Lotus Evora 2010

spahr

Hey everyone, since there is another delay in Unearthly09, im going to speed model a new car. Freshen up on my car modeling techniques. Decided to model a Lotus Evora, at a an in-game poly count. Which would be around 20-25k with tires and interior. So its a REALLY good in-game model :P.

I started sunday just gather reference pics all day, and just doodling over the car to familiarize myself with its shape. And then cleaned up an existing blue print to get front/side/top projection blue prints. Here is the car (not my renders of course)




Spent yesterday building curves at focal points on the car, mostly anything with a hard edge. Just so when i build my grey block i have a guide, but also at the same time, i can use these curves to loft a solid poly base. And here is what i got...



I love that stage, since it really gets me familiar with the cars shape in 3d, and just studying the angles. Ii spent the rest of the day and this morning building up the grey block. My purpose here is to get the exact shape down. This is mostly where i would love peoples feedback. Since its a low poly, i can change things real fast. And here is my grey block, with wires(even though the mesh flow isnt anywhere what i want, i think it should help visualize the shapes)..




And somewhere in the middle of off this modeling, i squeezed in an hour or so to make the rims. check them out!


So i of course thank you in advance for your feedback and comments. I hope to have the exterior modeled by the end of the week, including seams, door handles, brakes, you name it.

I also realized that the actual car has been in the progress of being made since 06, so there are subtle variations Ive noticed that are different with the reference pics i gathered, so here's a link to my main reference. http://www.netcarshow.com/lotus/2010-evora/


Thanks, and I should be posting updates everyday

Cody

Sweetsauce! This car is looking beast so far. Only crit I see right now is the transition from the door to the back wheel well needs to be smoother. This is the low poly, so it will probably turn out fine. Keep going!

spahr

thanks, and dont worry i plan on geting rid of its "Low Poly" look soon. 1 edge at a time! Its taking a little longer than i wanted to get this grey block done, but since i didnt have a blueprint for the back end, ive noticed some off scale on a few things.

BUT, i found that this car is on gran turismo prologue, so ive got a great 3d reference. I feel as though im cheating. They did a great model (they probably had CAD data )

So ill post up my update soon. Just cleaning up the mesh now. getting everything perfect before i start adding some details.

Hitez

i love this car. and your model is shaping up. not a fan of the rims though, but thats just me personally.

MoP

Nice start, looks good!

spahr

Heres an updated grey block. I hope i have the proportions right. There needs to be a few more tweaks here and there, and hopefully i can get the nice details in soon. Id love some C&C.




Thanks guys

ajr2764

Hello Spahr. Your car model is coming along very nicely. What I can see is that your edge flow seems efficient, not too many unneeded polys. I love the nurbs to poly method, thats how i learned to model a car in my class. So is 25-30k an average count for a ingame vehicle. My car was modeled with the intention of subdivided it, so it has alot of extra polys all over to hold the shape.

spahr

A good ingame, user car should be around 10-15k. But for my projects sake, lets say its a front end vehcile . I could LOD it in a couple hours or so when im done to show i can make a decent super high, high, med, low poly car.

The 25k i sort of aimed this car at should be everything from headlights/brake lights, interior, wheels ect. I dont remember exactly what they used on NFS. 25-30K would really be pushing the engine (meaning a no go). But i remember them wanting to do a LOD A+ for FE, so i dont feel im cheating by saying "in-game" but really making something that COULD be in a game but would run at 5 FPS lol, this model should work fine in the FE in a gran turismo engine(might be talking out my arse). Right now the body is 8250 polys. but again, no interior, or lights, or chasis, all that kind of stuff. I could fit it under 20k no problem where im headed, and thats fine by me.

Thanks ajr

Bruno Afonseca

Rims aren't perfectly round, which bothers me a lot. But the body is going pretty well, how did you do those curves? I find them pretty hard to control and yours looks so smooth...

spahr

updates! some orthos...













Hopefully this can help for some feedback. THANKS

spahr

Sorry about the rims, ill fix them when i get a chance of course, just trying to focus on the body. I noticed a bunch of proportion issues, so itll take me a while to fix those. And as for the curves, i dont really know how i did them. Ive just gotten used to knowing how many points ill need for certain curves, and just tweak the ** out of it.

vcool

Your ref images don't show. Says it's hotlinked and you should use embed code instead.

spahr

well i know this doesnt show any fixes, but i thought id post some of the issues i saw. Show my WIP.

spahr

MORE PICTURES.....sorry for so many pictures. I received some good feedback last night. I feel the model is really improving, I think its almost there. Ill try to post some actual renders with paint, to see some surface flaws soon.







Enjoy and Thanks for future feedback!

Xoliul

This is really going well, I love seeing this improve. Got a feeling this will turn out awesome! No comments on shape or wireflow, you know what you're doing.
What does bother me atm, is the shape of your tires. Yoo artificial, doesn't feel like rubber filed tires. They need to bulge a bit at the side and can't be so sharp.

Lamont

Xoliul wrote: »

What does bother me atm, is the shape of your tires. Yoo artificial, doesn't feel like rubber filed tires. They need to bulge a bit at the side and can't be so sharp.

I would not say the bulge is the problem, it's the radius of the shoulder to the sidewall that looks too small. I've ran on compounds that have just as stiff sidewalls, and barely bulged with a 3700lbs car. I would imagine a Lotus, being almost 1300lbs lighter, would have even less effect on the sidewall bulge. You would not notice it on properly inflated tires.

But if by bulge you mean surface contact from sitting, then yes, it's a perfect circle right now, I am sure he'll deal with it.

spahr

Hey thanks for the tips guys. Ill start on the tires right now . I think I have a solid base. And after basically 4 straight days of doing the body, im glad i can go back to work on some tires, and then start the rendering process. i am going to see if i can find a cool HDRI image of a race track, and model/texture something simple accordingly, and see if i cant get a cool motion shot of this car. Anyways, heres more updates. I got some base textures in, i need to do a consistency pass, cause i mostly just used my reference images for the textures. And the brake lights SUCK. but all in good time ... here ya go!







Ive been rushing to get this done before unearthly starts. So I only have a couple more days. Unless theres another delay *knock on wood*.

Thanks for the comments guys!

ZacD

very clean, very impressive, put it in GTA!

spahr

i would if i could but my file was recently corrupted. first time in 3 years. my last iteration was about halfway through this . not sure what i can do now. This is the first time ive lost work, im heart broken. And i did all the grunt work, all that was left over was the fun rendering.

Lamont

Ged

oh no that sucks spahr

c0ldhands

Sorry to hear that dude, maybe you can pick this up again after unearthly challange!

ZacD

No backups? No older versions of the file? I know vista automatically stores previous versions of files... And some 3D apps do auto backups.

Cojax

Hey model looks great man. I love Lotus, have a few in the family.

I find it hard to believe you where not making incremental saves (_01, _02 etc) or even have a MEL auto back script

spahr

I was making incremental saves, and somewhere along the line, i told myself, " i havent had a crash in months, im just cluttering this folder with dozens of saves. i gotta stop this" and whammy. Its karma. BUUUUUT Lamont helped me out and got most of my geo back. Except interior and headlights, no biggie to remodel.

Yeah its just crazy odds, all my other folders are 1-20 GB in size cause of all the saves i have lol. Ill keep it that way from now on . Nothing like learning from your mistakes from a good scare like this.

But as far as the model goes, ill remodel that stuff asap, and add in some seats, and ill be back on track to get some cool renders soon.

Oh and lamont, i think it was my instances that corrupted my scene. I went back to a previous file and they were really bugging up.

Xoliul

Maya seems a lot more evil in corrupting files than Max ? In max i'm pretty sure 99% of the time corrupt files have been because Max suddenly crashed on me, not when I was working totally legit with no problems. I never had the "open it next day to find total corruptness" thing.

Lamont

spahr wrote: »

Oh and lamont, i think it was my instances that corrupted my scene. I went back to a previous file and they were really bugging up.

From what I saw the problem started on the just few bits of geometry (I guess the headlights and or interior), all the history and nodes stuff just started throwing bogus numbers making Maya freak out on load.

Sirdelita

this is amazing!

toren3d

Sorry to hear about the corrupt file/lost work speedbump, but glad to hear your back on track. Remember in the future, once your at a satisfactory point, to get rid of those old history nodes, and to save out both a .mb and .ma (read this in an old maya book, that it helps to have both just in case).

Your car is looking awesome! Keep it up!

spahr

Ah thanks for the concerns guys! Well here are a couple quick renders, i just wanted to see if there are some surface flaws, and there a few areas i think look too 3d. Going to try and fix those. and i need to fix the badging i have, its not showing up well. In general im pretty happy with this weeks work. Although im pretty beat. Heres a couple renders for you, just a few first quickies, ill try to post some quality ones over the next little bit. Id love to try some vray, brazil, a 3ds max mental ray car render tutorial, but all in good time.