I wanted to do a quick comparison between my original attempt, the F1 2017 car and the Real Racing 3 models with their wireframes and just talk very quickly about the differences. I also include some shots of the car I have started, taking lessons from what has come before.
 |
| GP4 1995 mod |
So this is a little cringy for me looking back at one of my first works, but I suppose I have to look at the positive and think how I have improved from way back when. This is very low poly, very basic, and there are many elements that are simply not joined together. The nose is very basic and in fact it's just very generic. I couldn't quite marry up the top down view of the contours with the front view where the nose seems to be more shapely, but I'll focus on that in another post. The front wing has three elements and that is about all in its resemblance to the real car. The suspension is from Nick Ovey's Jordan, so it was an awful lot better than what I could have done at the time. The sidepod opening was reasonable enough, it's the most high poly part of the car. The rollover bar is pretty basic, and Tony who had mapped it had smoothed out some of the detail I had initially tried to incorporate (badly!). The rear wing isn't too bad, but the diffuser region is completely generic.
 |
| Codemasters F1 2017 |
As you can see, there are lots of polygons being used in this model and some of the detail is really nice. I've scaled it down to GP4 size, so that I can compare my version against this very detailed car.
 |
| Real Racing 3 |
By comparison, you can see immediately that there is a lot less polygons used in this model.
 |
| WIP |
So after a couple of days, I was able to get most of the main chassis completed. I would normally spent a bit of time trying to line things up against photos, spend ages looking at different angles trying to get the proportions right and the right level of smoothness. Because I have the other two cars in Zmodeler as a reference, it was quite straight forward to wrap my own work around the existing ones. I could also see how the professional modders manage their normals on tricky parts, like the cockpit area and sidepod opening. As I said in my opening post, the polygon structure will be very similar to the Real Racing version, but the contours will follow the F1 2017 model more closely.
 |
| GP4 1995 Mod |
As you can see, the original car had a very basic and generic rear end.
 |
| Codemasters F1 2017 |
From this angle you can see the level of detail placed on the rear of the rear of the car on the Codemasters car.
 |
| Real Racing 3 |
The rear racing 3 car doesn't have a rear wheel hub, is missing part of the rear winglet and bargeboards. The treatment of the rear of the sidepod is quite different, so I will have to look at some reference shots to compare which is the better solution. However, the car does have some nice detail at the rear of the car, around the suspension and gearbox area.
 |
| WIP |
I've made a start at the rear of the car, the hump at the rear of the engine cover may get tweaked as it wasn't the smoothest join I've ever done. Having looked at some photos, the bottom of the rear of the sidepod is quite smooth, so I've slightly gone my own way with that one. The key thing at this stage is to get the main shape as close to the real thing as possible, keeping an eye on proportions, checking as many angles as possible, because once you start adding details, it is much harder to change the whole shape after that. You can see how I try and make sure the majority of my polygons face the same way, though it's not perfect. I kind of treat it like stroking a furry cat. I hope you can see my slightly more efficient use of polygons and that the structure is very similar to the RR3 car, but that the shape is closer to the F1 2017 car.
