone out, hahaha.

@ Adam: I think you have me confused with someone else, hehe. But yes, the plan is to get the high poly all nicely modeled to a finished level and then bake everything down. My aim is to get the model to about half the 400k tri count it is now.

adam says "so are you going to make this super awesome?"
pangarang replies "no I'm gonna try and keep it boring"

Seriously though, give the train something to make me interested in a train.

Like Muzz, I read skytrain and thought "Sweet! A badass fantasy flying train concept!", but this is cool too :P

Where's your reference?

nice , what software do you use ¿

Germanys finest aerotrain!
Once they transported a elefant to the zoo with it and this is what happened

Turns out she couldnt fly but she survived it ^^
This is not shopped! Only the colours the original is b/w
Nice work so far pangarang

edit: ah damm just read theres no picture of it so they made this for the newspapers.
Some ancient photoshop called scissors i guess

the seats' base is too boxy imo

We have seats like the three seats in question on the Muni here in San Francisco. You can barely see it in the lower corners of this picture. Basically the front of the two seats is facing the side of the row of three seats. It's actually a bit awkward to sit in them, because you're staring at the side of the person on the end of the three seat bench.

isnt skytrain a transformer?

Ah, the skytrain... reminds me of home, nice work.

I think it will be better if you listen to this while looking at it.
http://www.soundsnap.com/node/38423

Cool, but why not one of the new trains? :p

This looks good, pretty accurate, besides what has already been mentioned. Next do one of the terrible buses!

Also, I find it funny that people were clicking the thread expecting something else. For me, this is the first thing in my mind related to skytrain.

200k for an in-game Skytrain car? Is that what you're after? And you never addressed my comments on your scene

I think adam means a touch of this ...





A dab of that...


Sprinkle a bit of this on top...


And you got yourself one impressive skytrain scene.

And realistically you could get a good looking in game interior for under 1 000 polys. And if your going to do a cool ripped up, dangling from the tracks scene, then id say use some more.

but for some critique on stuff that youve done. usually all the rails are generally the same size, and you have some that are very very skinny compaired to the ones near the doors. And the rails at the top, where you can hold on to, well yours are hugging up to the ceiling, with only an inch or two to fit your fingers in, id bring those down.

another thing is, you have hard edges everywhere, besides the vents, i dont see the 400k, the edges should be more rounded, and it will show when you bake out your normals.

your doors go right to the ceiling, on the skytrain(from memory) there are the maps and safy regulation signs that are up there, just how you have the advertisements above the windows. and your missing the glass panels near the doors, where you have that angled cut out.

So for me I think its really accurate so far, with just a few minor things you could change. and you need to take it to the next step with your high poly model, because theres some latches, handles and small stuff like that your missing. 1 flaw i see with the scene, dont know where your going with it, just how Adam asked. Is it going to be a cool in game stylish scene, or a sort of architectural visualization render? You gotta ask yourself what you want out of this project, and what you want to showcase artisticaly.

I think it's funny people from Vancouver knew what to expect while everyone else pictured a cool flying train - which come to think of it, IS an awesome idea!

@ TychoVII - Some pics i used as ref.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/beaster725/418621235/
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ytrain-mk1.jpg

@ Belias - Sofar just Maya. But will be using photoshop for textures.

@ Jay Evans - Thanks for the inspiration! Hahaha

@ Frump - I always felt the older trains were more interesting than the new slick minimalist ones. The new ones don't even have the zoom ... zooooom ... zzzzoooOOOMMM!!! sound like the old ones do.

@ adam - Sorry - I gave you a hard time for getting me mixed up with someone else and it looks like I did the exact same. I was responding to another comment but somehow ended up thinking you said it. Anyway, thanks for your suggestion! A destroyed train wasn't something I had in mind approaching this. Honestly, I just wanted a replica to as close as I could make it. But since you mentioned it (and thanks partially to the concept art Spahr posted) a few ideas have been brewing in my head. I'll def. see what i can do to incorporate your suggestions as I progress. And yes, I am building the exterior as well. That way the model can be sliced open and looked at from the inside. Lots of work! Someone tell my boss to give me a week off.


@ Spahr - Thanks for the amazing concept art. As it stands now the model has many small kinks that needs to be ironed out, as you have noticed. The minor details you mentioned that really give life to the piece like latches, grooves, handles, etc are being added gradually and will be posted here for critique. And speaking of critique, I appreciate that you are not holding back. As for the intent of the scene, I am going for a replica - how well i can recreate something I see from photographs with some wiggle room for an artistic license - though I don't feel far enough along on this scene to be using that license quite yet.

Here's a shot of the wireframe to show the poly distribution - actually a tenth of what I said it was. Read the scene's polycount wrong.

If you're going to do the Destroyed Skytrain in Vancouver scenario... I think you should do it like a zombie apocolypse scenario, but instead of Zombies its tourists, and instead of the apocolypse, its the 2010 Olympics... Because you know, anyone living in this city KNOWS that it's going to be insane trying to commute around town during the Olympics!!!! ;)
You model is looking pretty tight so far though, very clean geo!

Let's forget the destroyed skytrain idea for a second and focus on the point: A simple replica of the train, while
technically impressive, isn't a very fun portfolio piece. If I saw it I'd open it up, say to myself, 'Yup its the
skytrain' and close it. You need to give the viewer something of interest to check out. The idea of a destroyed
dangling Skytrain car is to just give this some focus rather than a literal recreation of itself.

I did this recently myself, actually and will post about it briefly to better demonstrate why I think you need to
push beyond just replicating the Skytrain:

I saw this concept online.

Thought to myself, "Damn I want to make that in highpoly!" So I did.

But that wasn't enough. I wanted to do an in-game model of it. So I did that too.

To me, its still boring at this point. While it may be a nice piece on its own, there's no oomph behind it. No real
KICK to the viewer to make them want to wander their eyes around a bit and get behind the piece as I did in my
imagination. So I did a full on environment for him. Instantly creating a story for whomever views the piece to
figure out on their own. With all those other images leading up to this also available right after the initial oomf.

Give this piece some oomf, yea?

You Tube

Not sure if this will help or not but seeing your train (which is awesome btw) and hearing talk of destroying it and making an environment reminded me of the teaser trailer for Fallout 3.

@ Adam - I totally see what you mean. Give the model some context, something other than a clean model with clean textures in a sterile environment. Then i started thinking about your first comment - making the outer shell of the train so I can dent, charr, rip and melt it, and have some cables, wires and various bits of machinery stikcing out from between that and the inner wall. The low poly is in production right now. Pics to come.

@ Castrated Weasel - Thanks for the trailer link! I'm getting more ideas the more i look at it.

Upate of the high poly.