Shadow Catching an Aerotrain

Since Vue Infinite 7.21 doesn't support Shadow Catching while Carrara does with an added plugin, I did a trial outdoor render in Carrara. Note the shadow under it to give the illusion of it being on the street.

Building a monorail

Here is the aerial guideway and reaction rail so far.

The production model

I forgot I needed to work on the final texture. This is the orginal paint job the Rohr Aerotrain had when it was built in Chula Vista, California (ca. 1971).

That's enough for Carrara now

I've reached Carrara's limit for outdoor rendering. Scenery is not its strong point. It's time to work on the original Rohr texture now for this vehicle and get it ready for some much improved outdoor rendering in Vue Infinite 7.1 (maybe 7.2 which just came out).

The future tech of high-speed travel is 36 years ago

Here is the Rohr Aerotrain with the Pueblo desert textures applied. The real Aerotrain doesn't have the rust. It's mostly plastic.

Adding tiny bits to the Rohr Aerotrain

This thing's got eyes and teeth now. It also has tail lights, too. Tomorrow I'll start working on the elevated monorail that it rides on.

One step forward, two steps back

Here's some boolean texturing (if there really is such a thing as boolean texturing) for the colored striping.

Now to figure out how to get my windows edges to work with the striping.

So far, so good

This time I added more geometry to the sides so that I could place the procedural windows more precisely.

Some temporary windows for the Rohr Aerotrain

I used Carrara Pro 5.1 to procedurally paint some random windows on the side. This is just a rough draft to get an idea of how things will look real quick.

The windows are darkened with some transparency added. I'll fine tune the generator values later.

The Aerotrain needs some details still.

Getting the window frames to smooth properly has become somewhat of a challenge. The poly-count is high enough already for this model, so I'll just paint the windows and doors on.

Here I've broken the model into two parts to better manage it and to add some color (this is one of three color schemes I'll be making for it). I also need to model the head and tail lights. And then there's a piece that goes in the front for the monorail and also the air intake grills I still need to add.