Project Cars

Taz · May 2015

Hey guys,

I've seen a few vehicles being modeled on here so I'm guessing there's some sim/racing fans here?

I work on the vehicle art team at Slightly Mad Studios on Project Cars. After lots of hard work and a few delays we're releasing our game today on PC. XboxOne and PS4 in a few days. I'm feeling pretty proud of what our team has achieved and I wanted to share it with you guys.

While I'm not the chattiest of fellows, I mostly lurk around. I've been on the forum since the Q2PMP days and I can contribute almost all of my knowledge to this Awesome community. There are so many inspiring artists on here that have helped me strive to prefect my art and in turn get the opportunities to work with some of the best.

So Thank You Polycount! You made me the artist I am today. You're Awesome!

Let's get on with some car porn!

[ame]www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz99m1zf1Kk[/ame]

More photos over at our community gallery.
http://www.wmdportal.com/projectnews/project-cars-community-gallery-78/
http://www.wmdportal.com/projectnews/project-cars-community-gallery-77/
http://www.wmdportal.com/projectnews/project-cars-community-gallery-76/
http://www.wmdportal.com/projectnews/project-cars-community-gallery-75/

Joao Sapiro · May 2015

at first i thought it was photographs !! super nice work ! congrats , love the atmosferic effects too

MiAlx · May 2015

Great job man, awesome stuff!

I'm not a modeler, but I'm curious, did you guys build the engines from scratch for every car, or did you build some kind of set of pipes, cables and cogs etc. beforehand to save a bit of time?

mats effect · May 2015

Been playing some today on the PS4 its very impressive. Best racer this gen so far.

Blond · May 2015

SOme of these shots are simply mindblowing. Great work on the photorealism guys! Good job on the shading, sincerely.

loggie24 · May 2015

Extremely impressive modeling and effects, congrats! How much time did you guys spend on each car? Must have taken a while to get it all sorted out :P

notman · May 2015

The video didn't convince me, when I saw it the other day, but those screenshots look amazing. I'll likely pick this up at some point.
Minor nit-pick, I do think the tires could use some 'abuse', to make them look less 'perfect'. Slicks usually have little pieces missing, and pebbles stuck to them.... but I don't recall any game ever getting that right, which is why I call it a 'minor' nitpick.

ghaztehschmexeh · May 2015

Really nice work. Anything interesting you can share with us about your approach or technique? Anything technically interesting?

Taz · May 2015

Thanks for the comments guys.

MiAlx wrote: »

Great job man, awesome stuff!

I'm not a modeler, but I'm curious, did you guys build the engines from scratch for every car, or did you build some kind of set of pipes, cables and cogs etc. beforehand to save a bit of time?

We mostly build everything from scratch for each car. But if there are other parts on cars we've already built that match we'll go in and reuse them for sure.

loggie24 wrote: »

Extremely impressive modeling and effects, congrats! How much time did you guys spend on each car? Must have taken a while to get it all sorted out :P

This depends on the complexity of the car. probably an average of about 4 months from nothing to a fully game ready model.

notman wrote: »

The video didn't convince me, when I saw it the other day, but those screenshots look amazing. I'll likely pick this up at some point.
Minor nit-pick, I do think the tires could use some 'abuse', to make them look less 'perfect'. Slicks usually have little pieces missing, and pebbles stuck to them.... but I don't recall any game ever getting that right, which is why I call it a 'minor' nitpick.

I believe this is something that happens over time as you'd expect it to in real life. You get new tires in the pits and the more time spent on the asphalt, dirt or grass will wear the tires accordingly.

Taz · May 2015

ghaztehschmexeh wrote: »

Really nice work. Anything interesting you can share with us about your approach or technique? Anything technically interesting?

Sure. I use a technique called 'Shape and Bake'. It's very similar to the DoubleSmooth method that's been described on here a few times.

I'll approach meshing out the car like it's a high polygon model with MeshSmooth but I only use 1 subdivision level and smooth groups to define the hard edges of the car. At this stage I'll ignore anything that doesn't add to the major forms of the car. This could be bonnet vents, grills, door lines, window rubbers ect. Anything that looks like it can be cut in or added on later.

The reason I only use 1 subdivision level is so that I can control how dense the overall mesh is with ease, I don't want something that's too dense because we are still making a real-time model so it needs to remain optimum despite it's high polycount of around ~300,000 tris.

Once I get the base mesh blocked in and my mesh flow looks good I'll go back over and tweak the mesh to get the accuracy required.(we aim for usually within 2 inches). Something that works well for adjusting the placement of long edge loops with lots of verts, like along the side of the body is a FFD box. it allows you to adjust minor waving in your body lines without moving all the verts by hand. This base mesh typically gets to around 20,000 tris before I apply the MeshSmooth. Collapsing it down I get my final mesh which is closer to the final tri count.

The benefits of this approach is a final mesh that's far smoother and better spaced and synced than if done all by hand. It's also a lot faster and requires little to no tweaking on the main forms afterwards. After this I'll go in and add all the details that are missing and fake bevel all the body lines that need to be hard edged.

Quick reply, Hope that makes sense.

ferrettank · May 2015

Amazing models! You and your team is so inspirational!

Yes I am very into race sims and cars. This is by far the best looking car game out there, the work put into this game is amazing!

Quick question, out of curiosity, what is your favorite vehicle in real life? did they let you model it?

Also what is a FDD box?

Taz · May 2015

Whoops, that was a typo. FFD is what I meant. It's a mesh modifier in Max.
Hmm I've got too many favorites to choose just one. hehe.

ghaztehschmexeh · May 2015

Interesting. Thanks for sharing!

Visceral · May 2015

Can i run this on a i7-3370,8gb ram and gtx 670?

Im guessing "no"

Fomori · May 2015

Amazing screenshots and the vehicle detail is phenomenal.

Thanks for sharing your modelling approach as well. Really interesting.

I expect reference is really important for your accuracy and relying on reference found on the internet probably isn't enough?
Were you given access to real cars for photography sessions?

Bruno Afonseca · May 2015

Taz wrote: »

Sure. I use a technique called 'Shape and Bake'. It's very similar to the DoubleSmooth method that's been described on here a few times.

I'll approach meshing out the car like it's a high polygon model with MeshSmooth but I only use 1 subdivision level and smooth groups to define the hard edges of the car. At this stage I'll ignore anything that doesn't add to the major forms of the car. This could be bonnet vents, grills, door lines, window rubbers ect. Anything that looks like it can be cut in or added on later.

Thanks mate! That helps me a lot, I'll give that a try

Deathstick · May 2015

I can't believe I never heard of the doublesmooth method before, looks like an awesome trick that'll make my life way easier in supplementing my regular control loops.

Stuff looks awesome, thanks for the info!

Rwolf · May 2015

I haven't modeled cars in ages

I was going to pick this up. But I don't think I would enjoy this with a controller at all...

(I picked up a Thrustmaster 300rs, it was great testing it on GT6, but had to return 2 defective units before I gave up and wanted a refund)

King Mango · May 2015

Amazing.

This is on my wishlist and when I buy a wheel it will be one of, if not THE, first racing game I pick up.

My question is that weather system though. I mean the clouds look amazing. Fifty seconds into the trailer on the Steam store page and I can't believe how realistic the clouds look. It's one thing to have a realistic static skybox but those clouds are moving and they are so convincing. I'm a little jelly

http://store.steampowered.com/app/234630/

kanga · May 2015

Man this stuff is really eye candy. I had a bit of a search and saw the game also has damage as well! Thanks for sharing notes on your modelling technique.

Cheers

Project Cars

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