WIP Ligier 1994 nearly finished

Last chance to take a look at the Ligier before the car goes ingame. Andy has been working, among other things on the details of the Ligier. Since the last WIP-shot all jointlines and holes have been added to the car. Note the fully modeled engine, which can be spotted through the cooling of the sidepod. The textures still sport some of the guides I lay out for Andy to make some positioning easier for him. One example is the fuel-opening.

Next station will be ingame.

WIP Jordan 1994 Part 2

Small status update. I get lost in my exams the next few weeks while Andy continues preparing cars for ingame.

Andy worked on Ligier last week and worked on some changes as we reported. These changes required some texture updates to continue. As I’m a bit out of the picture at the moment these changes are postponed for 1-2 weeks. In the meantime Andy picked up Jordan, which I reviewed and cleared last week.

Andy’s procedure is roughly this: He gets the models, which were done by Marco in zModeler and ports them to Maya, where he reworks all necessary parts to optimize the car for rFactor. This includes smoothing some edges and reworking all normals to improve the surface lighting on the cars. This is very important to get proper lighting and especially reflections on the car ingame later.

Here is a small animation showing the differences in the model before and after his tweaks. Often this requires some small remapping afterwards, this hasn’t been done yet and will follow the next few days.

This is the raw car so far without any joint lines, more work for Andy. 🙂

Preparing number two: Ligier

I mentioned in the last post, there has been some discussion last weekend over what car will be put ingame next. McLaren was the first candidate, but it didn’t make my eagle-eye inspection. Lotus, although nearly done is getting some more attention and therefore wasn’t our next choice. Ligier was, as it features a simple livery and little to do in this regard. However as I was doing my reviews I noticed some proportion issues. I simply can’t let such things go and so I begged first Marco then Andy to address the issue. I can be a maniac with such things and I admire everyone who can work with me. 🙂

Andy was so kind and took the job, as he needed to update a few things anyway to bring the car to all it’s glory.

Here is a small gimick, a comparison animation between the car before and after the proportion update. the old car had some normal issues, the surface on the new version is much smoother. You can notice the slightly pointier nose as well. Most obvious is the longer sidepod, which begins more than 15cm closer to the front tires, as it did before. The rear sidepod was also changed slightly as some angles were too steep and are smoother now.


Click to the the animation

Andy concluded most of the work on the carbody. Next up are the jointlines between all bodywork panels on the carsurface. The textures are mostly done, but will get a small update to compensate for the mapping changes.

WIP Pacific Racing 1994 Part n

Andreas ‘Neidryder’ Neidhard spent the last few weeks finalizing the Pacific car. The original model was done by Marco ‘BMWFan’ Büttner and the textures were painted by Dennis ‘Mediocre’ Schmidt. Andy took over to convert the model for rFactor and add his magic. The magic being 3D modeled joint lines on the car body. This is the first time we do this, so far all joint lines were always done using textures and normal-maps. Modeling them in 3D gives much more depth and makes them sharper ingame. This comes to a price. Of course the face count increases and is not up to the same count we use for the F1-2006 mod. As the cars are much less detailed as the 2006 cars, we can spent the extra polies and these details without regrets. Pacific checks out with 27k faces.

Here are two work in progress shots within Max from this morning. (Andy did some night shifts…) One showing the full car, second one without body work. The tyre textures are dummies for now, they will be improved later. Enjoy!

Andy is doing goood…

We already started previewing the details of the Pacific car 2 weeks ago. Andy enjoyed a week in the snow and is now back and nearly finished with his update of the car. He added a huge amount of details and is left with some mapping fixes, before the Pacific car will be the first to rollout ingame. While it was the last team in 1994, it’ll be the first this time. Enjoy some more close-up shots on the model-details.

This aren’t renders, but from the simple viewport, so use your imagination and “project” some Anti Aliasing (Hey, aren’t we all cylons after all?)

What are you doing part 2

Andy continues his magic. This car is still missing a piece, you’ll notice when you try to change to nose. Right now you’d hear the pit crew call for a new chassis, when the frontwing is broken. Back in the days they had T-cars. Another term, which modern F1-fans don’t know about and which let you feel like an old man. Enjoy the car!

ScreenShot008

WIP Sauber 1994

I just finished reviewing the early Sauber Mercedes for the F1 1994 mod. The model, as all models was done by BMWFan and is awaiting touchup by Neidryder to bring the car ingame. The textures were done by Codan. The story about Codan is, that he joined the team nearly 4 years ago and worked as a programmer on the Control Center and For the longest time he was able to hide is painting talent, but with this car for 1994 and even moreso on the cars for the SF-2009 game he has shown, that he can handle the tools and deliver some great cars. 🙂

Now, Sauber is a car where you don’t see that much details on the black texture. 8)

sauber94_1