GP4: 1996 McLaren MP4/11 walkaround part 1

The first 1996 car ever released in GP4 was Eugenio's McLaren, which included a Monaco GP version with the winglet on the engine cover. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of that car, and I can't find any screenshots of it neither. If I remember correctly, he was working on an updated version years later but was not able to complete it, and so I stepped in and took over. I found this picture lying around, where the white parts of the car were all of Eugenio's work.

If you look carefully and compare the above shot to the end results below, you can see I did quite a lot of modification to it. It's always quicker when there was quite a lot of the car there already. I started by doing quite a bit of work on changing proportions to be more consistent with my other 1996 cars and also with photos as a base. After I was happy with the main shape and proportions, I got to work adding details to it.

This is another car painted by Celinho and this would be the final Marlboro liveried McLaren, having raced in the red and white scheme since the early 1970s.

There was a B spec version of the car that appeared late on in the season, the most notable change from the outside is that the front wing supports are angled rather than straight. This small change is included in the 1996 mod, although the mid-wing was never added. The camera also seems to have gone missing.

Anyway, I'm really pleased with how the shape worked out in the end. My thanks go to the contributors, with Quickslick and Soulbringer having an input too. Eugenio did a great job on the main shape and it was a pleasure to bring this car to completion.

I can't remember exactly, but this was certainly among one of the first 1996 cars that I was involved with completed after the Forti and Minardi. I added suspension (common parts from other 1996 cars) the cockpit, the engine and gearbox, the mirrors and added details such as the hump on the rollover bar and the body lines.

I also did quite a bit of work in smoothing out the normals. If you look at the first shot, there's lots of odd shadows on the flat surfaces and where the light bounces off in an odd way. This is an area I felt I helped improve.

In the next post, we will begin to look at some of the detailed work that's gone into this car.

Here's the car in rfactor 2.