Hi dudes!

Thought I'd start a wip thread myself here too.

I've been working on this on and off during the year on the pc at work. I'm planning to render the final shots in Unreal game engine. This is my second personal 3d car so far. My first is the Mercedes race car I made while I was in Australia: http://vimeo.com/24960109

Anyway, the project is in a good stage now. I've got the car designed and modeled so I thought I'd show how it's come up to this point before I get to learn Unreal engine and get the whole scene, materials and texturing set up and get to rendering the beauty shots. Lots of wip images coming up!

The initial inspiration for the car was Emerald Weapon from Final Fantasy VII. Although a very low-poly model, there's lots of interesting shapes in there.


Based on the shapes and the overall look of Emerald Weapon in mind I started drawing the front and rear views. While I was drawing it I remembered another
green character with similar shapes. The armor of Green Goblin in the 2002 Spider-Man movie.


I'm also a huge fan of the concept cars Jakusa used to make so those things are definitely another inspiration. I did look at a lot of other cars as well for ideas on how to do certain areas but also tried to make it look like a unique car without any trace of the references I had. Try and guess the cars I looked at, I dare ya!

This is the first concept drawing of the car.


A couple of different variations. I used the ones with grey colouring as rough blueprints in 3ds Max and started modeling.



First couple of hours modeling gave me the first versions of the front bumper and the front cover.




Ended up changing the front bumper a bit while starting to model the rest of the body.



Trying out different shapes. See the door, the rear bumper and the hole below the rear lights.





Started adding smaller details into the design. Notice the door, the engine cover, rear wing, the big gills on the front cover, the exhaust tips and the shape of the side window.





The lines and shapes are getting more refined.



Pleased with the shapes so I started adding more geometry into the body. This is also when I cut the body panels separate from each other.


The rear wing is smaller but I modeled a brake wing on the front cover. The idea was that it would rise up during heavy braking aiding in deceleracting and also scooping more air to the engine.


A bit more nicer to look at now with more geometry.





I figured I had to put something onto the large flat surface in the middle of the engine cover so I went with the curved gills idea here and ditched the idea of the large brake wing. Instead, they are smaller and only on the air intakes on the sides. I also modeled a rear diffuser at this point.



Looking rather vicious front the front!


I thught about wheels for a long time before I even took the ideas into 3ds Max. Since the car itself is so wide and angular the wheels needed to match the aggressive look. Spent a long time looking at photos of wheels.
I liked the complexity and cavity of the Rotiform wheels but they felt too light. I also liked the coloured bits and the triangle design on the Land Rover concept wheels. Finally, the PP Exclusive wheels' closed design struck me as really tough-looking while the rest of the wheel was a bit too simple for my radical goblin car.




I took those three wheels as the main inspiration and modeled my wheel design. The fourth pic here was a test and didn't go further than that.





Next up, more detail! I modeled the front bumper insert bits and the shape of the headlights trying to keep the continuity of the lines going through the grille as well. Same with the rear.



A tricky bit for me was to figure out what kind of headlights they'd actually be. I've never designed modern car headlights with lots of surfaces and depth into them. I studied photos of concept cars and Audi headlights. They got some really nice headlight designs! Some of my drawings below. Maza, my #1 wip watcher thought the designs 2 and 5 were the best ones so I took the best bits of those and created the number 8 which is the one I ended up modeling. I modeled the rear lights with the similar design with a little different shape.






Proxy interior in place, the dashboard being the main feature in there. I still need to model at least the seats, a steering wheel and a rear view mirror. I'm not planning to do any interior shots with this so I'm not going to put a lot of detail in there. Also notice the side mirrors and the fins under the car. I'm still not sure about the leg of the side mirror. Might re-do that.





I'm now in the process of unwrapping the model for shading and texturing and after that I'll get on with the game engine. Hopefully it doesn't take too long until the next update!

Comments would be very welcome.

Holy hell yes! That's awesome! Can't wait to see the finished render

Wow

really cool !!

Hmmm the work around that must be very hard!
I'm not a fan of FF (cause I've never tried it) so those lines are a bit "meh!" for me. Since they are very edgy, I'd try to leave less curves as possible.
I'm also a bit sceptic about the rear. I'd try to make the bumper more like a Murcielàgo's one. I mean very high, thin and short.
Maybe you could adopt some verticals exhausts, meaning you'd prolong them vertically to the floor (V shaped exhaust). They could be part of a diffuser, with them in the centre, enclosed in a triangle shaped piece of metal sheet.

The lines in the car or the lines in the character in FF7? Just asking because there's not really anything from the character as it was only an inspiration. Meaning, liking the shapes have nothing to do with a certain character from a certain game. The Green Goblin armour was the primary reference for this anyway. It has those sharp corners in its design paired with the curvy, more organic shapes.

I see you have good ideas and insight, but just saying "make it higher and thinner" with "different exhausts" kind of would erase the whole rear and would make me to design it all the way from scratch. You see, the shapes are kind of the main thing here repeating in both the front and rear tying them together. These uniquely shaped exhausts are a strong element in that.

I'll definitely post the next project here right from the first wip!

Thanks for the comments guys! Much appreciated.

madness.. that stuff looks crazy man

I was referring to the car Anyway the rear seems tooooooooooooooo low for me (and for the kind of car, not?); but it's up to you what to do

I'll try and raise the bottom edge a little higher later today and see how that looks. I'm still on the clock at the moment so it's work work for two more hours.

this is so cool would love to see the final image good luck