After my last project (and victory !), I wanted to start something different. Enough of british cars, enough of lightweights. It's time for muscle, lot of muscle, and lot of horsepower !

My goal for this project is to model as detailed as I can. Not every single nut and bolt, because I don't have access to some kind of assembly / dissambly guide, but at least the most detailed model I've done ever.

Based upon my Ariel Atom II model I did for the SMC contest "Light Is Right" (and which won the contest ;)), and because of some request for it, I made some orthographic views to use as blueprints.

The grid seen in background has 10cm steps. The model is unfinished but anyways it's the best blueprint for Ariel Atom 2 I have ever seen - as it's the only one I've seen !

Voting process is now completed at SMC for the Psychedelic 60's contest. And I'm very proud and honored to announce I won the contest.

Thanks to the whole SMC community, because I really feel like I've learnt there almost anything I know about CG and car modeling. Also, congratulations to Niray, who designed the medails for the official SMC contests.

I think I won't enter the next contest, because I really need more than 2 months to complete a project. So the next one will be a choice on my own : 2006 Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 Roadster.

Stay tuned for more information about it !

The 60's contest is now over at SMC. The voting process to choose the winner is started. 6 projects (including mine) have been submitted, with an impressive average level. The vote will be really tough.

Here're my final renders :

I also posted these pictures, as they show pretty well some features of the car :

Rendez-vous in one week for the results !

After the WZA contest, SMCars.net launched a new official contest, 60's cars.

Last year I spend some time on the Marcos 1800 GT and as it's a 60's car, I start it from scratch to enter this contest.
 Nice way to see if I really improved my skills during the 12 last months.

Here's a time-filling project I started, to keep me focused on modeling between two contests at SMCars.net, WZA and 60's.

This car is not so famous, but really original from the french car make Renault. Lightweight, 2 seats only, 150bhp 4strokes inline, 930kg. It sounds like a good recipe to me !

   

I posted about it at SMC : here's the thread. It's always nice to get useful feedback from such experienced artists.

Now I headed back to the Marcos 1800 GT for the 60's contest. I hope I'll find some time to work on it, and produce renders of the model.

The WZA contest came to an end, and it gaves us a wonderful winner : see the results at SMC.

Here are the renders I submitted as my official entry. Due to a lack of time, they aren't as good as I wanted, and even don't show the whole model with all weapons. But it has been a nice exercise for sure.

The deadline for the "When Zombies Attack" (a.k.a. WZA) contest at SMC is coming. So I get back to work on my SuperSeven entry.

The rendering process was really different for these pictures. Follow the jump to learn more about it and how to use it in your own projects.

I'm back with my last project. And it's a bit ... well ... different !

There is a new contest on www.smcars.net. After the lightweight cars contest I proposed (please see http://thomasbaron.net/posts/view/2004_ariel_atom_ii and http://thomasbaron.net/posts/view/ariel_atom_ii_looking_for_a_render_style), someone came with a new idea : design the vehicle you'll want to drive if the world were infested by zombies. And with the trend with zombies movies the last few years, the contest sounded as a good idea to many peoples. There is about 10 serious entries as of writing.

Here're some interesting advices and ressources to work with Blender as a precision tool.

That is, when you want to model anything with precision or accuracy to an existing object. Why bother with this ? Because I've learned to value the acuraccy of a car model as well as the simple beauty of a render. It's a matter of taste, and I just think it's more grateful to achieve an accurate model than to rush to produce something-looking-a-bit-like-but-not-really-the-same.

By the way, happy new year !

If you don't want to read much

For precision modeling, the shortest advice is : define yourself the scale you'll be using for your model. By writing this, I mean that there is no feature in Blender such as "define which size is a meter or a foot or a parsec or whatever length unit you can think of". There is only Blender units.

8448 alfaGT atom2 blender blueprints clay contest db9 enzo finishedWork gallardo interior laguna lego lighting lp640 marcos materials modeling rendering screenshot siteLife spiderRenault superSeven test texturing tips tutorials unwrapping wireframe workInProgress yaf(a)ray yafray

Blender Open, free and excellent
Yafray Open, free and wonderful renderer
BlenderNation Powerful news site dedicated to Blender
ScratchMadeCars Forum with great works inside and lots of blueprints
Blender Guide Repository for hundreds of Blender ressources