ent in a scene, you can increase the in- terest and modeling opportunities at the same time, and more to the point, the animation opportunities, too.
Improved animation control: Tim- ing, cueing and synchronization Let’s start off by having a look at how we can coordinate lighting, sound and movement. In future articles, we’ll come back to each of these in detail. It is the timing and coordination that dif- ferentiates much of this work from what is normally seen on layouts. Just as one quickly tires of watching a train traverse an oval of track, I tire of watching some animated feature re- peat itself quickly in some obvious fashion. Consequently, I set a goal of attempting to create distinct, but ran- dom patterns and sequences which may eventually repeat, but might take hours, days, or even years before they do. And yes, this is possible! Let’s focus on a simple animation that can have an immediate impact:
windows and building lights. By isolat- ing rooms and their windows, we can make them come to life by sequencing their lights. First, isolate the rooms and their windows so the light con- tained in the “room” does not leak out to adjacent rooms and floors, or even through the walls. I now use only Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) for modeling because they are small, bright, inex- pensive, and do not generate any ap- preciable heat. I only use bright white LEDs to minimize the variety I have to stock, and I color them as needed with Tamiya clear acrylic paints, which can be mixed to deal with virtually any lighting situation.
I build a simple box for the room be- hind every window set to be lighted. If the interior is not to be detailed, the walls and floor are painted black and the ceiling painted white. LEDs can generate a very concentrated bright light. If you want a bright room light (simulating,
say, fluorescent factory lights), the walls, including the outer
building walls, must be opaque to the light.
Plastic,
even quarter-inch
styrene, is translucent and light will pass right through it. Painting the in- ternal walls is often essential. If you are detailing the room interior, try a base coat of black before applying the final wall color. I have used black styrene sheet to good effect, as well. Fi- nally, for rooms with no modeled interi- or, I lightly spray the window glazing material with Dullcote. This gives the windows a dirty look, but not frosted, and it diffuses the light coming from the interior.
Once all the rooms and lights are in
place, we need to demonstrate life in the building. The idea is to turn room lights on and off over time in a realistic fashion. In this example we only focus on timed lighting, so everything in se- quence is switching on and switching off with appropriate delays. With a personal background in elec-
tronics, I would likely lean towards an electronic solution, but fellow machin-
Bringing life to a building can be as easy as having the room lights turn on and off, as illustrated in this sequence of photos (above). This was accomplished with an Arduino controller. Fig- ure 1 (below), however, shows a simpler mechanical sequencer that has a motor-driven brass drum that can create the same ef-
Fig. 1: Mechanical timing and sequencing Battery
Motor Brass drum
fect. The drum, which is partially covered with blue tape, and the phosphor bronze wipers are wired into the circuit. When the wipers come into contact with the brass drum the lights go on. As the drum rotates and a wiper hits the blue tape, the electrical circuit is interrupted and the lights go out (below right).
Insulating tape
Start button
Resistors LEDs
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
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