Making Of 'Ford GT40 In Vegas'

Hello everybody, my name is Luis E. Nieves. I am a digital artist currently working as Technical Director at Lightstream Animation Studios and based in northern California. In this Making Of I would like to share my workflow and also some tips with you. This project was done using Autodesk Maya, mental ray and Adobe After Effects.

I wanted to push myself and see how far I could go with this project, so I decided to build a piece capable of making an artistic statement. I didn't want to feel that it was just another 3D model. Being an automobile nut, I, like some of you, had the idea of building a car from the first to last bolt. For this kind of task I've found that a good set of blueprints is never enough. So I spent around a week collecting photographs before starting the modeling process and I was still collecting references at the end of the texturing and rendering steps.

If you are trying to make an above average model then I would advise starting with planes, boats or cars that have been restored. You will easily find categories, illustrations, schematics and diagrams of objects with historic meaning. For this image I quickly selected some of the GT-40 pictures I'd found during my research (Fig.01).

Fig. 01_photo_refrences

Fig. 01_photo_refrences

I usually try as much as possible to start from spline cages. It becomes very handy to have a tridimensional blueprint of your model; it will guide you when you're making decisions about size, position and where your components should be organized, even before you model the shell. Later on, you can use the spline curves to loft panels that will be the base mesh of your car body. Once I had my cage done, I started modeling the chassis using photo references (Fig.02).

Fig. 02_car_cage

Fig. 02_car_cage

The next step was modeling all the components that have a direct relationship with the chassis. I started by creating primitives to establish rotation and proportions, and then I went into detail using pictures. Here I used techniques like nurbs revolves, lofts and extrusions that I then turned into polygons later on. Finally, I used lattice and nonlinear deformers to achieve the desired shapes (Fig.03 - 05).

Fig. 03_suspension_wheels

Fig. 03_suspension_wheels

Fig. 04_car_motor_brakes

Fig. 04_car_motor_brakes

Fig. 05_car_engine

Fig. 05_car_engine

After I'd finished all the components, I moved on to the interior. As you may notice, at this point I had already started a rough lighting and rendering process. It is a good idea to shade with a high specularity material, so your mistakes show up and all the annoying bumps and pinches are easier to identify and clean (Fig.06).

Fig. 06_car_chasis

Fig. 06_car_chasis

Now it was time to start with the body shell panels. These are the visible parts of the car; those that sell your model and where you can't lie. In this particular case, the blueprints had a chronic lack of precision, so I decided to set up several cameras using the tumble, track, dolly, zoom and roll options. By watching image planes through different cameras, it gave me a far better approach to the real deal than just my blueprints. I modeled the body as a whole and then broke up the panels following the design. You can cut using the split polygon tool and then get rid of the triangles relatively easily. Working with even spaced topology gives you better reflections while rendering and beveling all your edges keeps the separations between panels perfectly clean (Fig.07 - Fig.09).

Fig. 07_car_concept

Fig. 07_car_concept

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Fig. 08_car_mesh

Fig. 08_car_mesh

Fig. 09_car_model

Fig. 09_car_model

I always manage my work as a pipeline; I set a direction to follow and I stick to it until I finish every stage of the project. For instance, I don't shade my model if it's not completely done. To start another level of the job is distracting, so it is important to keep my attention and efforts always pointing to my north.

The next step was painting the model. Good UVs give you good guides for your textures. In order to unwrap my geometry as best as possible, I combined Headus UV layout with the regular UV texture editor tools available in Maya (try the new interactive smooth UV tool, it works great) (Fig.10 - 11).

Fig. 10_car_model

Fig. 10_car_model

Fig. 11_uv_texture

Fig. 11_uv_texture

The texturing process was again based more or less on the pictures I had collected. It was very important for me to portray the real car in high detail, so I made all the logos, titles in the cables, decals, dials, tags and stickers that every object required. I even painted some chalk writing on the tires, dirt and scratches here and there to get rid of the CG look that sometimes is too perfect (Fig.12).

Fig. 12_engine_parts

Fig. 12_engine_parts

For the rendering process, I used mental ray image-based lighting. The reflections, light and color are coming from an HDRi picture set I recently shot in Vegas. I placed a chrome sphere within my mentalrayIblShape node to test my settings (be sure the reflections are facing the right direction). I used the camera tools I mentioned before to match my car and the back plate shot in terms of perspective and size. The result I achieved is coming directly from MR, I didn't make passes or compositing. Finally, I added some post production enhancement and color correction using Adobe After effects (Fig.13).

Fig. 13_vegas

Fig. 13_vegas

And here's the final image (Fig.14).

Fig. 14
 

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