Okay, so check it out, I messed around with trying to recreate that Fallout London train crash scene in Unity. It was way harder than I thought, lemme tell ya.
First off, I grabbed some free train car models online. Nothing fancy, just something to get started with. Then I needed some London-looking buildings, so I spent like, an hour searching for decent assets. Found some that were okay, a bit cartoony, but good enough to block out the scene.
The Crash Part: This is where things got tricky. I initially thought I could just use the physics engine and let the train cars smash into each other. Turns out, that looked terrible. The cars just kinda bounced around like toys. So, scrapped that idea.
Next, I tried using animations. I rigged up the train cars to some bones and animated them smashing together in Blender. Exported that to Unity. Looked way better! But, it was a fixed animation, so no real player interaction. Boo.
Then I remembered something about using “ragdoll physics” combined with animations. Basically, you animate the main movement, and then let the physics engine take over for smaller, more realistic movements on impact. It was a pain to set up all the colliders and joints, I had to watch a few tutorials to figure it out. But after that, it got better.
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I animated the train derailing and starting to tip.
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At the point of impact, I enabled the ragdoll physics.
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The train cars then smashed into the buildings in a satisfying way.
Dust and Debris: The scene looked too clean, right? Had to add some dust and debris. I found some free particle effects on the asset store, tweaked them to look like concrete dust and sparks. I created a particle system that would emit a burst of dust on impact. That really helped sell the effect.
Lighting was the last thing. I played around with the shadows and added a slightly orange tint to the light to give it that post-apocalyptic feel.
Challenges I Faced:
- Getting the Physics Right: The ragdoll physics were fiddly. The train cars would sometimes explode for no reason.
- Performance: All those particles and physics calculations were killing the frame rate. I had to optimize the particle effects and use fewer physics objects.
- Making it Believable: It’s hard to make a train crash look real! I watched a bunch of videos of real train crashes to get a better idea of the motion and the destruction.
Overall, it was a fun project. Learned a lot about physics, animation, and particle effects in Unity. It’s not perfect, but it’s a decent starting point. Maybe I’ll revisit it later and add some more detail, like interactive debris and better sound effects. But for now, I’m moving on to something else. It was a blast trying to bring Fallout London to life.
