Lavender's Trackmania WIP Picture Dump

LavenderGreaterNull

LavenderGreaterNull

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Hi, I'm LavenderGreaterNull (short: Lavender) and I map scenery in Trackmania 2020! It's a racing game where players can create their own racetracks and share them with each other. In this thread, I intend to occasionally drop screenshots of the maps I'm working on, supposedly they're visually pleasing. Feel free to stick around, if you've got cool sceneries to share yourself, you can post them here too!

Here's what I'm currently working on, a track named Substation! It's a speedtech route built in a high-voltage sci-fi energy distribution facility.
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Didn't do much the past few days, been mostly apathic. Today I redid some decoration on an area that I previously thought was meh.
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Obviously it's still far from done, but at least the area around the coil actually looks like a circuit now. Besides adding some roofing, I think I wanna emphasize this detail more.

Oh and if you're wondering what the new block is, it's the backside of a screen
 
Right now I've decided to do some different setpieces before I do the roofing for the tesla coil, and I have a peculiar problem.
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The purpose of a substation is to transform voltage from high to low, or vice versa. This particular substation, being super-futuristic, is gonna need a big f##king main transformer, it's gonna be eye-catching, and I want it to be the main setpiece of the track, and I want to position it roughly where I've outlined it, underneath the receptacle to the right. The problem I have is the route - as you can see, from the start, you grab a reactor, then make a far left drift. But if I now position the big setpiece to the right of the track, directly adjacent to it, it's gonna make players look away from the curve and/or have a harder time driving. Which is not what I want.

The bit that's stuck to the left of the circular arc is pretty much the first thing I've made here, to be screenshotted and sent to the route mapper as a "hey, how do you like this general style?" And it does a pretty decent job of guiding the player's vision to the left, along the electricity's arc. What I think I'll do is try to visually section off the transformer from the curve, maybe make it drive into an indoors section of sorts.
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P.S. Those indicators to the right are a plugin
 
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Not much happening behind the scenes at the moment beyond planning out the next setpiece
 
Today I bring a screenshot from a different track, and this one comes with some backstory.
So, yesterday evening, the Trackmania Mappers Association held an event called Potluck, where people could throw in whatever map they liked and we'd play it on a server. The majority of folks were sitting in a vc that I didn't have access to, so I joined the TM server, commented on the fact that I couldn't join the vc, and Cobla, one of the server's mods, said, "don't worry, go join a vc and I'll move you in". So when I finally got inside, I heard someone (idk who) say, "by the way, Cobla and Lavender, you're in the queue".
Turns out someone was doing a thing where everyone who joined that specific vc had to map a checkpoint for an endurance dirt map. On my checkpoint, on the route, I got heavily tutored by Cobla, and didn't manage to finish scenery that day, so I postponed it till today.
Anyways, here's what I built. From the checkpoint arch in the top right to the checkpoint that's currently connected to nothing in the bottom left
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Part of the main transformer setpiece. Not sure if I'm satisfied, but it's 9PM right now
 
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Today's additions, lightning bolts still missing but to be added. I hope I'll be able to do more during the weekend
 
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Here's another piece of the transformer! Now I just need the buildings to the side and that setpiece's done.
 
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Route by Skifreak, it's over a minute long so probably not eligible for TOTD, and also will explain the dozen or so Waypoint team signs I'll be placing here - I'm not a Waypoint member at the moment. Scenery inspired by the puzzle video game Lumines. ...And this was supposed to be "light" scenery.
 
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Update on the Skifreak route, wanted to build some unfriendly Soviet blocks in this section.
 
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Feels good to for once be able to share an update on your works, after weeks of stagnation. Winter's been coming, my depression has been slowly but steadily climbing its way out of the basement and eating away at my motivation, but... I can do this. Yeah, I probably can.

I completely scrapped all the scenery this map had previously and am starting from scratch because I felt like I had built myself into too many corners. Honestly, this sort of more abstract-ish scenery was what I meant to be building from the very beginning, I just... didn't manage to keep creative control over my work.

Also don't mind the semi-transparent calendar in the bottom right, I switched to Linux Mint and screenshots are a bit wonky
 
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At long last, I've made some more progress on this map!
 
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