GP4: 1996 Footwork Arrows FA17 walkaround part 3

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. 

GP4: 1996 Footwork Arrows FA17 walkaround part 2

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. 

That's it for this post, more to come soon. 

GP4: 1996 Footwork Arrows FA17 walkaround part 1

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.