Hey Everyone, in keeping with my hard surface modeling I've taken on modeling a Formula 1 race car. I've used blueprints and as much reference as I could find and because in the F1 world the rules are always changing the specs for this car are in line with the 2011 rules.

The model is heavily inpired by the Ferrari F150 but not a replica, the only reason is most of my references are from that model.

I've posted on the WAYWO thread with HP updates so here is the latest one:



I'm currently working on the lowpoly and I have it at ~19k tris. Assuming this is going into a racing game, is that too high? Low? Not sure but there is plenty of room to knock it down.

Thanks in Advance!

Here are a few other views.

It's quite bumpy and sloppy in some areas. This is an extremely difficult type of car to get right though...

I see on the intakes on the sides and the sides of the nose cone. The dip in the top of the nose doesn't flow through to the tip from what I see now.

The front and back wings are my best features, I think. Front and rear suspensions and wishbones seem ok to me. Aside from the above I mentioned anywhere else?

The head rest area and the nose cone to intake transition area is rough too ..

I made some updates and had a little fun. I smoothed out the blobbyness(?) where the nose cone meets the main body and smoothed the shell around the intake.

I still need to fix some pinching above the front wheel and the that annoying line along the side of the nose cone.



I also decided to take a crack at some mental ray renders using Material ID's and some lighting practice. Don't mind the ground its an attempt at concrete with puddles :/

Here's an update to the HP. I've smoothed out the nose cone pinching and bubbling as well as the side of the body.



I've adapted the low poly to fit the new HP and it still sits at just under 20k tris. Assuming that this could go into a racing game is that an appropriate tri count?

Here's a silhouette test I did against blueprints. The model and prints are according to 2011 specs.

just a quick one, as my personal preference to F1 tyres i think intermediate wets, or extreme wets always look better than slicks, especially in 3D

im not sure on the chamber angle for the fronts either, just abit too much

Thanks for the tip!

As for the tire angles, I'm not sure exactly what the degree of incline is, but it's an easy fix.



EDIT: Just reviewed some info and as I can see, it would appear the driver controls the camber on the fly. The rule of thumbs appears to be around 1 to 2 degrees, max of 4.

I may be over doing it so I can fix that.

I working on unwrapping and it's the first time I'm using TexTools. I thought maybe if I separate all smoothing groups it would make quick work but I'm just going back into the way I used to do it.

Not sure If I'm doing it wrong but here's a progress shot. I have 4 Smoothing groups overall and they're laid out side by side, #1 left most.

The way I have it setup currently I'm afraid I will have way too many islands and seams so before I go any farther I'll need some direction.

I finally got the UV's completed(ish), I've circled spots that I think have a lot of unused space. Would they be acceptable or should I keep going?

The empty space is probably fine.

However some of your UV's are overlapping each other which will create problems when you bake. Along with that, you haven't left enough room between some of your UV islands - typically try to have an even amount of padding/space between all your UVs. And lastly some of your UV islands are on odd angles, which isn't a bad thing, but you may get some jagged lines/bakes depending on how big of texture you plan to use.

Originally Posted by Hang10

I finally got the UV's completed(ish), I've circled spots that I think have a lot of unused space. Would they be acceptable or should I keep going?

New UV's

the wheel corners or the part where it meets the outside wall needs to be a bit harder and less round. Other than that pretty good work.

Can we see the diffusers?

Sorry for the late response, here's a shot of the diffusers.



I also pinched in the edges of the low poly wheels, they'll be adjusted on the HP shortly.

20k is fine if its for a current spec game.

Parts of the model are good, but the overall shapes look blobby and ill defined. I strongly recommend you go and take another pass over the red paneling and really try and study how and where the car curves. Basicly the shapes are there, but are not well defined enough, and have random blobs and bulges on them, rather than something designed to cut through the air.


Dont get me wrong, it looks like a racecar and looks halfway decent, but a further pass would make it look a lot better.


Cheers

Your screen shots are EXTREMELY blurry and in-turn they are ruining what could be a very nice looking model. I highly suggest you make a clay render of this until you get some vray settings down or something.

http://www.artemstudios.com/2010/tutorials.htm

Hope this helps. Keep going at it man! This will make a sweet portfolio model.

When you're referring to blobby are you talking about the HP or the low, I've made some changes to the curves on the low which I'l have to do on the HP.

@Josh: Thanks for the link, I'm following it right now, I'll do some new renders of the HP later tonight.

So I've been on a hiatus from this project for too long, glad to get back to it. I've been struggling with getting correct normal maps to bake from my cage. I ended up using pieces of the bake and painting a normal map and I'm getting much better results except for one area:



Now the smoothing groups for the surrounding polys are the same, the normal map doesn't have any differences where the seams are. They are both seperate uv islands, so far that the only conclusion I have.

As for the colors, I'm experimenting with white and green(above) and as for the spec map it's non existant and if anyone has any links furthur the PC's own wiki it would be greatly appreciated.

I started having fun with rendering and tried more colors I prefer much more over the above green.



I find the lime green my favorite so far.

looks good man, but it would a whole lot better if ya had some decent non blurry renders.

I guess they look a lot better on my 11" screen :S

So here's another render, I bumped up the AA to the max settings I could. I'm using Mental Ray in Max.

Textures are still WIP, I'm trying to get the look of the speckles of new car paint and not sure what to do about the tyres.



[yes un-shameful promotion]

EDIT: Just noticed the weird triangle shaped on the nose and in the intake.

20k is fairly low for this kind of vehicle. It'd be fine for a taxi or what not, or maybe LOD1 or soemthing. For reference the Formula Masters cars in Race07 are ~28k and the F1 games from Codies are just above 30k.

Normal maps aren't something I'd be using - they're for per-pixel changes in normals. A lot of the bodywork on a F1 car is gradual curves over a set, continuous shape, something you should b using mesh for (no normal maps on the body ideally).

For the shape of it, it seems a bit generic for a 2009+ F1 car - no offense. All the top teams had some sort of concept that you could see visually; Brawn had the sweel long nose and pushed sidepod shape, Red Bull had the platypus nose and tucked in the top of the bulkhead (and even tried to continue it this year), Torro Rosso had the 'double floor' and McLaren tried some interesting things the last few years:


^McLaren 2011

^Torro Rosso Double Floor (underneath the Red Bull logo there's a wide, flat gap down to the floor)



For tyres, look up pictures of used F1 tyres, with graining and wear. Even slicks look good and less 'clinicly unrealistic' (common problem with rendering tyres) when they've been 'used'


Some references for green-coloured cars if you want: