FMP Week 1 Blog 2

I decided that having physical models to reference would vastly increase my efficiency and quality of work throughout these projects. Because of this I have been researching model kits and die cast models, to try and find the best quality and cost effective models. Also this means that I now need to nail down exactly what I will be making during my FMP.

 It eventually came down to these two vehicles. A 1967 Toyota 2000 GT and a 1963 Corvette Stingray. I could get hold of both these models but went with the Corvette due to its slightly more complex Form. The Toyota is entirely made up of curved forms, there aren’t even any creases to follow. I may come back to it another time. The Corvette was also slightly cheaper.

My second vehicle is going to be a chassi and suspension study. Because of this I have chosen to go with an older off road vehicle as the mechanics should be relatively simple. I’m also really into the idea of making a larger 4x4 off road truck/ lorry. Because of this I have bought the above model kit. This is an extremely complex kit that goes into extreme detail which is exactly what I need.

This is an image of the models under side once completed. This model kit covers all the details that I will be covering. 

I’m only going to be using this kit as reference for the mechanics of the vehicle. I’m planning to drop a civilian cab on this chassi.

I have found good ref for the above truck and this is probably the style of cab that my finale truck will have. I’m also going to be further altering the truck by adding larger off road tyres as well as adding the 4x4 suspension and drive train from a WW2 Military vehicle.

Work

Due to waiting for loans and then Shipping the above models which didn't arrive until the Thursday of this week, it was extremely difficult to get started.

I spent some time taking many reference shots of a local Russian military truck.

I initial wanted to get under the truck and try and get an understanding of the drive train, chassi and suspension. But there was a large amount of glass so this was impossible. I did spend time getting as many pictures as possible as there are many things that I could pull from this vehicle. I could even use parts of this on my 3^rd designed vehicle. As I had no reference that correlated exactly to my projects I decided to begin modelling by making the wheels from this truck. As my truck is going to be a homemade hodgepodge of parts so this is actually fine.

3D

I made the wheels. I have actually modelled the tread, I’ve done this because the wheels are going to be massive, I also think that it is important to capture the gnarly off road tread of these tires they are an important feature of this vehicle so it’s worth spending a huge amount of tries here. Currently the wheels are at an extremely high tri count, I may need to further reduce these further, but I’m worried about losing the smooth edges I have achieved.

This is a Porsche 993 done by Safy Saada a level artist at Ubisoft. This is what I have been referencing for my wheels. As you can see they too are relatively dense with tries.

When making these wheels I went through many variations of tri count and general construction. The finale wheel was made from a flat cross section of the wheel in 3DS-Max which was then bent into a loop. This was then smoothed in ZBrush and then Decimated. I then also Ran the Average Normals Script.

 I used Substance painter to check the effects of the Script and then altered my geometry/ restarted until I had the desired result.