Greentoken has a free online converter that will do 3ds > obj conversions: http://www.greentoken.de/onlineconv/

On another subject, has anyone seen any store fronts or street fronts? I currently have AntFarm's Window Shopping http://www.daz3d.com/window-shopping, as well as Victorian Street Front http://www.daz3d.com/victorian-street-front, but would love suggestions for others. The Central District Subway is great, but it's got a subway station. http://www.daz3d.com/the-central-district-subway

--MW

This is my largest project to date. Definitely spent a great deal of time on this scene.

Awesome. Just Fantastic! :D

I COULD see Diana going at him with her Magical sword and shield...and Doomy winding up for a devastating right hook...

(Hope Kara wakes up SOON, 'cuz if Diana gets pushed BACK by Doomy ANY further, she's likely to step on the Maid of Might's head! 0_o;;;; ) :)

If Doomy power-punched Mary Marvel or Kara, I could see one of them draped over (maybe) the top of the cop car on the right...or slammed up against the side of the building...If the guy can trade full-power blows with Kal, a blow from him would send these ladies FLYING...(in a BAD way) :(

(And he'd probably LAUGH about it... 0_0;; )

______________________

• I wonder if anyone has done Metropolis PD/Central City/Hub City/Gotham City 'decals' for the police cars? That might put another cherry on this bloody sundae... :)

• Are Doomy's bone spurs UV mapped? If you could add 'dirt' to them (add further depth and shading to them), it might bring him into the 'grunginess' of the cityscape more. You can see the shading/dirt on the ladies/Hawkwoman, and it ties them into the scene very well...But Doomy's bones are reading as too...clean...to my eyes. (Which is weird, 'cuz his skin reads fine to my eyes...*shrugs*)

______________________

All told, VERY cool scene! Wish we had gotten a bit of this during the 'Death of Superman' arc...instead of the A-List JLA just HAPPENING to NOT be available to help Kal (and Guy, Booster,Ted, Ice and the rest) fight the monster. Wonder Woman is a wizened fighter/warrior. Doomy would have beat on her, but she would've GIVEN him pain as good as any she would've gotten...

And Kal then would've ENSURED that Doomy would have PAID for EVERY bruise or cut Diana got... :(

If you reach 80C you starting losing the speed on your clock and your cards will render slower than it should, no matter it is rendering or games , for air cooling cards the only solution here is side fan , I have in the begining air cooled cards and the same problem as yours , after I installed the side fan the temp dropped to 67C and everything was fine again , now I use closed water cooling with independent radiator for each GPU  and everything run at 37C . I am not sure yet if I want central Water cooling as it will give me no more as I have now .

If you PC case allow you to install side panel fan go for it , also if you don't have already buy backplates for your cards it will lower the temp also around 3-5 C by cooling better the VRAM that is outside of the card that can get very hot and actually is not cooled by anything but the air in your case heating up the rest of the components on top of that . 

The secret in cooling right PC case is in creating the right pressure , so fans running like crazy may cool less than slower fans , also you will never get lower temp than your ambient room temp unless you use nitrogen ;)

1.Backplates

2.Side fan

that are all option you have here but with possible good result as I did and it worked . Or get yourself EVGA Hydro Kit for your cards and forget about the rest , your warranty will be not affected as long you keep the original parts just in case. I did with my 2 early cards as well and that was the best choice ever and the fact that everything will be protected by warranty even if something leak make it even better .

It's normal to reach 79 celcius while rendering with the gpu?

How can I know if my gpus are working? I only have two 980 ti. Both reach the same temperature with the fans working. That's a good sign to know if my gpus are working?

 

Thanks!

I couldn't begin to tell you what I did to cause it to go bye bye, it just went away and I was left with a big blank space in the middle of my workspace. I still have my Aux Viewport, I can even drag it into the central area and expand it, but then I lose the Aux Viewport. Also there seems to be no easy way to get back from full screen. 

I hate to say it, but it's crap like this that makes me glad DS is free. If I'd paid for software that behaved like this I do believe I'd be pissed.  I tried searching the forums, I don't know if anyone else ever tries that but in my experience it is an excercise in futility. It has to be the worst search engine ever. 

Anyway, I appreciate any advise on offer. I'm sure that there is some unintuitive sub-menu that will get my Viewport back that I just can't find. 

Morning. Having a bit of weather here...

...still raining there accroding to my weather site though not as bad as the other day.

More rain than we're used to I guess it goes to show be careful what you wish for but on the upside our roof isn't leaking, the central heating works and I got a few days off so could be worse :)

no use cant remember astoria or greenpoint.  called my cousin to ask if she has pictures.

i remember the trains vaguely, cuz they were reddish. 

ate all me spinach, so now can eat desert, butter pecan ice cream guilt-free

 

sorta remember the train stations.  people pushed. and they huddled cuz they knew exactly where the train doors open

 

red trains were the old diesel trains to long island, electrified tracks stopped, the trains switched to diesel power

cant find pictures. they stopped running them 80s or 90s

If you lived in/around Astoria, the red elevated subways were the R34 "Redbirds"... The last were retired in the mid 90s... Most are now part of an artificial reef somewhere down around the Carolinas. Back in the 70s they were mostly drab dark green... The red scheme came about the the early 80s... But they were mostly the 7 line, which was a Flushing line... They didn't really go into Astoria, just Queensborough Plaza then up Queens Blvd. The N and the R, which ran into Astoria and also through Greepoint (over the years they keep switching the N & R's routes), those had all sorts of different (filthy) colors... Some still had "64' Worlds Fair" light blue colors into the early 80s... I grew up on Crescent Street (Long Island City, or L.I.C.... the area was also known as Dutch Kills), three blocks from the 59th Bridge... (Ed Kotch bridge now?)...  Those were interesting times... NYC was falling apart, crime was rampant and the area was an industrial mess... Every other block had a burned down factory or abandoned lot... One whole block was a crumbled lot near 21st street, complete with a ten foot deep, 30 ft diameter crater where a water main broke and the city only caped (and never filled in the hole for about six years). There were some areas that were abandoned for so long that you'd occasionally find pheasants in, that had flown over from the LIRR freight yards near Queens Plaza (Long Island animals used to wander into the area by traveling along the tracks). The area was a favorite dumping ground for stolen cars and contractors who just dumped whole loads of demolition debris on the streets... At least one block was impassable to cars due to the amount of debris dumped on the street.  But as terrible as it was, it wasn't so bad to me as a kid and could be sorta fun at times... In a Fallout 4 kinda way... (Really, if you have played the game, they got the urban destruction details perfect)... There were no rules... You could explore anywhere, nobody cared... We had countless buildings, half of Roosevelt island, and even the (then) abandoned 63rd street subway tunnel project to explore... On Roosevelt island we once found an open hatch that led down to some access tunnels that ended up in the giant aqueduct tube which was still under construction at the time... Even the 59th street bridge was our playground... We used to ride our bikes down the outer roadways when they would close them down for perpetual repairs... A half mile downhill run... if you were lucky you could get your bike to 50mph. My friend and me once made soapbox racers (more like "assorted garbage racers") and ran them down the south roadway... On my turn it broke to pieces... I have no idea how fast I was going, but it was feet from the concrete decking... Theres nothing like falling on studded steel decking at speed to make you appreciate falling on concrete. One summer a stupid game we had involved climbing out onto one of the scaffolds above an abandoned lot near the river and dropping bottles into a 55 gallon steel drum below... We would lug dozens of bottles up the bridge in a folding shopping cart... We got pretty good at it and eventually someone moved the barrel... We had a mini adventure getting into the lot to reset the barrel... When we found it, it was almost 1/3 full of glass... We were really bored I guess.  Another side effect of living there was, if you were mechanically inclined, you could find almost anything to build almost anything, virtually anywhere if you looked long enough or knew were certain things tended to be found... Granted, stuff tended to look like it was made by the raiders from The Road Warrior, but you learned to be innovative... That and you hardly had to have any money to have fun (none of us did anyway). my step dad still lives in Long Island City in that same house. The neighborhood is totally different now. Some of the old houses are still there and many of the crappy old factories too, but one by one they are turning into hi-rise hotels and condos... The neighborhood is now an odd mix of working class and tourists, with stray groups of bohemians and wealthy hipsters mixed in... (I preferred the rats to the hipsters... They have more personality).  That LIC is long gone... Some of it I wouldn't wish on anyone... Some of it is why I hate apathetic mismanagement of infrastructure by hired officials... Some of it is why I don't trust the intentions or rhetoric of "urban developers"... Some of it made me a little tough and quick to fight... Some of it made me somewhat street smart, but at a cost... Some of it made me quite cynical...  But some of it I wouldn't change... Because some of it gave me some of the best closest friends anyone could want... We went through hell in a place nobody cared about and learned to watch out for one another on the way... As bad as it was, sometimes you can't find that in other places...

Sorry... This started out with me mentioning the trains and I got to thinking about the ones that ran to Greenpoint, which was mentioned... It reminded me of a friend who died last year and some of our crazy adventures and crazy Fourth of July's (stuff that would get SWAT teams into the area today, but back then the cops would just tell you "hey, stop that" and drive on)... My friend's family had a Deli in Greenpoint, so that was why I started thinking about all that and the other stuff...

 

 

oh yeah the 7!  use to take it to Hunter's Point from Grand Central.   ears popping.  scared to death of the tunnels now.  terror vortex subway tunnels and ferris wheels

dunno if i could get to staten island ferry, no tunnels on the way

havent been to avery fisher hall in 20 years, never been to the big one, the met 

...the Boston and Pacific one would work for the 50s- 70s livery.  Before that they were affiliated with the Union Pacific which would be the Denver and Southern texture. The Rio Grande & Western is perfect for the Penn Central.  The Southern Coast lines works for the older Milwaukee Road, before they partnered with Union Pacific

Still slow in south central US.

HI

Yes of course but don;t suggest yourself by benchmarks done with Octane as Octane  have total  different way of GPU scaling than iray  that really can't even compare in speed , other benchmarks are done in MaX what is also different story  as it usually render  slower than  iray in Daz Studio , without GPU there is no speed that is clear to everyone , that why I said if you go for more tha 2 cards you need to pay attention as things will works not the same way and even if you think is faster it is not optimal faster and nobody want to trow out $1000 for having 20% extra speed .

In the early drivers for win 10 there was a wrong power setting for GPU under Nvidia Panel , first was use multiple GPU , and second Average Power that slow down a lot , right now the power is set to Max Power but multiple GPUs aren still as main settings so if you use just one GPU  for your monitor's set it to single GPU, and as you mentioned the System power option usually set for Balance or power saving and not  performance 

I was thinking having 4 cores at 5GHZ will do the trick with 3 cards compared to 8 cores at  3Ghz (3.5Ghz) as indicated by the benchmarks but it was so wrong since the moment I upgraded the CPU to 8 cores I gain speed almost of additional card, less delay , faster scene load and rendering and my intel easy tune show utilization of 8 core with only GPU rendering, then I made experiment , disable 4 cores and run just 4 cores and the result was slower in overall , while working with iray and while rendering .

So if you plan for more than 2 card thing about , if you go for max 2cards 4 core CPU will be just  right , no matter at 3.5 or 4.0 Ggz as my other rig works wonderful with this CPU

here is my steam punk Hell Boy iray rig for 2016 with 9250 Cuda Cores and i75960 Extreme with 64GB DDR4 Corsair Dominator Platinum and MSI GodLike Motherboard powered with 1300W all water cooled , in December I am going to change the rubber pipes to hard pipes for central water cooling system as I am not feeling like spending another $500 while the temp run so low but more for the astetic of it , it is behind a glass full tower size rig so not typical PC case , it can be used on table top as well . I wanted something different this time as I am tired of boxes , I have one more space for 1070 or 1080 water cooled as well for the monitors

 

 

Hey Mec4D,
Indeed. This is why it is so important to always be sure that Power Options in control panel is set to "High Performance." This way the CPU is always running at max Ghz. If it is set to "Power Saver," then the CPU will be downclocked to sub 1 GHz speeds, and the rendering times with slow to a crawl (I had to learn this the hard way).

I think the point I was trying to make, however, was that CUDA is by far the most important variable of a GPU rendering rig. Yes, a good CPU is important too. But really any decent CPU will suffice. The difference between 3.5 GhZ and 4 GHz, or 4 cores or 6 in a CPU is negligable, compared to the difference in CUDA cores. Just look at any online rendering benchmarks (such as Octane bench or Furry Ball), and the systems that rank the highest are always the systems with the highest CUDA count. Anyone who is serious about GPU rendering absolutely must put CUDA count at the top of their priority list. 

 

Welcome back RGcincy and Ice Dragon Art. Hope the vacations were relaxing and fun! 

Had a great time, lots of mountains and cool weather. The new mountainscapes product is a good example of what I was seeing (central Alaska, SE Alaska, BC coast, Washington State).

I tried to render Ivan 7 but had a couple of crashes. Since it was happening with some other G3 figures too, don't think it was the new product. Not quite sure why it's happening but I'll be trying again.

Here's my first render of Medieval Hall and Garden. Took 51 minutes with CPU only (too big to engage the GPU, so I'll need to see what I can turn off). This scene used the Outside Camera 9 that comes with the set but repositioned to get a larger view. Everything is right out of the box except for the blue sky background. I like all the water plants and garden bushes. 

Hope you don't mind me butting in. The set is very modular, down to individual walls and floors, so there's lots you can turn off. I describe zones in terms of ordinal directions - north, south etc. North is the courtyard behind the long gallery, south is the lawns on this side etc (mea culpa, the directions don't match DS for sun-sky time of day - your camera is looking east in sun-sky terms, so early morning will light the lawn, and late afternoon will light the courtyard). There's lots of plants and ivy in the north area can easily be turned off. A couple of bridges not in shot, the near bank is in 3 segments and one or two of those could go. The entire Checker building could go apart from the roof. The interior floors in the long gallery could go, maybe the lower north wall (but that could change what's visible through the windows). Hopefully it shouldn't be too hard to free up enough vram to get it on your card.

Welcome back RGcincy and Ice Dragon Art. Hope the vacations were relaxing and fun! 

Had a great time, lots of mountains and cool weather. The new mountainscapes product is a good example of what I was seeing (central Alaska, SE Alaska, BC coast, Washington State).

I tried to render Ivan 7 but had a couple of crashes. Since it was happening with some other G3 figures too, don't think it was the new product. Not quite sure why it's happening but I'll be trying again.

Here's my first render of Medieval Hall and Garden. Took 51 minutes with CPU only (too big to engage the GPU, so I'll need to see what I can turn off). This scene used the Outside Camera 9 that comes with the set but repositioned to get a larger view. Everything is right out of the box except for the blue sky background. I like all the water plants and garden bushes. 

While using Daz Connect also, there is only one path (you can use a shared NAS drive) that you can specify for installing content but there could be multiple locations from where the content can be read.

But the challenge lies in sharing the database metadata. I am not sure if there is an utility that could do an export-import of the metadata directly from the Postgresql used by the Studio. I wish they allowed the DB connection to be externally configurable so that an external Postgresql could be configured.

Connecting to the same database twice would be a problem because you would have to keep both machines online any time you wanted to use them so they could reauthenticate because it would keep thinking it was a "new machine", it is an option but not a great one.

 

A second option would just be to transfer the whole cluster directory over to the other machine, but you would have to re-authenticate any time you did that and only on the second machine.

 

A third option is to have them share the same files but not share the data and just "install" any content on both machines. It should detect that the content is already there and is the latest version so it shouldn't actually download anything. I have heard a report or two that this isn't working in the latest release (4.9.2.70) so be aware.

If you implement offline activation some of the pains of staying online while installing new content could be alleviated. One option could be to issue a unique token to each user while installing the studio and logging in for the first time through the studio (preferably during first launch). Post installation, this token would be uploaded to Daz and visible in the user account section (and managed by user for tracking multiple installations). Each purchased item can then be encrypted using that key (two-way encryption) and a unique download link (with temporary validity) can be generated for each user. Both download options DIM and Connect can use this link for fetching and installing the content for the user. Manual download would also be possible by adding an extra step of packaging and compressing the associated encrypted content. Upon installation, the content stays encrypted on the disk and gets decrypted on-demand in memory when the Studio loads it.

Obviously the cost of this approach would be the load on the servers for encrypting the content each time a download is requested by a user and in addition to the diffculty in distributing the content through CDN networks.

If the user wants to use the content on another machine all they would need is a one time activation of the token in that machine and all his downloadable content and future purchases could be authenticated offline using that token. It would also enable user identification should any encrypted content appear "in-the-wild".

If I understand correctly, the purpose of the database is to store the associated metadata but not the entitlement of the content. The metadata should be safe to replicate across machines or stored in a central location (enabled by the external configuration of the Postgresql). The option of allowing metadata to be stored in a common database or replicated using export-import of database dumps could allow propagation of changes across all offline installations - a huge plus.

Here's is the next version.  I added a few objects - some trash (I found a wastepaper basket which had crumpled paper in it), and the guitar case.  Too bad you can't see the money in it from this angle (Free Money from Share CG - has morphable bills).

I also increased the light and changed its angle and reduced the shadow softness.  That's a good start.  I'll play around with it a little more.

I moved some of the birds around and changed some poses so that the duplication is less evident. 

The trash to the left of the woman's feet has to go.  I don't like it there, especially the one that is defying gravity.

I tried little pebbles as bread crumbs, but no matter what shader or texture I applied, they still looked like rocks.  Next I tried using some of the little cakes from A Curious Tea - Eat Me, but again, couldn't find a shader that looked like bread.  But also, the individual pieces took more time than I would like to render, and I didn't want an abundance of bread crumbs to slow down the render.  Looks like I'll have to Photoshop the crumbs in.  Maybe I can put a colored pebble in some of the birds' beaks, we'll see.

The city haze will wait until the end.

I really like this, but it needs focus.  Right now, with the birds (where did you find a magpie? I kinda would like to have one for a pet project) front and center and getting more light than basically anything else, they get my focus.  And they seem oddly positioned if the man in the shelter is feeding them,  That's a long way to throw breadcrumbs, isn't it?

Lots of great detail, but something/someone needs to be the central focus as the focus is currently no-where, really.

Hi,

First, so long as you're making this for personal use, you can use whatever you want for the textures.  That being said, most textures are created 1:1 which, in other words, means for a specific model's UVs so may not necessarily work on other models.  However, the good news is that you can learn to make textures for hair or find free ones.  You can find any number of tutorials on YouTube and free textures may be found on ShareCG.  Just Google for them.  You can study the Hair textures on various models to see how they are done.  What makes them look like hair, in particular, is the alphas on the ends to simulate the way hair strand end with variation.

As far as making the hair in ZBrush, first it would depend on how well versed you are in ZBrush.  Do you have much experience working with ZBrush?  Do you know how to UV map (ZB's is UVMaster)?  Are you familiar with using Curves and IMM brushes?

If you look at Charm Hair, you'll see that it is created with formed planes.

http://www.daz3d.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/p/o/pop-up11_charmhair_.jpg

If you look in ZBrush Central, you'll find the IMM repository.  Something like this would work.  http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?170167-Insert-Multi-Mesh-Repository&p=1078543&highlight=hair#post1078543

That should get you started if you are used to working in ZBrush.

Time: 1am Central Time. Download speed for DIM is between 10.8MB and 11.6MB. No problems whatsoever. Am downloading 7.6GB of products to start with.  EDIT: Now it's 13.5MB doing Bone and Fantasy Shaders.

it's a rare day the weather page reports good news

these complaint worthy complaints >.<

Seine River floods Paris forcing Louvre Museum to close Friday

PHOTOS: Texas governor declares state of disaster in 31 counties; 5 soldiers killed in flooding

...looks like everyone else is gettng the rain we usually do.  Hoping Annie and Ed are OK.

She was on Facebook early this morning.  I haven'g been on, but got a notice she shared something that I posted.  This was around 8:45 this am...probably my time, so maybe an hour earlier in Texas.  Strangely they are one hour behind us in time zone somehow.

Dana

Texas has 2 time zones, Central and Mountain.  Austin is in Central; El Paso is in Mountain.  We haven't had any flooding near our 'hood.  Awesome lightning shows have occurred though.  The creek half a block from the house isn't out of its banks.  The tower I use for Net access went down about 2 pm yesterday and wasn't back until around 10 this morning.  

...good to know you're OK.  Heard about the declered emergency.

it's a rare day the weather page reports good news

these complaint worthy complaints >.<

Seine River floods Paris forcing Louvre Museum to close Friday

PHOTOS: Texas governor declares state of disaster in 31 counties; 5 soldiers killed in flooding

...looks like everyone else is gettng the rain we usually do.  Hoping Annie and Ed are OK.

She was on Facebook early this morning.  I haven'g been on, but got a notice she shared something that I posted.  This was around 8:45 this am...probably my time, so maybe an hour earlier in Texas.  Strangely they are one hour behind us in time zone somehow.

Dana

Texas has 2 time zones, Central and Mountain.  Austin is in Central; El Paso is in Mountain.  We haven't had any flooding near our 'hood.  Awesome lightning shows have occurred though.  The creek half a block from the house isn't out of its banks.  The tower I use for Net access went down about 2 pm yesterday and wasn't back until around 10 this morning.  

My niece is in Killeen, I guess that's the Central zone.  I was worried about her and her family, after seeing the news about that military vehicle getting flipped and swept away from Ft. Hood, which is in or adjacent to Killeen.  Seems she's OK, though.

Dana

it's a rare day the weather page reports good news

these complaint worthy complaints >.<

Seine River floods Paris forcing Louvre Museum to close Friday

PHOTOS: Texas governor declares state of disaster in 31 counties; 5 soldiers killed in flooding

...looks like everyone else is gettng the rain we usually do.  Hoping Annie and Ed are OK.

She was on Facebook early this morning.  I haven'g been on, but got a notice she shared something that I posted.  This was around 8:45 this am...probably my time, so maybe an hour earlier in Texas.  Strangely they are one hour behind us in time zone somehow.

Dana

Texas has 2 time zones, Central and Mountain.  Austin is in Central; El Paso is in Mountain.  We haven't had any flooding near our 'hood.  Awesome lightning shows have occurred though.  The creek half a block from the house isn't out of its banks.  The tower I use for Net access went down about 2 pm yesterday and wasn't back until around 10 this morning.  

Thanks everyone.

I installed a large number of items, one being "Central Station."

I looked in Products for it so I could put that item in Categories.

I do that with all the items I install.

...

what is the sound of attenuation?

Diminishing retunes?

Victor Borge would have asked "What is the sound of aelevenuation?"

 

 

Is that like the number 11 on Marshall Amp dials?

 

sound of attenuation not louder than the sound of a generator test run?

Attenuation is the act of reducing sound.  In other words, turning down the volume!!!  Attenuation in itself makes no sound at all, it has an effect on the sound coming from something.  The term is usually used in electronics, namely amplifiers and mixers.  Sound technicians use the word attenuator where everyday people would say volume control.

Dana

Wouldn't that technically be the inverse of a volume control?

Depends on where your "normal" is.  If the signal being controlled is normally permitted through at functional levels, then you might design your equipment to "attenuate" the signal to achieve a desired effect or to match the levels of other less powerful inputs.  I've seen "Attenuation" in powers of 10 or in decibels implemented as discrete switches.  However, there's nothing to prevent it being a continuous control instead of discrete.

One could argue that volume/amplification/attenuation are matters of semantics but I'm sure there are experts out there who know the accepted lingo better than I. 

However if you look at the basic concept of a signal it has three primary controllable aspects; Amplitude, Frequency, and Phase.  Each aspect can be modified separately.  The terms "Attenuation" and "Amplification" would seem to be applicable to the Amplitude but not the Frequency or Phase.  Whereas the Phase is "shifted" and the Frequency is "Increased/Decreased???"

 

My understanding is attenuation always applies to amplitude, for example when daylight is attenuated by dust it gets darker, when clouds clear it gets lighter, irrespective of any phase or frequency shift   :) So a poesis of amplitude would be dawn, or dusk.

 

the day analog public   broadcast signal died

 

If you think about it attenuation might sound like a skateboard moving on a concrete slope, doppler and all ?

 

tee hee
so if the train leaves its station and the other train leaves its station
and the trains meet,
then how fast were they moving?
 

..if they were Amtrak Trains in Ohio, at best 10 - 12 mph.

I hear that.   When I was a kid here in the '50s in western NY state, big long freight trains and passenger trains would whiz by here at 45-50 miles an hour (they had to slow down for the big curve on the west of town), many each day.  Sometimes in both directions simultaneously on the two tracks.  We even had a major accident in the middle of town once when it hit a truck on the crossing   Nowdays when a train does come through (about 4 or 5 a week) it's a short freight and moving about 5 or 10 miles an hour on the single track left.  And passenger service in this area is completely gone.  The USA may have a wonderful road system but the trains completely suck.   Although I admit that when I lived in Washington DC during the '90s it was wonderful to be able to hop on the subway (Metro) system in the suburbs, travel to Union Station in Washington, take the train to Grand Central Station in New York City all in just three or so hours.  But the view along the tracks from the trains through the cities was really crappy most of the time, like I'd stepped back in time a hundred years to tar shacks and junk yard landscaping.  The trains should not have windows. 

 

..yeah my old neighbourhood on the south side of Milwaukee hd two sets of double tracks running north and south. One, which was only for freights, was about a block away. the other set was primarily for Chicago and Northwestern's  "400" streamliners that travelled between Milwaukee and Chicago and to points north (like Green Bay and the UP). 

Today the freight right of way is an expressway extension from downtown that ends just east of the airport and the passenger one has only one track with usually slow short freights like you mention.

Interestingly besides the Union Pacific (which took over Chicago & Northwestern operations, Canadian National is the other major rail line in the state having taken over several small and medium Wisconsin based freight lines.