Streets and buildings outline - part 5

 

Same process ...

And here's what we have so far:

And in one video:

Streets and buildings outline - part 4

 

Today, I didn't have time to continue on building draft structures, so I focused on pictures of the facades. 

See below:

11 rdM #111 - 11 rue des Martyrs - Parcelle 111

13 rdM #110 - 13 rue des Martyrs - Parcelle 110

15 rdM #109a - 15 rue des Martyrs - Parcelle 109

15 rdM #109b - 15 rue des Martyrs - Parcelle 109

For this last one, I had to combine two pictures together since the house is quite tall. I fixed the perspective and dimensions on each of them before combining them and the fit is very good.

Streets and buildings outline - part 1

Now that the tracks are glued and wired, it's probably time to start thinking about the scenery. The first stage is ballasting and track weathering, but I need to do a bit of research on this to decide how to proceed. The second stage is to start drawing the outline of the streets and building and to decide the exact location.

The main issue here to have an outline at the exact scale. Here's my current thinking:

• I got a DXF file from cadastre.gouv.fr
• On that same website, I measure the length of the front of buildings
• I then convert to those dimensions into HO scale
• I build a rough prototype in foam board

DXF file

I found multiple software that can open a DXF file; those include AutoCAD, nanoCAD, or QGIS. The issue is that the DXF file has drawing units, not real measures. Therefore, measuring in the DXF file does not help scaling the outline. 

 

Cadastre

I chose one building: 25 rue des Martyrs that is lot #100 on the cadastral plan:

It is about 8.99 meters in real, so approximatively 10.3 cm in HO scale.

 

Autodesk Viewer

As I was doing some research on CAD software, I came across this free tool from Autodesk: Autodesk Viewer. It allows to open DXF file and do basic operations. One of them is to make measures and smartly enough, there is a calibrate function:

 

House facade

Now that I have the width of the houses, I need the other dimensions. For this task, I will use my own photos, as what you can get from Google Street View is too distorted:

Google Street View

My photo

While the photo is quite good, I still need to fix the perspectives. I was pleased to find this article that explains how to easily do this in Gimp:

1. Load the picture in Gimp
2. Place 2 vertical and 2 horizontal lines to help framing the perspective:
• Drag from the left or top ruler to get a line
• Place the lines where things should be vertical or horizontal, like doors, windows, and roof cornice
3. Use the Perspective tool (Shift+P)
• Drag the corners until things start to align to the reference lines
• Iterate until it aligns nicely
4. Select the facade and crop to it
5. Use Scale Image or Print Size to scale the image
• Go to cadastre.gouv.fr and measure the width
• Use this HO scale calculator to get the size in miniature
6. Print from Gimp to get a scaled print of the facade

Here are all those steps in images:

Other online maps

Besides the cadastral website, I think those two can also be helpful:

• https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr
• https://remonterletemps.ign.fr

ESU ECoS - Engine image - part 3

 

In a previous post, I provided links to videos that showed how to load an image into the ECoS. This post is about using Gimp to handle rotation, resizing, adjusting background, and exporting.

Gimp

• If needs be, rotation can be done via the menu "Image > Transform > Arbitrary Rotation"

• Then, select as close as possible and crop via "Image >  Crop to Selection"

• Then, remove the background via "Tools > Selection Tools > Fuzzy Select"

• Then, create a new background layer on color B6B6B6, move it as background, and merge them

• Now, it is about resizing the canvas proportionally to match the 190 x 40 pixels size

• It is usually the case to increase the canvas horizontally rather than decrease it vertically

• The canvas can be resized via "Image > Canvas Size". Put the new dimension, click on "Center" under "Offset", and select "Foreground color" for "Fill with"

• Then, resize the image to 190 x 40 pixels via "Image > Scale Image"

• Finally, export the file in BMP format 24-bit via "File > Export"

• It seems that the Gimp export does not always work for ESU, so resave the BMP with Paint

• Then, it is ready to load into the ESU ECoS as usual

And everything in one video ...

I put all those steps into one video: