1994 Progress Update

It’s been a while since our last update. This has several reasons. With rFactor1 quite outdated and rF2 not really on our horizon and summer comming in europe, our motivation is currently not as high as it was during the F1 2006 development. Nevertheless the inner core of the group continued working on this mod, slowly but steady. Here is some of the work we did the past month.

First thing is the helmet shape.  Our 2006 helmet shapes were done by Eugenio Faria who did a great job on them. But for 1994 we needed something completely different. We took the Senna helmet as reference and created a pretty nice looking shape. As it was our first own helmet to model we ran into a few difficulties during the modeling process as well as during creating the mapping.

To be prepared for rFactor 2 and its animation capabilities we also created a complete new, rigged, driver model. We will present that later when we have something more to show than the blank model.

James (Juluka) and Dennis (mediocre) already started painting the 94 helmets. (These are just screengrabs from Maya)

One final note about the mod and its platform. We are aiming to bring this mod as a rFactor2 mod. But we’re still looking around for other possibilities. We don’t know enough about rF2 yet and with another Simbin game coming (the gt game announced a while back) we’re still not sure which platform is going to make it. We’ll decide that as soon as rF2 or other promising platforms are available.

Head protection

We are overwhelmed! Alot more people responded to our call for help on the 1994 mod than I anticipated. Many talented and interesting people who want to know what to do next. AndreasT and I are doing extra shifts to review cars and have enough cars ready to assign.

As if he’d know we’d be posting this Call-for-modelers, David Alby Medina contacted us in the week before. He was interested in modeling for the team to improve his portfolio. After short talks, he agreed to provide the helmet we have been looking for almost 2 years.

The story story about the 1994 helmet was another one of the long ones. For the 2006 mod we had the awesome helmet model by Eugenio Faria, unfortunately he wasn’t available anymore to help us create a new helmet for 1994. Marco started a helmet, but quit half way through it. Afborro succumbed to our begging at the beginning of the year, but was cut short due to his commitment with Reiza. We were looking for external helmets, but none from that time period met our expectations. Now thanks to DAM, we have our helmet and he a great piece for his portfolio once it is finished.

This is the the helmet of Ayrton Senna, of who we happen to have the most and best reference pictures. There will be 2 more common variants of the helmet for other drivers.

Now with the helmet done, our helmet painters can finally start to work their way through the drivers list.

WIP Helmets 09 and call for help…

Another few WIPs. This time I post a few helmet-texture shots. The helmet models will be reused from the F1-2006. Revisions and updates will be done where necessary, for example the Arai-helmet. Usually helmet textures are done “in between”. When a painter is bored, he picks one and does his art. The two textures shown here are done by Shaun ‘Whata’ Stroud. Shaun joined us during the F1-2006 mod and has grown into the team, we wouldn’t want to miss him. Some of his work was the Midland/Spyker-, the Super Aguri- and the Safety-car, along with many of the 2006 helmets. He’ll also be involved with the car textures for F1-2009.

At this point we’d like to issue a call for help. While we are on the topics of helmets, we are in need of a helmet-modeler. Out car-modelers are occupied or have no experience modeling helmets. Helmets are not just spheres with a cut-out for the visor. Modeling the helmets has become quite an art. While the changes for 2009 are manageable. 1994 requires much more helmet work with more limited resources and we are struggling to find somebody to help us out. So if you are a dedicated helmet-modeler, or know somebody we could ask. Tell us here or contact us at dahie at ctdpworld.org