Can anyone identify this product?


John P

Active Member
I just went to an open house at the South Shore Model railway Club in Weymouth MA, and I saw some building flats there that looked really good. See picture below. It seems as if they're made from photos of real buildings rather than using a drawing program. I can imagine that according to how active you're feeling, you can make them more 3-dimensional by adding details and by cutting out the windows and mounting them a little recessed back from the wall. The brickwork looks much better than anything I could do with plastic brick material, as it has all the irregularities of real brick. I asked one guy and he didn't know what the product was, and I wasn't ready to go round interrogating all the club members, so--does anyone recognize it?

By the way, notice how the builder must have made some mistakes, and so he covered up his sins with some "ivy"! We're all human.

IMG_3328.JPG
 
Looks like they've either taken their own photos or gone to a texture library like this one and clicked on 'Buildings'

They look great as low profiles as they are, just like a backdrop is flat.

Angie
 
I've been meaning to visit them for some time, but never got around to doing so.

At the RMR club in Worcester, MA we printed out photos of a city-scene backdrop and glued them to the wall which was painted as the sky.
 
WOW, that texture library is GREAT. I joined that site. They have some fantastic items to use for MRR'ing. That will be 1 of my best places to go. that's CG Textures.
 
Thanks Icheymon, that's great. I'm pretty sure you got the right product. And that texture library sounds interesting too.

So much good modeling stuff out there, such a short lifetime...
 
Those background building flats are a very interesting idea indeed! And just by adding a few thing on to them or over the edge you get a three demensional background. The same thing could be done by adding half a tree onto a background as well a adding a quarter tree in a corner or even making a 45* corner and using something like a 1/3 of a tree etc. to hide the seam.

My suggestion as a pro photographer would be to mount them on something like foam- core board so they could be easily positioned or removed and replaced or rearranged to suit your desired taste to even get a different effect after a while for some variety. They'd be light as heck too and easy to support.

Quite some time back I had suggested taking photos of various scenes and making prints which would be mounted on 1/8" to 1/4 foam-core board with different scenes that could
be easily changed when desired and these flats just reawoke the idea.

I'm going to have to look into using this type of back drop on my layout once I get a lot farther along as I'd much prefer to have something that suits the individuals areas rather than everything being being the same and photo of a scene here and there can make a big difference especially if it can be repositioned to suit scene.

Thanks for bringing up the idea again.
 
This is really interesting. My first thought was .. " .. camera, tripod .. building .." but then started to think about it. Most buildings that we would want to mass together for backdrop like was done in the OP's post are in 'real life' (suppose that is instead of the imitation life on a model railroad) are themselves .. clustered. That means they crowd together mostly limiting the photographs to the fronts. I looked back at the original photo and noticed that most of the buildings were indeed frontal shots with only a couple with a little of the side of the building. That .. could be done in your graphics program by slicing off a section of the front for the side.

Anhoo. I was looking around the net for images of buildings showing the front and a side and ran across this website www.bigindoortrains.com

The page is titled "O-Scale Building Front Photos" (not that the scale means anything) ..

He talks about "how he did it" .. using the stretch function to square the building photo .. removing power lines, parking meters etc .. even hows a DIY page ..

One of his photos is "Dillingers" Store Front. He has both the front and right side. The entrance is on the corner at a 45 deg . .thinking you could model that .. even cut that 45 deg into it. Cool.

So now .. I am thinking .. next nice sunny day .. camera, tripod .. and some interesting buildings .. :)

Edit: Darn. He has a Textures Page with brick, stone etc. and also a page with Business Signs.
 
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From that prior page I was linked to a guy named Andre Rooney who makes reproductions of old signs. His products are on Porcelain but .. BUT! .. he has them on Amazon.com .. AND .. a full color photo of each one! Take a look at his Amazon.com page .. I looked and his has more pages .. went through 11 before I got tired of pressing "next" :) .. there are also Railroad Signs

I love this one ..
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That's pretty observant Ed about what one can possibly do and your right that with the right techniques you can probably get some very good results. Unfortunately many of the photo programs don't offer to great a correction for leaning buildings.

I looked at the pictures you mentioned from the O scale site but wanted to bring up the door that is over to the Right and appears to be at an angle is in reality flat with the rest
of the front of the building. It's an optical illusion due to the sunlight peaking around the corner and just lighting a bit of the threshold area making that area lool larger. Look at the same picture to the left and you'll see a difference.

Now as far as photographing buildings, just in case your not familiar, and assuming your using a regular 35 mm type Digital there are a couple of tricks to get some fairly good if not perfect Rectolinier correction right in the camera. As best possible try to photograph at a midpoint height if possible while keeping the camera image plane as paralell to the front of the building as possible. If you can't get near a mid point height
try tilting the top of a verticle held camera in toward the subject to help correct a bit.
Of course if your lucky enough to have a tilt and shift lens a consider amount of correction is available there.

Enjoy your shooting, the efforts can be rewarding!
 
Paint Shop Pro has a menu item ..

Effects --> Geometric Effects --> .. then either --> Perspective Horizontal .. or --> Perspective Vertical. Works pretty darn well! Especially if you then used the other tools to manipulate the photo. I don't use Gimp (free) but the manual says it has Perspective Controls .. that ..
"The Perspective Tool is used to change the “perspective” of the active layer content, of a selection content or of a path. When you click on the image, according to the Preview type you have selected, a rectangular frame or a grid pops up around the selection (or around the whole layer if there is no selection), with a handle on each of the four corners. By moving these handles by click-and-drag, you can modify the perspective. "
 
Just wanted to say .. this is what I love about a forum like this. In this one thread .. cool idea for creating building flats with links to textures, signs, how-to etc. Which all go into a bookmarks sub-folder for structures .. which I can then refer back to once I EVER actually get started on my layout (putting in sub-floor in the house presently. Think a floor is done prior to the layout ... :/ )
 



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