[finished] Stylized Punk Fiat 500

VesaN

Happy new year 2021! 

I thought to launch this year by starting a project to train my modeling skills, and I wanted to create something stylized. I love old Fiat 500's, they're super cute and a great car to stylize. Here's my initial sketch and moodboard, I modified the blueprint to match my idea, basically just heightened the roof, made the tires more tiny, plus squashed it a little bit. I have never modeled a car before, so this is going to be a fun challenge. 

Color and texture-wise I have not yet made a decision, I love Lary Kummer's "Junkrat's RV" (link to the work here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/eE9oY), and I think I'm going for something like combined hand-painted and PBR like he did.

I'd love to hear your thoughts at any point during the process!




Update #1
I already have a base ready (with not the cleanest topology, though, any hints?) done so far. I made it twice because the first try didn't go so well. Those poles and trying to keep consistent edge loops are driving me nuts now and then, but progress comes with time. Next I'm going for some details!

sacboi

I'm afraid n-poles and uniform edge spacing are unavoidable when modeling vehicles, regardless of whether the goal is real time or off-line rendered, plus I prefer just the knife tool alongside edge slide operation for geometry/topology control which mostly results in minimal manual editing.

A neat project, I'll keep an eye out as you progress.

EDIT:

Also a bunch of stuff modeling cars, that proved helpful when first starting out, that might be of interest to you as well:

Modeling Cars In Polygons

Fiat 500 - 3ds

Fiat 500 - Blender 

Ashervisalis

You have a looooot of squiggly edge loops. Modeling cars is different than a lot of modeling, in that its a lot harder to fix topology later down the line. You kinda gotta switch back and forth between adding resolution and then cleaning up the topology as you move forward. If you wanted to clean it easily, you could probably delete every second edge loop right now and then spend time cleaning it. I would suggest adding in the wheels and bottom and various other parts early, before the shell gets too high poly.

VesaN

@sacboi, thanks for stopping by and commenting! They definitely are unavoidable, and for some reason a little hard to grasp, especially with the pole positioning and how to optimize their existence. Those resources you provided look amazing, thank you. 

@Ashervisalis - Thank you for your comment! I can see your point, a well established ground work provides success for later on. I was winging the whole thing so far, but this hard surface modeling proved to be wayyyyyy harder than I initially thought, I have so far mostly worked with "organic" modeling like plants, rocks, etc. which give room for unnoticeable errors.

This is the kind of feedback I'm looking for, constructive and honest, cheers! Seems like I'm going to take it 3rd time from the top, give or take it, it's not practice that makes perfect but a lot of practice. Until next time! 

VesaN

Update #2

3rd and new base done by @sacboi 's suggested tutorial. Better to make it properly from the top, gonna save me from headache later on. Thanks for the tip again! Taking it slow and trying to keep the model clean. I'll adjust it to match my concept in a later phase.

VesaN

Update #3

If I'm gonna model a car I might as well pimp it and give it some character! 

Sketched quickly down some concepts just to get my ideas down... yet not sure about which idea to develop further, I like the flowers idea because I've wanted to practice creating foliage and I love doing them... We will see, and you can surely vote your favorite or give down your concept ideas!

Until next time,
-Vesa

VesaN

Update #4

I've definitely made some progress and also learned a lot about modeling, which was my initial goal with this project. I still have to fill the bottom of the body and start to make the car look more stylized. I probably should've done that at a much earlier stage but having no clue how to model a car, I modeled it so far. Next before making the windows, I'll make some tweaks here and there to get my desired look. 

I've also been trying to figure out how I'm going to bake all necessary details from the highpoly mesh and how to approach texturing this vehicle, so that it would work as if optimized for a game. Mirroring UV's to maximize texture space is one approach I assume, but not something I'm really familiar with.

VesaN

Update #5

I decided to go on with the punk style. Here's current process and thoughts about next modification possibilities. What do you think works and what doesn't? Do you think it still reads as a Fiat 500? I'd love to hear comments!

sacboi

Nice!

VesaN said:

[...]

 Do you think it still reads as a Fiat 500?

Yes, overall still reads as an early model Fiat due too lower body shell silhouette plus other distinctive features unique too this car, despite your choice in stylized aesthetic

VesaN

sacboi said:

Nice!

Yes, overall still reads as an early model Fiat due too lower body shell silhouette plus other distinctive features unique too this car, despite your choice in stylized aesthetic

Thank you @sacboi for stopping by and commenting!

Good to hear that, after working with the same model without another pair of eyes it's hard to keep track of where I go right and where wrong.

Nevertheless, it's beginning to be ready for texturing... Which is my favorite part, to breathe life into the model! Just making a few optimization tweaks and I think next week or so we'll see it textured.   

sacboi

VesaN said:

[...]
I've also been trying to figure out how I'm going to bake all necessary details from the highpoly mesh and how to approach texturing this vehicle, so that it would work as if optimized for a game. Mirroring UV's to maximize texture space is one approach I assume, but not something I'm really familiar with.

Hi there:

Apologies, was a bit distracted so forgot to add these workflow samples earlier, both cover pretty much everything from scratch although I'd imagine you're nearly done with this piece anyway, however in my opinion a ton of insight which will come in handy for future reference if another hard surface project is in the offing at some later date.

Low Poly Approach - Blender 2.8 Vehicle Creation

High Poly Approach - Blender Realistic Vehicle Creation from Start to Finish 

Cheers.

EDIT:

Though paid content, I'll vouch were very useful when attempting a personal work so either tute is definitely worth the coin but possibly low poly version to start with, since you're interested in optimization techniques. 

VesaN

sacboi said:

Apologies, was a bit distracted so forgot to add these workflow samples earlier, - - 

Hi @sacboi, thanks for the tips! You're right, I'm almost done here, but since I kind of winged the lowpoly and UV unwrapping process, especially the former tut will come handy.

Now the low poly model is all set up in Substance and all the details are baked down, I'll start next texturing the vehicle. I'm taking as a challenge to use one 2K texture set for this piece.

VesaN

Alright, after a round of low poly retopology and trying to save a corrupted SP file, here's where we are now with this fella.

I'd like to have comments about anything that comes to mind regarding finishing touches, does something bother your eye? Anything you want to add/adjust/remove?

Olingova

It's super sweer!! Love the cute texturing! I would definitely add the wear of the windshield wiper to add a bit of life on the front who feels a lill bit flat for now  

VesaN

Olingova said:

It's super sweer!! Love the cute texturing! I would definitely add the wear of the windshield wiper to add a bit of life on the front who feels a lill bit flat for now  

Thank you! I totally agree, it lacks wearing as well as the other windows, too. Added some scratches there and a bigger crack! 

sacboi

Good job, though still some room for improvement but I figure you're aware of those area's to further nail down which I assume also taking a few pointers from the 80lvl breakdown hand-painted Overwatch Stylized RV article linked in the OP:

(a lot of gems in there I think worthwhile taking note of )

So keep going with it and looking forward too seeing the final render/s.

VesaN

sacboi said:

Good job, though still some room for improvement but I figure you're aware of those area's to further nail down which I assume also taking a few pointers from the 80lvl breakdown hand-painted Overwatch Stylized RV article linked in the OP:

(a lot of gems in there I think worthwhile taking note of )

So keep going with it and looking forward too seeing the final render/s.

Thanks for the support @sacboi ! Yes, as a self studying artist those articles are just pure gold. Now it's just a matter of patience to get the polished result I'm looking for. 

VesaN

I think I'm about 90-95% there now. Still room for (second) finishing touches. Excited about getting this finished! If something comes to mind with this piece please let me know.  

sacboi

Hmm...probably add a shadow cast underneath to ground the car and not have it' float' plus overall in my opinion a cyber-punk color palette is really pronounced with this update?!

VesaN

sacboi said:

Hmm...probably add a shadow cast underneath to ground the car and not have it' float' plus overall in my opinion a cyber-punk color palette is really pronounced with this update?!

The drop shadow was a thing I was struggling with in UE4. The ground is alpha blended as a translucent plane and thus doesn’t receive drop shadows as an opaque plane does. At least I didn’t find a way to do it, this was the best result I got. So I probably have to photoshop a shadow or produce the ground differently. 

What comes to the cyberpunk colorpalette, I see what you mean, I might have gone a bit over the top with the hue gradients. Gonna bring it down to make it more subtle. 

As always, thanks for your feedback, appreciate it! 

VesaN

Aaaand here we go! I brought down the hue variation and overall saturation levels plus made the metal parts shinier. Also decided to make a quick tiling texture for the ground as I wasn't quite pleased with the former one... These images are taken with a preview bake on UE4.

VesaN

And I call this project finished! Thanks all for the support and especially @sacboi ! Textured using single 2K texture set.

You can see more images and Sketchfab model at my Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zO12q6

teodar23

Looks good. I just read about the translucency issue you were having. You can set the material translucency to Surface translucent volume or Forward shading (under the translucency tab)

As a suggestion, the background color is too similar with the car color. Maybe try a complementary color for the sky.

VesaN

@teodar23
Thanks for your comment and for the help! With that setting, though, I only get this vague ambient occlusion type of shadow:


Also about the BG suggestion, I tried to play around with a complementary color but to my eye it didn't work so well... However, at early renderings I goofed around with this kind of staging:  

teodar23

That last shot looks great. maybe add a bit of DOF.

I am not at my computer so i cant give more advice, sorry.

if you figure out a way to enable shadows, you're golden.

sacboi

Well done +1

Also curious how you'll solve the remaining issues.

VesaN

@teodar23 thanks! I probably will remake that kind of shot and update it on Artstation for final renders! I will try to find out how to enable or work around the shadows with the transparent plane...

@sacboi thank you! I'll keep an update log here, though next week(s) is going to be a bit of a hussle because of lots of university tasks plus an art test...