Concept car project
polycounter lvl 16
Latest update :
Sup guys. So, i made an Aston Martin DB9 to gran turismo 5 (ish) specifications a while back, maybe some of you remember it. I was really happy with the end result even though it was slightly unfinished in some places, so I'm starting another similar project. This time though i'm going with my own concept, i really wanna build my own car from the ground up.
This falls conveniently in line with a rather large uni assignment i have, so work on this should hopefully be frequent. The end result of this is hopefully going to be some kind of interactive 3D car showroom in UDK in a similar vein to that Forza4 kinect tech demo thing that was at E3, but nowhere near as good. That's a ways down the road yet though...
I've been sketching up some concepts for the last couple of days and i kinda hit one i liked today which i quickly rendered up, but i'll post the lot up here and you guys can let me know which ones you like best. Everything on the first page is pretty much garbage, but i like all of the ones on the 2nd page. Beware my lack of perspective contruction lines!
Sup guys. So, i made an Aston Martin DB9 to gran turismo 5 (ish) specifications a while back, maybe some of you remember it. I was really happy with the end result even though it was slightly unfinished in some places, so I'm starting another similar project. This time though i'm going with my own concept, i really wanna build my own car from the ground up.
This falls conveniently in line with a rather large uni assignment i have, so work on this should hopefully be frequent. The end result of this is hopefully going to be some kind of interactive 3D car showroom in UDK in a similar vein to that Forza4 kinect tech demo thing that was at E3, but nowhere near as good. That's a ways down the road yet though...
I've been sketching up some concepts for the last couple of days and i kinda hit one i liked today which i quickly rendered up, but i'll post the lot up here and you guys can let me know which ones you like best. Everything on the first page is pretty much garbage, but i like all of the ones on the 2nd page. Beware my lack of perspective contruction lines!
Replies
i did some overpainting:
I'm thinking it'd probably help me a lot to try and design an appealing shape for the car around an imaginary space big enough for a driver and a passenger. Right now i have a tendancy to draw the wheels to establish some kind of rudimentary perspective, then i end up drawing the arches around the wheels and repeatedly pull the same shapes from them again and again which usually leads to really funky proportions. I need to break away from that.
I grabbed my sketchbook and did some doodling in bed last night based on what you said, and then a bit more this morning. I'm quite fond of number 2 but it's got furai written all over it. I think all of these at least have some nice shapes, i didn't bother to keep the really bad ones
I'm going to spend the rest of the day staring at the reference i've been collecting i think, then i'll do some drawings based on real cars to build up a bigger library of shapes to pull from.
1: I feel this one is a bit weak proportionwise, still suffers from the same problems as the last painting. Also the ass feel quite disconnected from the rest, lifts up too quickly.
2: this is getting somewhere, though i really recognize the Mazda Furai to much in here, try to refrain from copying too much like that. The side and rear views are the strongest, as I don't really dig the huge wide wheelarches, they seem impractical and too dominant. The rear has a bit of that mercedes CLK-GTR feel, while still looking fresh, that's the sort of feeling you want instead of too much of a direct copy.
3: Interesting, package feels like it fits together, proportions look nimble and believable. Maybe still too much lift on the ass in the side view. I'd try and give this one slightly more of a unique character through secondary elements such as vents, lights or intakes as it feels kind of generic from the current sketch.
4: feels too short and high, not the aggressive, low supercar feeling you want.
5: too sharp and edgy, almost becomes cartoonesque, like a hotwheels toy car.
I'd say 3 is the one with the most potential for now.
Your Aston Martin was pretty awesome, so I have high expectations for this
I'll have to pick your brains about car design sometime, you seem quite in tune with it. It's a lot harder than i gave it credit for.
I've been super busy these past few weeks so this project has been kinda on the backburner. I had to find time this week though to quickly make a prototype of the interactive UDK scene im planning for some presentation i have to give. I made a quick film of the level to use while i talk as i'm 99% sure i won't be able to install the standalone level on Uni computers, so i'll post the vid here too so you guys can check it out. All the assets in the vid are of course temporary, it's just something to show where i'm headed and to make sure i can do what i want to do inside UDK.
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I'll be posting up the most recent batch of concepts i've done when i get time to scan em. Hopefully this weekend i should be able to find time to get closer to locking down a design that i like.
The first page is all trash. I really like number 3 of the 2nd bunch though. It has a number of influences i can immediately see in it, but i really like how it looks which is something that didn't happen with any of these others i've done. I could go on and do more quickies like these till i hit something else i like, but what i think im more likely to do is take this number 3 guy and do some variations of it, try out a different ideas on that established base shape and see what i can make of it.
Glad to finally be makin some kind of progress.
Hah no problem, it's fun that there's a thread like this for a change that gets into a design area where I can give some fun feedback.
This! People really tend to underestimate it, "it's just a car, tons of those around, how hard can it be?"
On your new sketches:
Definitely nr 3! This one is going the right way, the rest sorta pales in comparison. I love the Brera type headlights you have in there, definitely keepers, it's so different from the usual supercar type of headlights. Also immediately saw the XJ220'esque side profile, makes the sideview the strongest proportionwise. The front and back might need to be a tad wider, but that's hard to say without perspective shots.
Definitely also try to fully exploit the "open/cut-off" rear, sort of like the McLaren F1 or Alfa tipo 33.2 Stradale
I have to say the weakest part about it right now is how the nose seems too small in height, I wouldn't have it rise up (that much) towards the front. Perhaps have a look at the Reventon for proportions of the nose, it sort of reminds me of the same pointed shape.
Btw, awsome work with the db9, it is one of the best works in polycount
I had a go at sketching other angles of the car earlier but it was taking too long just to make the perspective look right, so i decided to dive right in with a quick 3d mockup instead. Here's a preview of where im at after stopping tonight, playing with the the shapes and proportions a bit and just trying to get a feel for the overall mass.
I spent last night working on getting the front end in roughly, i've also changed a few things proportionally that i wasn't super happy with and tweaked some elements of the design. Still heavy WIP, but looking much more how i want it to.
edit : bit more. I'm liking this broken up look for the front much more, the other one had some serious underbite going on
and here's those orthos snafu
I did a quick test of the doors to check out the curves in the body and how the interior fits which shows the scale a bit better. There's a few problems i need to address, probably going to raise the greenhouse just a touch and make some other tweaks. The red square is where the engine will sit.
Edit: Apparently I missed page 2 when I posted.
I've had nowhere near as much time as i wanted to work on this, been super busy with my new job these last few weeks. I found some time tonight though to add in some small quick things like the wingmirrors, a few more panel breaks and etc. I also had a stab at a custom rim design, but i don't like it. I think once i nail that down and make some bogus car logo for a badge i'm gonna have to call this done and render out some stuff. The deadline is just over a week away now.
I threw in some lights and tried to get a nice raw viewport grab from max, as that's how i'm gonna present the end result (viewport rendered .avi). This is a raw grab from max with xoliul's shader doing all the hard work, no post.
use the properties of light on surfaces to your advantage to really push the design language!
Also back your camera up, cars look way cooler with longer lenses (unless it's a video game from the 90's)
http://www.tuningnews.net/news/080327/premier4509-lamborghini-murcielago-01.jpg
http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l299/calinescu/oa9d34_paintover.jpg?t=1303977482
The only one I think that have some merit is a slight tweak of the end of the hood bulge, at the front, and perhaps add some sort of rear wheel arch air intake.
thanks for the tip about the camera okkun, i'll try out longer lenses when i get home.
and xoliul, seriously dude, your shader.
Watch in HD and all that.
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edit : new vid uploaded
This isn't the final, final thing. I still need to add my credits in there at the end and some other info, but i'll be agonising over that later tonight. I'll probably re-up it when the extras are added. The music in it is causing some problems with youtube's audio matching thing, according to what it says peeps in the US might not be able to watch it. If you can't watch it you can probably download it directly from the tubes here.
As far as the technicalities go, the tricount will probably lie somewhere between 100,000 to 120,000 tris. I'm unsure because lots of elements are still the merged down turbosmooth model without optimisations. I ran out of time, but 100k approx is what i was shooting for (200ktotal, 100k reserved for the interior). The shots in the vid were all rendered in realtime with max's camera based DOF and Xoliul's viewport shader. The only post i added is the vignette.
Here's a couple of stills as well.
Nice work :thumbup:
I do like the shapes on your car but I think it's let down by the shader you are using, reflections need work as they are far too blurry for such smooth surfaces. Aside from that, one other thing bugs me and that's the alloys, they really are the only part of the design imo that look poorly constructed and unrecognisable.
alloys here http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=concept+alloys&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1680&bih=870
Are you using mental ray for this?
Seriously dude if you fixed the shader, gave it kick ass alloys with all the details and rendered in mental ray using the same camera motions and soundtrack it would blow people away.
Kitteh - i think this one falls down to personal preference dude. i tried your suggestions out but i like the way it sits as it is, and yeah the contours make it look like it arches in the middle but i like that. the bottom of the car is actually flat though, that i can guarantee.
GCMP- i mentioned a post or two back that yeah, i don't like the alloys at all either. i've run out of time though so i had to stick with the junky unfinished stuff i had. a lot of the car needs a lot of work, maybe when i get some free time i'll revisit it to finish it properly. you're probably right about the blurry reflections, just a byproduct of using a low res cubemap, a lot of this is very rushed.
and nah dude i'm not using mental ray. like i said in the post, it's realtime with xoliul's max viewport shader.
maybe if you get free time just render out one screen with mental ray and post it? :P