With some touchups by Neidryder, we finished work on the Ferrari model. The model was done by Stefan ‘erale’ Triefellner in the past months and is now ready for mapping and then painting. Painting will be done by James ‘juluka’ Bendy and erale will continue on the next model.
Andy took a few pictures of the car to show offaround erale’s work.
An important part for building mods is research and we spent a lot of time to collect pictures, technical manuals and other resources to simulate the Mods as realistic as possible.
When we embarked on the 1994 mod, we knew, we wouldn’t have the same access to high-resolution material as we did for 2006, but over the years we collected over 3GB of photo material from the season. Still, every now and then we wondered what happened to the old cars from 1994 and where they ended up. Our research found some of them in Museums around the world, but for many cars we did not find any information. This brought us the idea to crowdsource this search.
We’d like to know which museums around the world have any Formula One cars. I’m sure this is very useful information for other Modders as well, which is why we invite anyone to join in on the research and help to collect a complete list of museums and their exhibited cars.
For this purpose we set up an Etherpad and started to collect and discuss car models and museums.
List of Formula-One models in museums
Etherpad is a javascript-based collaborative tool for parallel writing. Once you enter, you can change your name in the top-right corner, or you can write anonymously. You see anyones writing in a different color and you can just come in and help writing. Every change is saved automatically, so vandalism can be traced.
Once we feel we have a complete list, we may republish this here on the devblog, so everyone benefits from the research.
In a second step, we are also looking for people who’d like to go to a few museums and take pictures of selected cars. If you have a museum near you and would like to help out, contact us.
James ‘Juluka’ Bendy continues his work on the 1994 helmets of Rubens Barrichello and Pedro Lamy. Infact I have to post these fast, because he is quicker giving wip-shots than I can post them. *gg*
Every now and then we get a request of people to join CTDP with the aim to learn X. Be it modeling, textures or any other skills related to Modding. Today we’d like to give a few hints where to get started with the endeavor to learn 3D-modeling.
It’s a rather long way before you can start to model a complex shape like a F1 car. So the first steps would be to learn how to set up blueprints for a car. There are a lot of tutorials available that deal with these topics. They guide you through the whole process from setting up the blueprints over the modeling and basic techniques used till you have finished your first car. These tutorials focus on cars with pretty simple shapes as it doesn’t make sense to learn modeling by recreating a pre-2009 Formula One car with its complex shape and all that winglets.
These are some Tutorials we can recommend to start off.
After you finished your first model try another car. Try some harder shapes but still use accurate blueprints which are a good aid in the beginning. Focus on getting a smooth shape and try to find your own modeling style. Don’t copy other people that created these tutorials. That won’t help you if you try to model a Formula One car or some other car where you don’t have any blueprints and of course tutorials.
Speaking of modeling Formula One cars (or other racing cars). The most important step before starting a racing car without a blueprint is research. As you don’t have any blueprints – and if you have you can’t be sure how accurate they are – you have to get the proportions right. So take a look at the technical regulations. The tell you a let about the cars measurement. They can tell you the size of a cockpit opening or the position and size of the rear wing. Also try to find good sideview pictures of your car to use that as a ‘blueprint’.
By looking at these tutorials you’ll find that some start with a simple polygon (quad) and others start with a box. Don’t hang on that too much. That’s more a personal preference which suits your style. In the end you’ll be working with polygons. And always aim to use quads. If you have to use triangles but never let a face have more than four vertices.
There are also some techniques that use spline-modeling or maybe patch-modeling. But in our opinion that are more advanced modeling techniques and not suited for beginners. If you’re pretty secure with the polymodeling and you found your own style you can start to experiment with these techniques. I find them very useful – especially the patches – if you want to recreate complex forms without spending much time. Through the splines you have a rather easy but still a very accurate way to control the form of your patch.
There are many 3d modeling tools out there. Maybe some of you know “the big 3”, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3d Studio Max & Autodesk XSI (former Softimage XSI). But there are a lot of cheaper (Maxon Cinema 4D & Luxology Modo) and some open source (for example Blender) softwares available.
Which one is the right one for your first modeling attempt?
Well let me tell you one thing: it’s just a matter of taste. If you know how to model in one application you can adapt all your skills pretty fast to another one. Sure you have special features in some of these tools but the basics are all the same.
Most modders start with 3D Studio Max because it’s quite popular within the game industry. Maya is also a good choice to start. Nevertheless is the learning curve with the node based User Interface and the Hotbox pretty tough. Softimage XSI looks weird if you start it the first time but it’s very handy for organic and “freestyle” modeling. Cinema 4D is most used in the architectural industry but still some of the modders (for example spoony from LMT) are using it to model F1 cars. Modo is a very cool tool, too. It has a great performance in modeling and useful tools but it’s not that popular and therefore you won’t find many tutorials for it. Blender will be adressed by msater at a later time.
You see, each application has its advantage, but 80% of the tutorials out there are covering 3D Studio Max. That’s why you should start with this application (if available). After your first few cars you can try to do parts or the whole car of your next project in a different program to get an overview. Most of the 3D modelers in game or CG industry have basic knowledge in more than three 3D applications. The get a specialist you need to know the basics of each program and pick the one which fits best to your expertise and personal taste.
We take questions! If you are stuck with a problem or have questions related to modeling ask them and we will adress them in a future post here on the blog.
Thanks to TwoOneOne for some of the tutorials links.
James ‘juluka’ Bendy has been busy this summer. Or rather his kids kept him busy. Well actually his kids kept him out of his basement and occupied his computers playing World of Warcraft. Finally school begins again, he is back at work and the result of this weekend are these to helmets of Frentzen and Alesi.
There are a few trends that are hard to avoid and you have have to embrace them at one point. CTDP comes into the social networks… to take over the world.
We have established beachheads in Facebook and Twitter and are preparing our invasion.
CTDP on Facebook
CTDP at Twitter
We will be posting more frequent small updates. WIP shots will be found there first.
To be the first to get all information, we suggest to follow us there and subscribe our devblog via RSS.
On average you will be notified about 3-4 days before the news hit VirtualR and another day before any other news blogs pick it up. 😀
Despite the new ways, we are still available on the established ways.
Use the forum to ask questions and get help support for our Mods. We suggest to post any technical questions there, so the google can find it and anybody else can find the answer to the question.
If you have questions of more private nature please use our contact form.
For informal contact check out our members lists in facebook and twitter.
Had you already subscribed us in the social world, you would have seen this Jordan WIP shot already 4 days ago:
Marvin Fröhlich released version 1.3.0 of his rfDynHUD overlay-plugin for rFactor. This is mainly a maintenance release, however there have been some cleanup and some changes to the Widget-API. Widgets written for version 1.2.x may not work and should be updated. We urge third-party authors to update their widgets. Please report any problems you encounter in our forums.
rfDynHUD is Open Source and licensed under GNU Public License V2. Contact Marvin for access to the source code. Please remember the license does not allow commercial redistribution!
For the past year, we had Eric ‘ennisfargis’ Tozer working on the next version of the Bahrain International Circuit. This would include the 2010 layout and some major improvements on the tracks elevations and ultimately it would convert the track for rFactor2 once that is available. This work proved to be rather tedious as it is very hard to get hands on proper elevation data. Consumer GPS data is not exact enough and so we compiled height data from many different sources and are in the process of updating the track accordingly.
Fortunately for Eric, unfortunately for us, he got the foot in the door with Reiza Studios and won’t be able to continue his work on the track. This leaves the track in a work in progress state with nobody in the team to pick it up.
We are therefore looking for interested track modelers to get in touch with us to work on this track and help convert it to rFactor2. The track was a big success and it would be a shame not to bring it to the new platform. A lot of work has been done and we will provide help to step into the existing project as good as possible. Still you will need to know the basics of track editing, FFD modifiers and track exporting.
As with our other projects. CTDP is a dynamic team with people coming and going. With the death of rFactor and the continued waiting for rFactor2 we had more people disinterested in modding lately and therefore encourage everyone who has dome some modding and would like to continue and work in an organized, collaborative and enjoyable atmosphere to get in touch with us and see how you can help on the continued development of Bahrain Circuit and 1994.
The easiest way is to register and post in our forum, or to send an email in our contact form.
Thank you, Eric, for you contributions and wish you good luck at Reiza!
Andreas ‘Neidryder’ Neidhardt was just showing around some WIP shots of the 1994 Jordan, when we realized, we never posted any shots of the current car here in the blog. This needs to change.
The car was original modelled by Marco ‘BMWFan’ Büttner and is one of those we decided to keep and build upon. After some thorough reviews Neidryder took over to update the model and bring it up to standards. This involved heavy work on the main chassis: proportions, airbox and rear end. The latter is still work in progress as you can see in one of the shots. The suspensions are also just placeholders and will be replaced in the upcoming weeks. Lastly, the joint lines will be added to the model.
Once the model is done it will receive an updated mapping and one of the painters (maybe even myself) will update the existing textures to the model.
Time for some new WIP shots. Stefan ‘erale’ Triefellner has been busy building the new Ferrari model. The model has been in development over the past 3 months. After our extensive reviews we deemed the existing Ferrari model not accurate. Updating the as we do with other models became more time-consuming than building a clean new model from scratch. After all we have all models, measurements and as it is important to get the proportions right, this was the way to go. The basic model is finished, erale is currently working on the details, joint lines and suspension.
More screens will be on the way soon.
