My senior undergraduate capstone project at Texas A&M University. The project is based on my research thesis of "Advertisements and the Use of CGI in Realistic Showcasing".
The project was made using Autodesk Maya, Substance Painter, and Unreal Engine.
BREAKDOWN
Reference Gathering
Warping Pass
Front Wing Warping
Slight Warping to Break Perfect Straight Line
Rear Wing Warping
MODELING
To model the Formula 1 car I first gathered many references to have a better understanding of the car's form. I then created a general form in Maya's 3D space using NURBS curves to act as a guide to help myself visualize the car's body. I then used planes to model the block-out version of the model based on the curves. I further refined the model, adding geometry when needed.
When the model was "finished", I made a few warp passes on the geometry where I would slightly warp the model to give it a better sense of realism. I made sure to warp the wings the most since gravity and many forces would have warped them the most in the real world. I also moved some vertices on longer spans of the car to break the perfectness of CGI.
Design 01
Design 01
Design 02
Design 02
Design 03
Design 03
UE Car Shader
UE Substance painter Texture Maps
UE Clear Coat Manipulation
SURFACING
I decided to use Adobe Substance 3D Painter to surface the car and iterate through livery designs. Initially I wanted the car to stay true to only Aggie maroon and white, but I found it made the livery plain so I added more color. The colors of the sponsor logos played a factor in giving life to the car's design. I used the yellow of 'Wells Fargo' to bring out the car number on the side of the car.
For the main maroon paint I added some flakes to the texture with a metallic component to them so the will stand out when light would be applied. The stars on the back of the car have a gradient roughness on them to further separate their design from the similar maroon of the car.
In Unreal Engine, I applied the texture maps from Substance onto the body of the car. I then added a Clear Coat shader onto the car to give the paint a more finished look. I masked parts of the clear coat with custom texture maps to keep some of the car without the clear coat. I also used a texture map to mask some of the clear coat roughness to show some subtle water dried marks, further playing into the realism of the race car.
Rendering
I used Unreal Engine's Sequencer to create the shots and lighting for the project. I intended to keep the cinematography simple since the body of the car was the focus and I wanted all attention to it. I rendered using the Movie Render Queue with 64 subsamples to get the cleanest renders possible.
Car Turntable
