This is part 3 of my walkaround, as we begin to look at some of the details of this 1996 Footwork Arrows FA17 shaped by me, with Soulbringer, Kedy89 and AUS_Doug all helping to compelte this car. This car forms part of the 1996 mod for GP4, and has subsequently been converted to other games such as rFactor 2 and Assetto Corsa.
Footwork ran quite a rounded sidepod. Look at the bottom of the sidepod inlet, how it is rounded to let the air under the sidepod. The gradient then becomes more square as you get the join with the floor at the rear, and again I wanted to merge the sidepod smoothly with the floor which a nicely rounded. The sidepods show an undercut or sorts. The top of the sidepod shape was not flat, infact the contours at the bottom of the cockpit side protection and the top of the sidepod are not the same. So the top the sidepod has a different cross section as you progress from the front to the rear. This wasn't easy to get right and also to get the normals to look natural here was tricky too.
As mentioned previously, I'm happy with how the rollover hoop merges smoothly onto the engine cover section, again this was an area I wanted to perfect in my modelling. The rear wing is quite standard, with Footwork being one of very few teams to colour the inside of the rear wing endplates.
Here's a wireframe shot of the rear of the car, just to show some of the contours and details of the rear that would otherwise be missed. Again there weren't too many shots of this area of the car, but I like how it turned out. There was a big fat exhaust at the back, but there's no fancy blown diffuser on this car. You can see how the sidepod cooling outlet at the top separates that flow from the exhaust. The diffuser is nothing special again other than the kink along the top of the central section.
Finally, here's a quick view of the internals of the car. I wanted to get some of the larger parts of the pipes and other larger details in there to give some interest, some of this more close to the 1997 car which I could find some internal photos of.
Well that's it for the Footwork FA17 walkaround, and indeed the 1996 walkaround of my cars. I hope you guys enjoyed it, look out for more insights into my more recent work.
This is part 2 of my walkaround, as we begin to look at some of the details of this 1996 Footwork Arrows FA17 shaped by me, with Soulbringer, Kedy89 and AUS_Doug all helping to compelte this car. This car forms part of the 1996 mod for GP4, and has subsequently been converted to other games such as rFactor 2 and Assetto Corsa.
Footwork ran quite a bulky nose cone and monocoque section. The front wing supports are slightly angled back, and the front wing endplates are looking to generate an outwash effect, whilst most the other teams were looking to direct the air towards the inside of the front tyre.
Footwork also ran a small barge board in the front suspension, looking to stop any turbulent air from the front wheels from disrupting the flow under the nose. I've shown the wireframe in the shot above, again you can see how I put lots of rows of polygons to get the right normals. You can see the body lines too have lots of rows of polygons too. The top of the cockpit, above the driver's legs, is almost indented.
The main barge board is quite small in comparison, very similar to the one it ran the previous year. Behind that and Footwork are trying to maximise the undercut at the bottom of the cockpit section, an Adrian Newey concept from his March days.
I was in the routine to creating unique cockpit dashboards at that time, though this was quite primitive back then. I'm glad that Kedy has brought some colour to the buttons. You can see the odd indent on the top of the cockpit clearer from this angle, presumably encouraging the air downwards towards the sidepods and under the car.
Footwork also ran remarkably high cockpit side protection. These were not always easy to get right, but I enjoyed getting this to look smooth and seamless and the reflections look good off it too. The head rest behind the driver, usually I wouldn't join it to the main shape, but here I went the extra mile and blended it in. I've also included the hole on the top of the rollover bar, this was for the cranes to wrap around the rollover bar so that it could be easily craned away.
This Footwork Arrows car would be my final contribution to the 1996 mod and in theory the shape that bests represents my modelling techniques that I have picked up along the way at that time. Credits go to Soulbringer for mapping, Kedy89 for the textures and I believe AUS_Doug was involved with the shadows.
I was really pleased with how this car turned out, on the shape side on my part, and also on the rest of the work to bring it to completion, the early season Footwork livery being my preferred livery before TWR brought Power Horse sponsorship with him and a new livery for the car.
I'd learnt by now how to proportion the car, making sure the dimensions match the other 1996 cars in terms of width and height in particular. A bug bear of mine from the early days when multiple car shapers were active, there was not much consistency in that regard, so I wanted to make sure that for the 1996 cars they were consistent throughout.
There weren't, at that time, many good photographs of the rear and the internals, so there was a bit of artistic license employed if I remember correctly. I really wanted to make this car as smooth as possible, and I was perfecting my normals management, that's probably most evident where the rollover bar attaches to the side head protection/engine cover.
It's been a long time since I wrote one of these, but this is the final one of my cars from 1996, so I look forward to enjoying the detail with you over the next couple of blog posts.
In the meantime, here's a video of a converted version of the car in rFactor2.
One of the things that gripped me about F1 when I was starting out was a Ferrari victory at Monza was something special to behold.
In 1994, the Ferrari's had their strong V12 engine in the back of the 412T1B, and with Schumacher banned in the Benetton, it was an opportunity for victory with Alesi taking pole position, but Hill took a much needed win to close on the championship battle as Berger came home in second.
In 1995, the race Coulthard span out on the warm up lap from pole position, but a red flag on the first lap gave him another opportunity, but a wheel bearing failure meant he retired early on. Hill, in the other Williams, took out Schumacher in the Benetton and that meant the main front runners were out of the race, with Alesi and Berger leading the race comfortably. But it was all too brief, as Alesi's camera fell off his car, and in the process damaged Berger's suspension and he had to retire. With 7 laps to go, Alesi's car also had wheel bearing issues, with flames visible in the wheel at one stage.
In 1996, Hill crashed out early from the lead, hitting the clumsy tyre wall on the side curb. Villeneuve's Williams was somewhat off the pace, and Schumacher, in his debut Ferrari year, led Alesi's Benetton home to a popular victory for Ferrari in Monza, and the celebration was awesome. For me, I got caught up with the emotions and that victory lives long in my memory.
So for Ferrari fans who have not witnessed a Ferrari victory at Monza since 2010, it has been long overdue, it introduced newer fans to one of the best things about F1 that comes by all too rarely.
Qualifying was amusing to watch, it was always going to happen, with such a premium placed on slip-streaming, that the majority of cars would run out of time to begin their timed lapped. We don't want this to become a common occurrence on the fast tracks, but it was amusing that for all the money and effort and time and thousands of employees to put the best drivers in the world on the track for qualifying and the majority don't make it around on time to get a lap in. There's a brilliant comparison video on the F1 Youtube channel with the benefits of the slip-stream clear to see. In the end, Leclerc got pole by the slimmest of margins, and had Raikkonen not gone off at the last corner, it might have been a Mercedes one-two.
There was an overwhelming will for Leclerc to win in Belgium, because of the tragedy of the day before, but I think there were still quite a majority that willed Leclerc to do it again, in a Ferrari, at the Italian Grand Prix, and to witness that joys of the emotional, fanatical and passionate Tifosi. We know the Ferrari is harder on its tyres, but at the same time, they had such an advantage on the straights, but the Mercedes were always going to be a threat.
Hamilton'sMercedes chased Leclerc through the first stint and into the second stint. Leclerc wasn't faultless, on lap 23, Hamilton was alongside into the second chicane, but Leclerc came across and edged Hamilton off the track. Leclerc was given a 'yellow card' warning, a 'do not do that again' message that was new for this race. It seems to me that you're allowed to push the boundaries once and get a warning i.e. absolutely no consequence at all.
On lap 36, Leclerc locks up into the first chicane, and around Curva Grande pretty much weaved in front of Hamilton, blocking any further attempts into the second chicane. We got nothing from the stewards on that. Hamilton has used up his tyres by lap 42, and locked up into turn 1, giving Bottas the chance to chase Leclerc. But, honestly, if Hamilton couldn't do it, what is Bottas going to do? Run deep into turn 1 and have no meaningful attempt at getting alongside Leclerc. So Leclerc won with a fiesty drive, and deservedly so. He took the good-will of the questionable consistency of the stewards, and became a Ferrari hero (if he wasn't one already!).
However, on the other side of the Ferrari garage, Vettel had another one of those days. He was hard done by in qualifying, that's probably fair to say, being caught up in the traffic on his turn to get a tow. But he's in charge of his own car at the end of the day, and it's your own fault for not getting to the line in time, whatever the agreement is in place. And then in the race, he lost it... again! How many times are we going to say that. Since France 2018, he has lost the car, on average, once every three races. His recovery was just plain dangerous, but understandably sitting still was also dangerous. I don't know why the radio or the marshalls weren't more reactive in telling him when it was clear to go. He clumsily hit Stroll as he went past, and in turn Stroll did the same to Gasly (though Stroll was sitting on the track whereas Vettel was mostly on the grass). I felt the penalty was fair, understanding that all this safety around the cockpit is really hampering safety due to lack of visibility. But once again, it all happened fundamentally because Vettel lost the car. He's now three points away from a ban in three races. Ferrari have got to get a reserve driver ready. I respect Vettel, and it's a tricky car, so perhaps next year's car might be more suited to him, but on the evidence of his driving for over a year now, does he really deserve that top drive? He's had the benefit of doubt a fair too many times now.
Both Renaults had a good weekend, but Daniel Ricciardo in particular was super fast. He claimed Renault's best result for years, having dropped behind Hulkenberg at the start, but passed him by lap 7. They finished fourth and fifth, good work for this weekend, closing in on McLaren, but I suspect fortunes will reverse when we get to Singapore.
Kvyat and Sainz were both having good drives until various issues outside of their control retired their cars.
Perez had another strong run in the Racing Point. Gasly had a good day too, though he punted Grosjean off in turn 1, and was unlucky to be forced off by a rejoining Stroll and lost time when Grosjean had his spin on lap 7, he was running ahead of Perez at that stage and could have finished strongly in the points. Gasly has had two strong runs now, a completely different situation from his Red Bull days.
It's difficult to judge Giovinazzi's performance when Raikkonen had probably the worst weekend of his career (off in FP1, Q3 and 10 second stop-go penalty in the race), but at least the Italian finished in the points at his home race.
Formula 1 is on a wave of good races, and with Red Bull and Ferrari looking strong on various tracks coming up, we should see some more fantastic racing as Hamilton continues to swan towards his inevitable sixth Championship.
This part 3 of my walkaround as we begin to look at some of the details of the 1996Tyrrell024 shaped by me, mapped by Soulbringer and painted by Kedy89.
The chassis was quite a reasonable chassis, but the Yamaha engine was under powered and it was not particularly reliable.
Here is a shot of the rear of the cockpit, the side head protection and the rollover bar/engine cover. In terms of modelling, it's one of my favourites in terms of getting the shape and proportions correct, as well as getting flat surfaces merged by smooth curved normals. Essentially, how the light reflects off the body of the car around this region is 'natural'.
Here is a wireframe shot of the front of the sidepods. It's not always the easiest to join the sidepod onto the main body of the car. The top of the sidepod joins to the side of the cockpit and it's not easy to get good looking normals here. Then as the sidepod curves around it joins to the floor at the bottom. You have to watch the curve on the floor is in line with the curve on the top of the sidepod from the top-down view, as the regulations state that from underneath the car, you shouldn't be able to see any bodywork.
Moving to the rear of the sidepods, and there is a small undercut, and a lip on the top. The shape of the top of the sidepod is quite curved, essentially to try and make it as much like a wing as possible. You can see how it is more of a bump than a smooth curve.
Looking from the top down at the rear of the engine cover, you can see the lip and how it works with the winglet. Like the 1995 car, the gearbox housing is quite small, with this bulge at the rear to house it. In terms of managing normals, you have the top of the sidepod, the remains of the side head protection, the rollover bar and the bump all to integrate neatly together. You can see where I've put lots of parallel polies to try and make sure the normals of one part doesn't effect the normals on the others.
From here you can see that the rear suspension also has it's unique coverings, working with the rear of the engine cover to work with the diffuser. It's not new, with the Ligier and Benetton having similar solutions in 1996 and previous years.
The rear of the Tyrrell is quite neat and simple, compared to some of the other 1996 contenders at least. At the time, I always liked the look of the double pylons supporting the upper rear wing.
Looking at the internals of the car, Kedy89 has done a nice job with the textures. I was experimenting with the engine cylinders at the time, of the midfield teams they were all unique, and you can see how bulky the Yamaha ones were. I didn't want to throw too many polygons at it at the time, but if I was to revisit it, I would probably be a bit more generous to make it look a bit smoother.
I didn't want to go overboard with detail at the rear of the car, but enough to make it interesting and the main parts of the rear suspension, the gearbox housing and the engines and radiators being included.
I found a video of a conversion of the car straight into F1C to compare with previous posts.
This part 2 of my walkaround as we begin to look at some of the details of the 1996Tyrrell024 shaped by me, mapped by Soulbringer and painted by Kedy89.
The front wing endplate is quite a standard version on the 1996 grid. The front wing supports are the widest ones on the grid. After pioneering the high nose, the Tyrrell team had returned to a low nose solution for several years, but they developed this nicely sleek nose and monocoque for 1996.
There's a slight bump on the top of the monocoque where the nose cone joins to the main chassis. The team started the season with a normal barge board just in front of the sidepods, but developed a smaller version just behind the front wing to work in conjunction with the upper suspension housing.
Here is a wireframe shot of the front of this car. The underside of the monocoque narrows as it reaches the floor.
Here is a shot of the cockpit from the drivers point of view. Kedy89 has done a nice job with the textures, highlighting some of the 3D details of the cockpit. I wonder why they put the aerial off centre, I don't know if that is more distracting or less distracting than if it was central.
I managed to find this conversion to Automoblista. At least for this one, putting on the early season suspension they amended the textures and removed the shadow. But there are things that you can tell are signs that it's my car with some updates, like my low-poly aerials and mirrors from the cockpit view.
The 1996Tyrrell024 was probably one of my favourite looking cars from 1996. It was a little sad to see so few sponsors on the mostly white car, but I did enjoy the Japanese GP livery in particular with the increased tobacco advertising. It gave me a particular impetus to make this car as nice as I could make it, little did I know at the time that it would be one of my last cars I would create for the 1996 mod.
This car, like the Ligier, was mapped by Soulbringer and painted by Kedy89 and I am truly appreciative that these great artists were able to help out on one of my cars, I'm really pleased with the end result of this car.
Harvey Postlethwaite, the team's head designer, was churning out some interesting designs and ideas for the cash-strapped team, from innovating the high noses in 1990, to swapping the front and rear wheels in Hockenheim practice 1995, to the X-wings in 1997.
The 1995 car had a particularly small rear end, and that concept is further refined in the 1996 car. The sidepod concept had changed from the 1995 car, with the upper element being quite curved, which wasn't easy to get right. Most of the sidepods you see are usually flat rather than slightly tapered, being lower on the outer edges and higher when it meets the engine cover.
One of the stand out things that appeared on the Tyrrell 024 mid-season was the suspension coverings over the top wishbones, both front and rear. The concept remains unique to this car, not being seen on any other car since.
With the car being mostly white in the early part of the season, it was important to make the car as smooth as possible, as any blemishes will show up more obviously. In fact in the shot above, the top of the sidepods just under the winglets show a couple of shadows that are a result of me not quite having the time to fix it. But looking at the smoothness of the engine cover and the side head protection, that's an area that I'm quite pleased with from a normals perspective.
If I remember correctly, the 1993 Tyrrell was already mostly completed by the time I started out on this car, so it was interesting when I got to the internal parts whether there were any transferable parts, mostly using it as a reference for places where I did not have particularly good photos of. In the end, I think the 1997 car was being used in the BOSS series and there were some good shots of the internals from that car, so that was what I used as a reference for this car mainly.
Once again, here is a clip of ta converted version of my car going around Monaco in rFactor 2. What's interesting to me about this conversion is that they put the normal suspension on, but they didn't take away the shadow from the textures.
Whilst I have the F1 2013 version of the 1996FerrariF310 in Zmodeler, I thought I would do a bonus article having a look at their car. As mentioned in my previous post, the car is made by professionals who probably had access to more source material than I would personally have time to find myself. They also had less to worry about in terms of polygon count so they could throw much more resource into the car that we are limited to in GP4. So the cars in F1 2013 are incredibly accurate, and more detailed than what GP4 might be able to handle.
This is the low nose version of the car, and you can see how the nose itself is slightly raised from the front wing as mentioned in my previous posts. The front wing as added detail on the vanes with a joining support wire. This model has 3D bodylines, as my cars also do. You can see that there is more detail on the suspension and the wheel hub. The smaller bargeboard hidden in the suspension is beautifully done, as it's not quite straight, but looks almost warped, a nice touch.
The nice work on the bodylines can be see in this shot above. The integration of the rear of the side head rest protection is nicely done, with the front part being quite flat, whilst it is much more curved by the fuel cap and rearwards from there. The head protection itself is wonderfully detailed. The seat is nicely recreated, though there's not too much else in the cockpit worth mentioning.
The rear of the car has some lovely details and I wanted to show the wireframe so that you can see some of the details and modelling techniques used to create them. One of the things I try and do is to make sure all my polygons face the same way, |\|\|\|\|, where as there's some difference on this car around the rollover bar.
There's some nice detail on the hump at the rear of the engine cover, and the suspension pickup points. The rear fin has some nice detail as does the rear wing itself.
When I said the GP4 car took a few liberties in the diffuser region, it was to this car I was comparing it to, which from what i can tell from pictures is much more accurate and well proportioned. You can see some of the complexities of the rear suspension from this angle and how tightly packaged it all is, something you don't necessarily appreciate unless you try and make it yourself.
Finally here's a nice shot of the car where you can see the detail on the seat, the hump in front of the cockpit with bodylines on it, must have taken a while to get that right. The conversion to 3DS format has knocked the normals a bit, so the sidepods don't look as smooth as it does in game.
I think it looks great in game. If this car was to make it into a newer game, I'd expect to see more polygons and more details than before, particularly on the insides and the cockpit which are lacking a little in detail in F1 2013. I hope you enjoyed this slight detour from my regular postings, but I always try and follow modern techniques to further improve myself and my modelling.
For the third part of the walkaround, I will be looking at the cockpit, the rear of the car, and some of the internal parts of the 1996FerrariF310 created by Nick Ovey and Ebi Attard. If you missed the first two parts, you can read them here, part 1 and part 2.
The cockpit is pretty basic, at a time in GP4 when there wasn't really much attention put into making cockpits accurate, as the in cockpit view used a generic model for all cars. Some nice touches are the onboard camera, as placing the camera on top of the rollover bar started to become the norm in 1996.
The wireframe is shown on the shot above, so that you can compare some of the techniques used on this car compared to some of my cars of a later period. The same philosophy applies with more polygon usage around curved regions, whilst large polygons are used for flat surfaces.
The Ferrari were one of the teams caught out with the side head-rest protection regulation, new for 1996. They had the highest of all the teams, something that affected the flow to the airbox above the drivers head, and it was common to see Schumacher and Irvine to drive down the straights with their head as over to the side as they could manage.
Moving onto the rear of the car and this is an area where perhaps artistic license ruled over accuracy, though it is not bad by any means.
There have been some lovely photos of the car with its engine cover off, so it was good to see that faithfully recreated on this car. whilst it is basic and a lot of it covered by the radiators, it's good enough for you to get an idea of what is there. Ferrari were quite unique in that they didn't run a black airbox, with the prancing horse featuring prominently on it.
Here is a shot of the inside of the car from the rear. For comparison, I have a screenshot of the F310 created for F1 2013. It's a shame that the car doesn't make it into the classic part of the 2018/19 game.
As you can see, the 2013 model uses many more polygons and attempts far more detail but the proportions are pretty similar. What I'm saying is that though the GP4 car, created by amateurs and aiming for less detail, have done a fantastic job and holds up well against the F1 2013 version which was created by professionals with probably better source material to work from.
The high nose created by the Ferrari is very reminiscent of the Minardi high nose adopted in 1995, with the bulbous undersection and the angled supports. Personally I loved the look. The front wing is simple but accurate, Ferrari running three elements, which wasn't unique or new, but most other teams ran simple two element front wings.
New rules for 1996 meant that the front wing endplates must be rounded to avoid punctures on collision. Ferrari's version is notably quite rounded. You can see the vanes underneath the front wing and the undercut at the rear of the endplate, something they had developed on their 1995 car. The nose should have been easy to integrate, but I had to make a slight adjustment to the top of the nose and the angle to make sure the high nose was not too low. The textures are nicely integrated with the shape with the bodylines and how the suspension connects with the monocoque.
Moving towards the cockpit, there is the small bump in front of the cockpit. This I believe is to do with a regulation with the steering wheel, that as the steering wheel turns, the wheel must not exceed the height of the monocoque.
You can see the bargeboards on the F310 and the floor as it guides the air underneath the sidepod and towards the diffuser.
Here is a close up of the underneath of the sidepod, nicely done by Nick and Ebi. The curvature of the top of the sidepod is spot on for me.
Here is the front of the sidepod, again I think this is beautifully done and kept at a very low polygon count, whilst keeping lovely smooth normals.
Next up in my walkaround series from the GP4 1996 mod is this one. The FerrariF310 I wasn't really involved in, the main shape and work being done by Nick Ovey and Ebi Attard. I only got involved with helping them get the car in-game and creating the high nose, so that will be the car that I will review. If I remember correctly, this car was released years after the original McLaren, but a little before the Benetton by Oggo. So in my review, it's not for me to judge it according to the standards of some of my later works when I was pushing the boundaries of accuracy.
The car has good proportions overall, and is a pretty accurate shape. The car has lots of nice source photographs so that you can get some really good reference shots for modelling. What I did forget to update on this car was the rear winglet endplate, which should have been updated from the early season version.
If you notice from my other cars from the front and rear views is that everything lines up nicely, the width of the front wings, the sidepods etc. Sadly on this car the rear winglets exceed the width of the rest of the car.
The John Barnard designed Ferrari for 1996 season was known as the truck, because of how it handled, perhaps not fitting for the arrival of double World ChampionSchumacher. Somehow, he managed to eek out three victories in a car that didn't deserve to be challenging the Williams at all.
The car started out the season with a low nose, though the nose itself was slightly raised giving more surface area to the front wing. This concept was ditched by the Canadian Grand Prix. There was no change to the main chassis to accommodate this, so the high nose had to be raised from the bulkhead forwards, which led to the slightly awkward bulbous shape. Compare this to the F310B for the 1997 season when nose and chassis were designed together in a more tightly fitted and slender and sleek shape.
Barnard also returned to a raised sidepod, something similar to the double floor concept tried (and failed) on the 1992 car. From this angle, you can see the sidepod is completely separated from the floor until the very rear.
