[finished] Stylized Punk Fiat 500
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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!
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!
Replies
@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!
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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?
You can see more images and Sketchfab model at my Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zO12q6
As a suggestion, the background color is too similar with the car color. Maybe try a complementary color for the sky.
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: