BMW Z4 GT3 - Practice

DanielPeres

---

LASTES UPDATE

---

---

Hey guys, so I finally ended this year of school and now I have some free time to practice my modeling again. Since my PC is quite low end (trying to get some money to buy a new beast) I can't go with nice environments because they won't look good in engines (display driver sucks) and also it can't handle tons os polygons so baking things like procedural rocky walls and things like that would be a real pain in the a**.

So with that in my head I decided to start practicing with automotive modeling since the last and only one I did was quite noobish. I decided to give a try to a rather complex car, the BMW Z4 GT3.

My old car: https://danielperes.artstation.com/portfolio/pbr-honda-civic-1-6-crx-del-sol

So I wanted to firstly block the main base of the car and then go into details but I am not sure if that's how I sould do it or not.


Another question that I have is how should I achieve such details? I know I have to consider polycount but as this is a portfolio piece there is not really a need to be super worried about that, so, should I get those details (as marked in the images below) with normal maps or should they be in the geometry?




Also, should I start going for those details right now or do you think its easier to get the whole base of the car and then start going into details?

I know I don't have a lot by now but some criticism would be welcome

Kid.in.the.Dark

Always block it out before you detail. that goes with any piece of art work you ever do... you'll often find yourself coming to an absolute stop when you detail hardcore starting off... because once you realise somethings out of proportion or placed badly on the mesh and you need to edit it, all of a sudden it's just too dense and too much of a hassle to correct everything without it being incredibly time consuming.

Block out then detail keep going it's a good start (Y)

DanielPeres

Kid.in.the.Dark wrote: »

Always block it out before you detail. that goes with any piece of art work you ever do... you'll often find yourself coming to an absolute stop when you detail hardcore starting off... because once you realise somethings out of proportion or placed badly on the mesh and you need to edit it, all of a sudden it's just too dense and too much of a hassle to correct everything without it being incredibly time consuming.

Block out then detail keep going it's a good start (Y)

Thanks a lot, really great tip also, concerning how should I do the details, I've seens some threads where people say cars don't really need normals maps because you can get preetty nice results with the base mesh, what is your tought about that?

Kid.in.the.Dark

Sadly, I've never actually done a vehicle specifically for games.. I've only done vehicles for production renderings... I'm sure someone on here would be happy to enlighten you though I'd like to know myself actually haha... but I mean in theory... using a normal map would always be better, people are building helicopters/tanks/aircrafts etc... and they're baking everything besides the few exceptions who have truckloads of technical backing to their models. So I'd say probably best to put baking a normal map into your pipeline, after all we're all after quality (Y)

DanielPeres

Well you made quite a good point there, helicopters/tanks/aircrafts actually do use normal maps so yeah probably cars use them too. Tho I saw a thread a while ago where there was this guy who made a lambo for a game and he said that he would not use normal maps in the car mesh itself, only in the wheels/interior. That might come from the freedom we have nowadays to push the polycount quite high. I'll keep modeling and then I'll see what is the best approach for me in this case

DanielPeres

A little progress. Now its time to move to the harder parts, front and rear ahah

beefaroni

If you have some extra $$, Grant Warwick's Hard Surface Modelling course has a pretty good portion on cars. I used it and got about midway through a car in my free time and his tips were SUPER helpful, especially the fact that he used 3ds Max.

He has a discount for students as well, which brings the price a bit below the $300 price point it sits at now.

DanielPeres

beefaroni wrote: »

If you have some extra $$, Grant Warwick's Hard Surface Modelling course has a pretty good portion on cars. I used it and got about midway through a car in my free time and his tips were SUPER helpful, especially the fact that he used 3ds Max.

He has a discount for students as well, which brings the price a bit below the $300 price point it sits at now.

I have been searching in the internet and the only one that I am finding is a 90 minutes free v

DanielPeres

Some progress

DanielPeres

Some progress!

I am still thinking if I am going to go with a production mesh, that way I would go with a HP mesh only, I am considering this because I have lost good topology in some areas and the only way I can get that back is by making some retopology with the HP

DanielPeres

Progress:

ferrettank

Ah yes looking good so far!
Some stuff I've learned in my 7 years of creating digital 3D Cars:

First, find real pictures of the car. If you search long enough, you can find perfect front, back and side pictures of almost any car. Only use blueprints as a guide because they are way more inaccurate then a picture

Take a vert, trace all of the body lines, this way you can create a 3D blueprint. You can fix any perspective issues here. Trying to fix these issues after you start modelling, IS THE BIGGEST PAIN IN THE BUTTOCK EVAHHHHHHHH.

Then make a simple but a very clean block out of the car. Make sure all of the lines are correct, because once again, it is a pain in the buttock to change stuff after this.

Then once you get the basic shape out of the way, apply a Sub Surf, or Turbo Smooth layer. This will give you really nice smooth topology to work off of


Add more details, work from the big details down to the small ones. When the details get too small for the topology, then apply another subsurf, or turbo smooth layer.


**tip, when doing all of this, topology flow is sooooooooooo important. Make the topology follows the body lines. When I was starting out, I would sort the turbo squid models by highest rated then study their topology.

**The burnt out feeling, this happens to me when I spend months on a car. I pick a part on the car, separate it from the rest, then really detail it. I treat it as a different project. You can do this with rims, engines, seats, steering wheels etc... This makes it fresh!

I hope this helps! I look forward to the progress on your z4!

DanielPeres

ferrettank wrote: »

Ah yes looking good so far!
Some stuff I've learned in my 7 years of creating digital 3D Cars:

First, find real pictures of the car. If you search long enough, you can find perfect front, back and side pictures of almost any car. Only use blueprints as a guide because they are way more inaccurate then a picture

Take a vert, trace all of the body lines, this way you can create a 3D blueprint. You can fix any perspective issues here. Trying to fix these issues after you start modelling, IS THE BIGGEST PAIN IN THE BUTTOCK EVAHHHHHHHH.

Then make a simple but a very clean block out of the car. Make sure all of the lines are correct, because once again, it is a pain in the buttock to change stuff after this.

Then once you get the basic shape out of the way, apply a Sub Surf, or Turbo Smooth layer. This will give you really nice smooth topology to work off of


Add more details, work from the big details down to the small ones. When the details get too small for the topology, then apply another subsurf, or turbo smooth layer.


**tip, when doing all of this, topology flow is sooooooooooo important. Make the topology follows the body lines. When I was starting out, I would sort the turbo squid models by highest rated then study their topology.

**The burnt out feeling, this happens to me when I spend months on a car. I pick a part on the car, separate it from the rest, then really detail it. I treat it as a different project. You can do this with rims, engines, seats, steering wheels etc... This makes it fresh!

I hope this helps! I look forward to the progress on your z4!

wow great tips! Some of them I can't use in this project because I am already in the detailing part but I will definitely get this anoted and apply it to future projects!

Well I started to define the base shapes of the car and now I am grabbing each one of them and detailing them, then I move to the next one and so on.

This is what my HP looks so far. I am still thinking if I will go with a LP mesh or not. Anyway, if I decide to get a LP mesh I will render both the Low Res Mesh has a game piece and I will also render the High Res Mesh as a beauty render (something I have never done before)

DanielPeres

This is the High Poly by now:


And this is the Low Poly:

DanielPeres

Last update on the HP

DanielPeres

Update:

DanielPeres

Update:

ollitei

Looking pretty good so far. Some pinching visible in some places (such as the area where the headlight meets the side fenders) and there's a few differences compared to the real car. Most notably, the shoulder line is a lot simpler in your model while on the real car it's got the sharp crease and a small concave shape below it. Your model currently doesn't have the concave detail. Another thing is the cooling vents in the front bumper and on the side skirt. They're different shape compared to the Z4 GT3 but that's really a minor thing since body kits can have a lot of differences anyway. The shoulder line details is something I would add in as that is something that defines the car.

And about thinking about whether to bake the high detail into the car or not. I would advise to do the exterior all geometry. If you do the geometry well enough you wouldn't have any need to bake more detail into it and even then I've noticed there's a lot of troubleshooting and topology optimizing to get a good bake and to me, when it comes to a complete car with large and curvy surfaces it just isn't worth the extra work. I only use normal maps for smaller objects within a car such as the lights, interior parts, tires and wheels. Most modern video games nowadays have their car tri counts almost at the 300k range (player model on ultra settings) so you wouldn't need to worry about putting that geo to at least on the exterior panels.

DanielPeres

ollitei wrote: »

Looking pretty good so far. Some pinching visible in some places (such as the area where the headlight meets the side fenders) and there's a few differences compared to the real car. Most notably, the shoulder line is a lot simpler in your model while on the real car it's got the sharp crease and a small concave shape below it. Your model currently doesn't have the concave detail. Another thing is the cooling vents in the front bumper and on the side skirt. They're different shape compared to the Z4 GT3 but that's really a minor thing since body kits can have a lot of differences anyway. The shoulder line details is something I would add in as that is something that defines the car.

And about thinking about whether to bake the high detail into the car or not. I would advise to do the exterior all geometry. If you do the geometry well enough you wouldn't have any need to bake more detail into it and even then I've noticed there's a lot of troubleshooting and topology optimizing to get a good bake and to me, when it comes to a complete car with large and curvy surfaces it just isn't worth the extra work. I only use normal maps for smaller objects within a car such as the lights, interior parts, tires and wheels. Most modern video games nowadays have their car tri counts almost at the 300k range (player model on ultra settings) so you wouldn't need to worry about putting that geo to at least on the exterior panels.

Hey, thanks for your words. I will tru to make a lower poly but without needing a normal map as you said, maybe I'll make a normal map for the tires and lights. Also, can you point the shoulder difference you talked about so that I can changed it? I don't understand what the shoulder is :x

MattyWS

Just to iterate, modern games like gran turismo and forza are all geometry with the shell of the car. Normal maps are really only needed for things that would be crazy to add into geometry with rough surfaces like tires, front grills, dirt/mud/raindrops over the body etc. and of course interiors.

DanielPeres

Testing some materials! LAST UPDATE

DanielPeres

Been finishing the model and trying material

DanielPeres

I finished this project a while ago, just forgot to post here.

You can see the whole project here:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0lBxy

BradMyers82

The model looks really nice, although I think the material and lighting are the biggest thing holding this back right now.  It looks oddly matte for a car in those renders.  I would look at some real world ref, and pay careful attention to the environment reflections and stuff like that in addition to the specular to try to achieve more realism.  nice work here tho!

DanielPeres

Thanks for the feedback Brad Right now I have already finished this project, I might pick it up in the future and give those tweaks you talked about. Tough this was rendered in Keyshot and the materials are the ones that already come with the software. In my next projects (like the one that I am starting now) I will focus in game art/real time rendering only as that is what I want to do in the 3D world

DanielPeres

Also, I saw your portfolio, great work! And I love those custom characters, they look so awesome! 

BradMyers82

Cheers Nukakola7!  Looking forward to your next one!