I think it's time for a summary of my sign modelling work done since March 2018.
I made quite a lot of signs, learning Blender and getting more experience with graphic software during this whole time, which helped me create some unique textures for my latest signs that you'll see in PM 2.40
Signs are one of the most important elements. They make every road much more realistic and help you believe you're in the country you just entered after crossing a border. As some countries have a similar landscape, signs play a crucial role and make a huge difference.
I'll try to use pictures to show you the awesome difference between SCS and PM, so you can understand how much effort and love I put into this "rework" (which was basically working from scratch).
Keep in mind some textures are straight from Wikipedia (like all prohibitory or info signs) but
most other signs were made from nothing and I used official documents to do everything as realistic as possible.
An example of an official drawing:
And now let's get into signs!
Left - SCS model from base game, it uses textures for names (editable signs didn't exist back then of course; keep in mind the black/white texture isn't the original, blurry one)
Center - my first Blender edit, improved textures, editable city name, but it still didn't offer enough flexibility when it comes to long names
Right - my latest model, correct size and textures, many variants to choose from
HixoPL and me decided to experiment with an innovative feature - sign stands. SCS uses them only in ATS, so I'm pretty sure we're the only two people who introduced this technology to ETS2 so far. In ProMods we always look for new, cool stuff which makes our work more effective but also provides a better experience for our players, because we can easily recreate real situations.
That's a quick image of how it works:
Only the top sign has 2 poles, so their models don't flicker inside each other like it was happening in the past.
This awesome feature allows us to use only one sign model with many poles' variants, here's another example:
No matter what case we'll find in real life, we're prepared for it!
There was a similar issue with river name signs - fitting a long name on such a small sign produced hilarious results.
Well, nothing will surprise us now
Many signs were just ugly, both on the front and back:
Or way too big:
And here are some creations, which are as realistic as possible, but took hours of tweaking because of no official documentation, so I'm very happy with the result:
And elot360PL gave me a challenge, so I did my best to make it look realistic, by looking at similar signs and using my own knowledge.
Here's the result, hopefully no sign was forgotten
I hope all my future signs will be even better, as it's a never ending journey - it's time consuming, sometimes annoying but also fun and rewarding. I'm sure you'll all appreciate our hard work when driving through Poland and knowing all this, your experience will be even better!