Wood. Lots of it

 A well overdue insight into the processes i used to create the wood panelling that makes up the majority of my train.

The first thing i did was to create a generic texture, that i would use over and over again. I started off with a small image of our front door, and started tiling it, then using the patch tool, eliminated seams and repetition, and then repeated the process until i had an image nearly 4000x4000. Then using one of my references photos, copied the layers and made variations in brightness and hue. With this document, i would be able to pick different grains for different wooden assets, but still keep the same uniform values throughout the level.

To keep consistency further, the first material i made in UDK became a parent material, so any other wooden materials i made would be material instance constants, so every piece of wood in the level would keep the same specualr level and glossiness, saving time and keeping materials constant.

Most of the panels followed the same or a similar process. Simple low poly model, baked onto with a high poly. I didnt create a shadow map in max, as my panels aren't really going to look like they're lit from one major light source above, so i used nDo and a bit of homemade ambient occlusion using layer blending options in photoshop.

 Then i slapped my wood texture on beneath the multiplied AO in photoshop, and rotated where appropriate to get the grains going the right way.

 All very simple, but there were alot of different meshes to make, these are actually just a few that happened to be in the same max scene.

 Doors required a bit more attention

Of course, everything need to be lightmapped. I created several checker pattern bitmap images, a 32x32, 64x64, and 128x128. I made the colours this light blue and violet as it was easier to see selected and deselected faces when lightmapping. I've lightmapped everything with these checkerpatterns as it results in clean lightmap results in UDK, lightmap consistency, and just makes the whole thing easier and quicker. Most of the time i dont need to go back and change the lightmap as i normally nail it first time with this method. I also recommend having a lightmapping album/playlist that you only listen to when lightmapping, so you can actually look forward to doing it  : )