The answer is always the same: work harder. Work harder than you ever have in your entire life. Work harder than anyone else around you. Sacrifice your time, your happiness and monetary gain just to work harder. Abandon your notions of fairness. They will only slow you down. Never fool yourself into thinking your hard work entitles you to anything. It does not. It only prepares you to work harder.
Perhaps not the most inspirational quote, but certainly one of the most realistic.
Viva Italia!
If you’re going to race a tiny Italian car why not secure a big sponsor? Here in fictitious Alitalia livery is an equally fictitious Abarth FIAT 500 racer with lots of carbon and lots of moda Italiano. Original livery design created by Forza4 artist: URC Fightdogg. Thanks dude!
Here is another of my early 2D works brought to “life” in 3D.
I’ll admit the poor Civic never lived up to the performance potential that its visuals might have led us to expect. Even so, I’ve continued to think the design is pretty darn slick.
Im really enjoying this series of revisits and I may have a view more up my sleeve.
Here is the original 2D piece for comparison:
This is a re-do of one of my very first automotive artworks, a 2D painting of a red Celica with a cheap “sunset” gradient. I thought I’d revisit it and do it in 3D this time around and see if I could capture the same sort of feel with up-to-date details and techniques. I feel I pulled that off pretty well.
Here is the original 2D piece for comparison:
Whenever anyone brings up the Scirocco, we still can’t help but wince a bit at the fact that the United States was snubbed from the car’s second coming. Here’s a sweet metallic blue VW Scirocco custom I wouldn’t mind having in the driveway. JA BITTE JA BITTE!!!!!!
Most people have no idea what all goes into doing a 3D model, let alone one of a well known racing vehicle. We (Russ really) decided to do a sequence of Work-In-Progress shots for this particular subject, Rahal Letterman Racing’s BMW M3 GT2.
Understand that this is not a tutorial or full detailed all-inclusive series. Think of this like the special feature of a DVD, it’s a behind the scenes look, not a filmography class.
This is the first stage of my 3D methodology.
While I don’t use a spline cage and patch surfacing technique to model, I do use a spine “cage” as a reference for poly-modeling. This allows me to work out my 3D proportions before building polys.
I then use these like a fully 3D blueprint to construct the body shapes. By using splines, I can create smooth flowing curves that help me position polygon vertexes accurately.
I typically start with the part I think is going to give me the biggest headache. No sense in doing everything else and then getting to the hard point and not being able to get it done. I’d rather know up front that I suck. But, when I started this project I was tired and wanted to work on easy stuff, so the biggest, simplest stuff got done first. 
Like everyone else out there, I only model half of the symmetrical geometry, then apply a symmetry modifier to create the mirrored half.
At this stage all of the “easy” body shapes are done. The remainder are filled with holes, vents, slots and screwy shapes of all sorts. The rear fender and bumper are just nuts in terms of complexity.
At this point I have quite a bit accomplished. The remaining body panels have been completed but the front end seemed to have some bumby spots yet rendered just fine. The front lip spoiler looked a bit too thick, so I will be tweaking that. Overall its resembling a car at this point. In the next stage I’ll start the wheels and other details.
Many pieces here come together to form the wheel/tire “assembly.” Certain details on these parts are achieved with displacement maps – not modeling. The sidewall on the tire is modeled and mapped separately from the “tread” surface. Also the the AP Racing caliper / rotor is not 100% accurate, but for all that you will see in the finished render, this will do.
As you can see, I try to model using separate parts whenever possible. When doing high-poly work, there’s very little incentive to model parts as a contiguous mesh. For me, having separate parts makes editing easier, materials easier and when creating things by eye, makes scaling and proportion changes easier.
Again, here I am showing the benefit of using separate parts when possible. Most of the sponsor decals are NOT UVW unwrapped, but multi-sub-object material applied to select polygons with unique map channels. In the next stage, I’ll tackle the interior.
Interiors are where you can get away with simple model and texture work. Unless there’s a specific reason to create the extra detail, I don’t. I see long drawn out WIP projects on other fora where modelers are creating every last stitch in 3D. 3D instrument numbers and so on. Nuts. Even in close-ups, that detail is often lost. And for full car shots, most of the time, you barely see the interior. When you’re billing for your time, you don’t spend time doing things the client will never see.
OK!! It’s all done now. Here is the complete car in a 3D garage environment. HDRI are used for ambient lighting and reflections. There is only one light (a shadow casting spot), the rest is IBL from the HDRI. The Garage geometry has been reused from previous scenes with a few new textures to update it and make it match the car.
I’ve been amazed at how often those outside the discipline of design assume that what designers do is decoration. Good design is problem solving.
A very defining quote. That’s exactly how I view and define my work – as creative problem solving.
Since the light was perfect outside of our newly remodeled Mediterranean offices, I thought I’d snap a quick shot of the New Bentley GT we had build to commemorate the new site launch. (disclaimer: everything you just read is complete BS)
