Backdrops

[CNSF]

I've posted a couple of photos showing what I'm talking about over in the Gallery; still can't get them to appear here in a post.

[CNSF]

 Tried to post a photo here to illustrate my point above but it didn't work, and I can't find instructions on how to do it.  So maybe I'll just go downstairs now and make some trees.

[CNSF]

I've had no artistic training and little practice, yet have had really good results with paint for sky and minimalist landscape scenery. I'm modeling the farmlands of Oklahoma, where the foreground 3D scenery usually has to blend seamlessly into the backdrop, and can't imagine trying to do that with photos. Paint provides the necessary control over color and texture (or the appearance thereof) to at least approach seamlessness. However, I've been careful to limit the backdrop to simple, distant fields with minimal detail; nothing dramatic. Once I get into town, I'm expecting to use a mix of photos and flats for backdrop buildings, as I can't imagine myself getting believable results with paint. I've had a little practice with this, too, photoshopping some city scenes for use on my son's layout, which turned out quite well. Perspective is always going to be a problem with backdrops no matter which method you use. I'm optimizing mine for ground- level viewing, both for photography and when I'm in "train-watching" mode. But it's also not too far off for the view I get when seated on my operator's barstool. And I'm trying to minimize problematic things like roads running off towards the horizon, though you usually can't avoid them entirely.

[SeeYou190]

wp8thsub

Photos can work, but from my observations they usually look better in photos than in person, where reflections, color and perspective mismatches, and variations in detail, can become distractions. Most of our 3-D modeling is not photo-realistic, so photo backdrops can look out of place by drawing attention to the lack of appropriate textures in our scenery.

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I agree with this 100%. No photo-reallistic backdrops for me.

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-Kevin

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[E-L man tom]

xdford

Thank you Tom. One thing I do do is to print the backdrop buildings on single A4 sticker paper and mount the "flat" on a foam core strip cut to the outline of the buildings. Then suggesting shadow, I paint what would be the "roof" part with a flat blackish colour to suggest a bit of depth to the building. That would sit under your clouds on a blue sky quite well.

I have not tried it for "distant hills" yet as my older machine was obliged to run on Linux as Win10 stuffed up the computer after numerous reloads. I now have a newer on where Win10 is yet to fail (Give it time... it is MS after all...) but no CD/DVD drive so I will have to copy files to a memory stick... oh the joy!!! However the same principle should apply for background hills and other scenery made using surveyor within Trainz.

I did have a thought that using GIMP or Photoshop that any photo realistic images could be "converted" into "paintings" and take the necessary edge off th background that forces the viewer to look at the scene as pointed out earlier... all fun in the experimentation!

Cheers from Australia

Trevor

 

 

Trevor, I have heard of GIMP as well; Photoshop is quite popular.

To your comment on using a memory stick (thumb drive, as I call it), instead of a CD/DVD, I much prefer the thumb drive. It is easier to move/delete files and you can also "make" additional room, if desired for other data by deleting files that you don't need anymore. The CD/DVD is permanent, and, they take up filing space, whereas you can keep a thumb drive in a drawer, a briefcase or even on your key chain.

Back to photo backdrops, I struggle with enlarging the photos (or even reducing them for forced perspective), once they are taken. Seems to me that a series of backdrop buildings or a panoramic view would have to be a pieced together set of photos. But, even at that they need to be way bigger than what you have on your digital camera or your cell phone. 

[xdford]

Thank you Tom. One thing I do do is to print the backdrop buildings on single A4 sticker paper and mount the "flat" on a foam core strip cut to the outline of the buildings. Then suggesting shadow, I paint what would be the "roof" part with a flat blackish colour to suggest a bit of depth to the building. That would sit under your clouds on a blue sky quite well.

I have not tried it for "distant hills" yet as my older machine was obliged to run on Linux as Win10 stuffed up the computer after numerous reloads. I now have a newer on where Win10 is yet to fail (Give it time... it is MS after all...) but no CD/DVD drive so I will have to copy files to a memory stick... oh the joy!!! However the same principle should apply for background hills and other scenery made using surveyor within Trainz.

I did have a thought that using GIMP or Photoshop that any photo realistic images could be "converted" into "paintings" and take the necessary edge off th background that forces the viewer to look at the scene as pointed out earlier... all fun in the experimentation!

Cheers from Australia

Trevor

 

[xdford]

See Below... not sure why my reply printed twice apart from my clumsy typing fingers!

[E-L man tom]

xdford

I have made and used backdrops from Auran Trainz for building fronts as part of a backdrop which are not quite so photo realistic so they meld into the backdrop a little easier.

To do this

1. Open up PAINT and then Trainz. Go to Surveyor mode.

2. You may like to texture the ground with some green grass or whatever ground base you would like on a single Trainz baseboard.

3, Select your building(s) from Trainz and place it or them so that the face that you want is facing south in your case being in the Northern hemisphere/North in mine. Rotate either yourself or the building(s) as you zoom in on it to fill most of the screen. Strangely enough there seems to be a difficulty in getting these buildings exactly square onto the screen.

4. Press your "Print Screen" button and Alt Tab and toggle your way into Paint. 

5. In Paint press Control V keys together and your printed screen will appear in paint. Select the area you want and move it to the top left hand corner of paint. Save as "building set 1" or whatever
6. If you are doing multiple sides to your building, because there is a "sun" in Trainz rotate your building and get all faces in "sunlight" Repeat steps 4 and 5

7, Scale the individual drawings on Publisher, Word, Open Office or whatever you have making sure your corners align size wise. Smaller makes them look further away or using this technique, you can use the stickers on foam core boxes to make 3D buildings. I did this with a lot of Tomkats buildings as well as make 3D versions of them.

I have also used a similar technique with pictures of Google earth taken at street level of a line of buildings, specifically those in Yorkton SK but I have not assembled these yet as a backdrop section.

 

Hope this helps

 

Regards from Australia

Trevor

Trevor

 

Thanks for that tutorial Trevor! I'm not at that stage in my layout building yet, so I copied your post to a document and filed it for future use. About the extent of my backdrop features right now is clouds, which I painted on. I actually gave a clinic at one of my round-robin group meets on painting clouds on a backdrop.

[Doughless]

Good point Dave.  Backdrops that are highly detailed almost always look best when viewed from a single vantage point, where the foreground and backdrop meet at the same angle of perspective, and that angle also carries into where we are standing while viewing the layout.  Its a limitation.

More generic backdrops, like a simple blue sky or rolling hills in the background, don't carry the same demands of having to look at it from the "correct" angle.

 

[dknelson]

wp8thsub

Photos can work, but from my observations they usually look better in photos than in person ....

I think Rob touches on an important point here, which works both ways.  I have been to layouts which have appeared in MR or RMC and often notice I am more troubled by certain painted or photo backdrops in a still photo than I ever was during an actual layout tour.  In fact sometimes I thought the backdrops were marvelous during the tour and goofy looking in the article.

Partly it may be perspective in that we as visitors rarely have the opportunity at crowded layout tours to hunch down to get the "scale human height" perspective that layout photos are taken at.  It is difficult to get that perspective right whether painted or photo.

And things like painted clouds that we glance at briefly, think "ah, a cloud" and then look more closely at the trains, become distracting when you can stare at them at length in a magazine photo.  For example, and no offense to Jim, but a prior iteration of Jim Kelly's Tehachapi Loop layout had painted clouds that were fine in person but looked almost childish and cartoon like -- too stark a white against blue --  in a magazine article (he must have agreed because they are not on the current backdrop).  Ditto for people who experiment with cotton ball clouds - ok in person, not as effective in a photo.  Unless there is a storm coming (or going) you tend not to notice clouds on the horizon as much as those overhead anyway.

I am starting to come to the conclusion that in many cases a really minimalist backdrop is the best, except perhaps where you are trying to convey a distant rail-served industry that there was just no room to model, even in a smaller scale to suggest perspective.

Dave Nelson

 

[Doughless]

Every photo backdrop that is heavy into buildings that I have seen have been taken from the WRONG ANGLE.  They are taken from street angle, meaning the camera is looking UP at the buildings.  When we look at our layouts, we are typically looking DOWN at the buildings, revealing much of the roof.

So when the typically building oriented commercially available photo backdrop is placed on the layout next to our model buildings, the angle changes quite noticeably and unrealistically, IMO. 

An industrious person or company should use current technology and start making photo backdrops using drones that hover just above the building, giving the photo the same angle as how we view our layouts.

Photo scenery backdrops aren't so bad.  Many appear to be looking slightly down at a field, hill, etc from a higher viewing point.

Edit:  All of the backdrops so far in this thread look realistic, IMO.  And speaking of angle, you'll notice in MisterBeasley's photo how the angle shows us looking down at the road, probably because the camera was being held about 6 feet above it.

[selector]

I like seeing qood backdrops mounted in the right places on a decent layout.  For me, the trouble begins with placing an otherwise great backdrop in the WRONG place.  I see it suprisingly often; a flat layout with a mountainous scene or scenes of fields rising away at the wrong apparent angle for the terrain closest to the viewer.  It grates and draws my eyes to this disparity or unsuitedness.

Whether painted or imaged, backdrops suffer from a 2D effect on a 3D system.  Viewed from the nose of an oncoming locomotive, a favourite technique in imagery, the backdrop looks squashed with skinny mountains, very thin trees, and housed with the walls far too close together.

[luvadj]

I find the photo backdrops are too overpowering on some scenes; I stick with the painted ones on my layout.

[MisterBeasley]

I have only one small backdrop.  I tried it after seeing a how-to article in MR.

I went outside on a quiet weekend day and took a picture of the street in front of my house and printed it on my computer.  I fitted it in place, and then repeated the process once I realized that I had to take the photo from about knee height, not eye level.

With a few "real" trees along the approach, this blends in nicely.  Ideally, I should edit the photo and replace the yellow lines with white to make them era-appropriate, and extend the lines on to the layout.  Someday, maybe.

[xdford]

I have made and used backdrops from Auran Trainz for building fronts as part of a backdrop which are not quite so photo realistic so they meld into the backdrop a little easier.

To do this

1. Open up PAINT and then Trainz. Go to Surveyor mode.

2. You may like to texture the ground with some green grass or whatever ground base you would like on a single Trainz baseboard.

3, Select your building(s) from Trainz and place it or them so that the face that you want is facing south in your case being in the Northern hemisphere/North in mine. Rotate either yourself or the building(s) as you zoom in on it to fill most of the screen. Strangely enough there seems to be a difficulty in getting these buildings exactly square onto the screen.

4. Press your "Print Screen" button and Alt Tab and toggle your way into Paint. 

5. In Paint press Control V keys together and your printed screen will appear in paint. Select the area you want and move it to the top left hand corner of paint. Save as "building set 1" or whatever
6. If you are doing multiple sides to your building, because there is a "sun" in Trainz rotate your building and get all faces in "sunlight" Repeat steps 4 and 5

7, Scale the individual drawings on Publisher, Word, Open Office or whatever you have making sure your corners align size wise. Smaller makes them look further away or using this technique, you can use the stickers on foam core boxes to make 3D buildings. I did this with a lot of Tomkats buildings as well as make 3D versions of them.

I have also used a similar technique with pictures of Google earth taken at street level of a line of buildings, specifically those in Yorkton SK but I have not assembled these yet as a backdrop section.

 

Hope this helps

 

Regards from Australia

Trevor

Trevor

[marksrailroad]

I painted my back drop beginning with sky blue then the clouds with white and gray. To finish it I painted mountains and pine trees as well as a city scape off in the distance. It turned out fairly well if I do say so myself...

[wp8thsub]

I tend to prefer painted backdrops.  Painting lets me control color and perspective more thoroughly. I can do the painting after messy 3-D scenery work is done, so I don't have to worry about damaging the backdrop during scenery construction.  I can scale the backdrop shapes to precisely fit with the foreground, placing features exactly where I need them.

Photos can work, but from my observations they usually look better in photos than in person, where reflections, color and perspective mismatches, and variations in detail, can become distractions.  Most of our 3-D modeling is not photo-realistic, so photo backdrops can look out of place by drawing attention to the lack of appropriate textures in our scenery.  With photos you can see the same backdrop on multiple layouts, which kills realism for me.

Above are some examples of where I designed 3-D and 2-D scenery at once to create scenes that feel more expansive than they really are.  All of these are 12" deep or less.

[BATMAN]

I took an 8' x 24" piece of hardboard and hung it up in the garage and used my airbrush and paintbrush to see how good I am at doing mountains and such. I couldn't believe how good it was. So I painted over it with my sky blue to do something a little different, I couldn't believe how bad it was. So all I have is a blue backdrop with a few clouds and funny poofy drapes.

My daughter is an incredible artist that will be bribed when the time is right.

[angelob6660]

I will be painting my backdrops. I was going with styrene but I realized I didn't get a sheet long enough than 7 inches. So I'll be using a thin of wood.

[BRAKIE]

riogrande5761

Pros: can create a very realistic scene quickly and fairly easilyCons: high cost - can be fairly expensive

Jim,Good points.. IMHO a ISL almost demands a Photo backdrop of a industrial  area since the very nature of the beast is-well industries.

I have went as far as to look into the costs and it was a tad more then I expected but,haven't rule it out on my new ISL since I'm still in the  94/95 era industry planing stage.

[riogrande5761]

JohnWPowell

photo or painted backdrops,which do you use and why?

Painted Backdrop:
Pros: cost is minimal, can be rewarding if results is realistic
Cons: definite learning curve to get good results, some results look cartoon-like

Photo backdrop:
Pros: can create a very realistic scene quickly and fairly easily
Cons: high cost - can be fairly expensive

For a very realisitc example of a painted back drop, Rob Spangler has learned the techniques and the results have been a realistic back drop that blends well with the forground 3D scenery.

Some other examples displayed in the forums of painted are less than stellar, while most of the photo backdrops look quite good with a minimal effort.

[hornblower]

I've used a combination of both.  I used paint for the sky and distant horizon, then added photos of individual buildings. However, to insure that the background photos have a similar look (light, shadows and coloring) to the 3D structures on my layout, most are simply photos of the back sides of the 3D structure models.  Since you can't see the sides of the layout structures facing the backdrop, I photograph these building faces, print them out slightly smaller than HO scale to force perspective, cut out the structure along the roof line and side walls, then glue them to the backdrop using spray adhesive.  I sometimes glue the photos to a piece of foam core to add a little 3 dimensional depth.  I have also used photos of low relief background industrial structures to significantly increase the size of these industries.  Since the photographed models are three dimensional, the photos look better than the two dimensional building flats I have printed using Evans Design Model Builder.  Try to photograph your strucutres from an angle similar to the normal viewing angle of the scene in which it will be placed (up and down as well as left to right).  That way the photographs will add depth in a realistic manner.  You can also use left and right angled photos to suggest buildings following streets beyond the backdrop.  I just about doubled the depth of an urban scene I'm modeling using photos of the rear facing walls of several of the foreground buildings in the same scene.  Nobody (besides myself) has noticed that the photos are of the 3D buildings in front of the photos.  Very nice effect for about 2 hours work! 

[Anonymous]

IMHO, photorealistic backdrops are too dominating, attracting the viewer´s attention away from the foreground. For that reason, they often fail to serve their purpose, giving a scene more depth.

I have painted my mountain backdrop in just a couple of hours, with a few, swift brush strokes.

My art teacher would most likely burst out in tears would he still live to see it, but I am quite proud of my achievement.

[Lone Wolf and Santa Fe]

    I think either are fine if done right. I painted them on an older version of my layout but I’m not the greatest painter. On the current version of my layout I use pictures from old Union Pacific Railroad calendars. I cut off the sky so only the buildings, foothills and mountains remain.
    I also print my own background buildings so they are the buildings that I want. Some are stock but some are custom which I made myself including the real city hall building and other real landmarks.

[JohnWPowell]

photo or painted backdrops,which do you use and why?