CREATE A DYNAMIC FORMULA ONE SCENE
Paul Flower combines his passions for motorsport and modelling as he creates a retro racing render
This is an image that I wanted to create both as fan art and as a tribute of sorts to the late Roland Ratzenberger. Due to the tragic events at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994, his memory is somewhat overshadowed and I wanted to create a more positive image showing him at the wheel, doing what I imagine he loved. This is also why I wanted to create a retro feel with the styling.
In this tutorial, you’ll be shown how to set up and create a Formula One car using a range of tools including 3ds Max, with techniques that you can use on other models. Among the advice here, I’ll show you how, by using programs like Mudbox, you can use various functions and settings to pose elements including the driver.
There are other techniques that can help you take your model a step further and truly bring it to life. For example, setting up and lighting the scene, rendering the model with the aid of V-ray, and compositing the renders and adding details in Photoshop.
01 SET UP BLUEPRINTS AND TEMPLATES
Before the modelling work begins, it’s always best to find blueprints or cross-sections of the vehicle you’re making. Apply these to planes in 3ds Max as materials, and position the planes so you’ll be able to model in a 3D space between them and view from all angles.
02 BASE MODELLING
Start with a Plane that’s set to See-through under Object Properties. This allows you to see the blueprint, making it easy to move the edges and vertices, and match the image behind. Now convert the plane to an editable poly. Dragging and extending the edges and vertices, you can manipulate the plane to reflect the representation in the blueprint. Remember to orientate between the different views to create the 3D model. At this point you should start to see the 3D form take shape.
03 CREATE SECTIONS
Try to divide the model into sections that match the panel
lines of the car, for example the nose cone, engine cover and monocoque. Doing so will make the final model resemble the actual car, while on the contrary, making it all in one piece and adding lines as a texture or bump map is less likely to achieve the results required.
04 MIRROR AND WELD
Once you have the shape correct in editable poly, select the complete element and drag to clone it. Add a mirror modifier and once again convert to an editable poly. You need to position them together and weld the vertices down the centre to make it a solid piece. Repeat this process for each element of the model.
05 SMOOTH THE MODEL
Once the element is how you want it in terms of shape, add a Meshsmooth modifier, which will be used for a detailed model. Doing so helps remove blocky edges and is more in-keeping with the smooth, aerodynamic surfaces of an F1 car.
06 UNWRAP UVW
Add an Unwrap UVW modifier to the element. You can do this before you add the Meshsmooth modifier to make the process quicker and easier, but it may result in distorted textures, hence why I did this afterwards for this particular model.
There are different approaches to UVW mapping, but I usually select all the polygons, click the Mapping tab, and then Flatten Mapping using a 50-60-degree angle threshold. This divides the map up into decent-sized chunks, which you can then use to divide along panel lines or into better whole sections. Use either the Quick Peel or Relax option to flatten it out more appropriately.
07 TEXTURING
Now it’s time to bring the model to life, and one of the parts I enjoy the most: texturing. Export the element as an OBJ and import it into Mudbox. Add a Paint layer and export the Paint map into Photoshop. This will give you an unwrapped UVW as a mesh layer in Photoshop. You can do this to accurately lay out the texture
map. I’d recommend creating the textures at 4,000 x 4,000px, which is a good size for high-quality textures and limits pixelation.
08 ADD DETAILS
In this type of model, it’s recommended that you gather as much reference material as possible to aid with the details. In this example, there are small details such as the aerials, locking bolts on the engine cover, and a drinks tube for the driver to stay hydrated. All these small details help make the model feel real.
The engine and some of the internal workings are also added. Doing so helps when positioning the car for later renders as you never know what can be seen through the intake or the rear. It’s not a necessity, however, if you know it won’t be seen.
09 SCENE MODELLING
This render didn’t require too much scene modelling except for elements such as the tarmac, white line, curb, tyre barrier, and even a wall to help with creating realistic reflections and setting the location. In order to help make these small but important details, use substance maps alongside Vrayblendmtl with mask maps to create the dirt and colour variations found in the tarmac and curb.
10 REFLECTING REAL LIFE
To show that the car is moving, you want to replicate movement. It’s tempting to add too much, but when you look at actual images of a moving car, they don’t show that much movement as the camera keeps the car in focus unless it’s at high speed. You want to preserve the details in the model here, but do remember that it still requires some artistic licence when balancing with real life and what you would expect to see.
11 CREATE MOVEMENT
To create the desired movement, animate the wheels to roll forward along with the car moving a short distance. Add a physical camera to the scene and turn on the motion under the camera parameters. Doing so can render the motion blur. You can
later overlay this render to the unblurred render to create the desired motion.
12 HDRI ENVIRONMENT
Add a V-ray Dome light to the scene and bring in an HDRI map to a Vraybitmap. Also set the Mapping Type to Spherical, which sets the tone and reflections for the scene. There are plenty of free HDRI maps available online. A dusky racetrack version was used in this example as it kept the tone of the lighting darker and more in-keeping with the retro feel desired.
13 LIGHT THE SCENE
In addition to the V-ray dome light, two Vraylight Planes and Vraysun were also added to the scene. This combination helps with the realistic shadows and ensures the key areas of the model are lit. Turn down the sun and dome lighting to make sure that it doesn’t overpower the model.
14 RENDER SETTINGS
Depending on your machine, you can use V-ray to render the model. In this example I tried to render to a fairly large scale, approximately 6,000 x 4,000, and set a 180-minute render time for the overall image.
In the Render Setup window under the Global Switches tab, tick Override Depth and set the Minimum transparency to 50 and the Maximum level to 100. Also set the Light Cache Subdivs to around 3,000. You can play around with these to get your desired results.
15 CREATE THE DRIVER
You can create the driver’s overalls using the same method
as the car. It doesn’t need to be 100 per cent correct at this stage, nor does it need to be a high-poly model. Once you have created something close to what you want, Unwrap UVW the driver, export the model as an OBJ and import into Mudbox. This step could also be done in Zbrush.
16 DRIVER DETAILS
In Mudbox create a new Modelling layer and, using the Wax or Grab and Positioning tools, manipulate the driver to how you’d like. Now increase the subdivisions and, using the Repeat tool and appropriate stamps, you can add clothing creases and stitching to the overalls and gloves to make them more realistic. The stamps that I used to create the overalls were the 50 Seam Brushes Without Stitches (4K)+alpha -Vol 04, created by OMID Mousakhani, and the 20 Folds VDM Brush for Zbrush Vol.2 made by VK Gamedev.
17 RENDERING
When it comes to rendering, I always like to render out multiple passes: a clean standard render, an ambient occlusion version (which enhances shadows), a cloud texture (for the car to render an overlay as additional reflections), as well as renders of varying brightness. These will all be used as different overlays when we move on to the post-production process.
18 RENDER DETAIL
You can render key sections such as the driver using the Region render in the Render window. This creates a render of higher quality for that particular section. I also use the Render region section to improve texture, for example on the driver’s gloves, as the colour can block out some of the texture. In this case, you can re-render just the texture pattern on the gloves, which can then be faded in on top of the original gloves to make the texture more noticeable.
19 IMAGE EDITING
Once you have all the relevant renders completed, it’s time to compile them together. To do this, use Photoshop. Import all the renders in order with the ambient occlusion versions above set to Multiply. You should start to see the image come to life.
Add the motion blur render along with the high-quality render sections that you may have created. Finally, add a Curves or Levels adjustment layer to make sure that your colours pop. To really add the retro feel, you can import the final render into Adobe Lightroom, add a preset you like and adjust the lighting. With that, you’re done! •
“I WANTED TO CREATE A MORE POSITIVE IMAGE SHOWING HIM AT THE WHEEL, DOING WHAT I IMAGINE HE LOVED”
3D WORLD