Body

There were no blueprints for this GT1 version of GT-R, so I had to use a blueprint for the stock one and then turn the model into this modified GT1 version, which was not a big problem. That's where the spline cage came in handy. I used it mainly for snapping the vertexes during the modeling process. It helped me to keep the edges precise in case I needed to make dramatic changes to the mesh. The main differences between the stock and GT1 car was the width, side skirts, and huge amount of air intakes and outtakes.

I started by modeling a wheel arch from a disc object, and then made a low poly model of the body shell with basic modeling tools. After that was done I just added more edge loops where needed while keeping it all as smooth as possible. I ended up with dense mesh as the holes required a lot of polygons to be perfectly smooth (Fig.04). After the body was done I finished the rest of the car and added lights, windows and a simple interior.


Once the car model was finished, I created a simple parking lot and also covered the surface of the car with thousands of water drops, to make the renders look even more interesting and realistic. I modeled three different shapes of drops and then scattered them across the car using MoGraph (a Cinema 4D tool). It can also randomize the size, rotation and position of the instances (Fig.05).

Texturing and Shading

Another part that I enjoy is UV mapping. For me it is relaxing after the hard modeling work. For texturing I used Bodypaint and Photoshop. Since I used V-Ray for this project, I used V-Ray Advanced materials on most of the geometry. I also used Blend materials and V-Ray dirt, especially on the wheels, where I wanted to mix clean metal materials with layers of procedural dirt.

There are 8K textures used on the body of the car, as I knew from the very beginning that I was going to make close-up shots in the end. I wanted some of the stickers to look pasted onto the surface, so I created a bump map from the diffuse texture. The black part of the car livery had to be glossy so I created a map for that as well (Fig.06).