GP4: 1995 Ferrari 412T2 WIP 5

This will be my last WIP update until I finish the car I think, so time to concentrate near the rear end of the car.

GP4 1995 Mod

First up as always is my original 1995 car. As mentioned in the previous posts, Tony (b-tone) had simplified the car before mapping it. The rear wing was not bad.

RR3

Moving onto the Real Racing car, and you can see there is a lot more detail than my original car. There's an additional hole in the engine cover as part of the launch spec. You can see the vents clearly modelled here. The rear wing only has one set of winglets. It is however missing the two bumps near the back of the engine cover.

F1 2017

 The F1 2017 car is very beautifully modelled and pretty accurate.

WIP

For my car, I have more or less followed the contours of the F1 2017 car. Actually, I think the rear end is a little short on the Codies car, so I've extended the rear out a little bit. The vents have 3D grills, just to make them a bit more pronounced. I was tempted to model the late-season winglets, but for simplicity and time, I decided to go with the early season version which I prefer anyway. I don't think you can quite see it from this angle, but there's a nice bit of detail on the leading edge of the rear wing endplates.



Moving onto the rear end of the car, and here's where there isn't much commonality.

GP4 1995 Mod

My original car, has a generic rear end, I can't remember where it was from. It was just bolted on and I built my Ferrari over the top of it.

RR3

The RR3 car extends a little further rearward than the F1 2017 car. Though the diffusers are based on the same early season version, their detail is quite different. They have a put a lot of cables in there which makes it look good, but I can't find any good photos of the area to know whether to copy it or not.
The central diffuser section is great, as is how the rear wing supports integrate with it. But the outboard parts of the diffuser is where I think this falls down. Firstly, it goes too high, it goes too far rearward (should only go the rear axle) and they haven't bothered integrating the lower rear suspension arms, so it just goes through it. The upper arms also penetrate through the rear wing endplates. It's a shame because some of the rear of the car is fantastic. It's also missing the exhaust outlet.

F1 2017

There is also lots of detail on the damage model of the F1 2017 car, although I don't think you get to see much of it in-game. The rear suspension is beautifully modelled, and the exhaust nicely slotted in. The central diffuser section is the same as the RR3 car, though there's less cables. The outboard diffuser area also extends past the rear axle, but I can see that they've done that to fit the lower rear suspension arms in front of the thick end of the wedge shape. The other thing to note is the floor just in front of the rear wheels is quite narrow for some reason, it doesn't line up with the sidepod from top-down view.

WIP

My car is still a work in progress and I've consulted as many photos as I could find, which I've tried to avoid to speed up the process, but I can't help myself. So I've gone for the late season version of the diffuser, with the central section quite standard but with a slot in the central section. The underside of the rear wing endplates has half-holes cut out ready for the suspension when I model it. The outboard diffuser section is as per the rules and pictures that I could find and the rear axle already modelled so that I could line up the diffuser with it. The width of the floor fixed. I will need to introduce a cut out of the rear end of the outboard diffuser so that the lower suspension arms can fit past it. I've also not finished the rear of the bodywork, nor the underside, and I also might add a little more detail like suspension springs and more cables.

GP4: 1995 Ferrari 412T2 WIP 4

In today's WIP update, I wanted to show you the cockpit area. As those who have been modding or plays with mods in GP4 will know, the in cockpit view is a generic shape with a 2D steering wheel with no arms, and that the outboard steering wheels are also 2D as well as 2D driver arms with no good views. So it limits what you can model and play with a little. It's an area I notice on other games that have come on a long way from when I was heavily involved in GP4 modding, so I have included a much more detailed cockpit even though it may not be as well appreciated in-game, at least in this blog there is an outlet to show it to you.

GP4 1995 Mod

Back when the 1995 mod was in development, there were a lot of shared parts, the cockpit being one of them and it allowed cars to be produced much quicker. I think the 1995 generic cockpit is on over 50% of the cars in that mod. The surroundings of the cockpit was also very simple, with a token driver body model.

RR3 (in cockpit)

In looking at the Real Racing 3 files, they too have a more detailed cockpit shape (pictured) and a less detailed, low poly version for the main car. Interestingly, the mirrors are much larger on the in-cockpit view model than on the outside of the car. The dashboard is incredibly detailed, and there is the driver model from the waist down. There is a nice steering wheel though it's not pictured. The cockpit surrounds has this horse-shoe shaped lip across the front of the sidepod, but the inside of the cockpit seems like a little random to me, but the main car has a better modelled seat.

F1 2017

The first thing that jumped out to me about the Codemasters car was the giant mirrors, they are quite exaggerated. The dash is neat and tidy and very detailed, but there's an incredible amount of detail on the steering wheel mount. The seat is much more defined and a proper attempt at the inside of the cockpit compared with the RR3 car.

WIP

GP4 is perhaps not the game to put lots of detail in the cockpit, but with GP4Tweaker, it is possible to get a reasonable cockpit view by amending one of the onboard cameras, but its a little tricky.
The dash is very similar to the 412T1B which I did for GP4, and actually quite a bit of that I used photos for this car as an additional reference. But I decided not to recycle any of those parts and create it from new. Dials and buttons are red to highlight them. The steering wheel mount is a simplified version of the F1 2017 car. From the pictures I've seen, the right side under the dash was a little different from the Codies car, so that is unique to my car. The mirrors are also resized and I think more realistic to the pictures I've seen - they are more rectangular and deeper.

Incidentally since taking this screenshot, I noticed that the top of the monocoque from this angle and also from the T-cam view did not look particularly smooth, so I've since tweaked my poly placement.

Also I tried my generic driver body model and it did not fit in this car. Interestingly in Jean Alesi's interview on the F1 podcast, he mentioned that his unique way of holding the steering wheel at 10 and 2 o'clock positions was a way to fit his arms in the car more than anything else. I was looking to do a new driver body model for my stunted 1994 Williams, so I may do that with this car but lose the upper arms which I have modelled in the past. Anyway, I think I need to put some attention to making the cockpit a little wider.


Moving onto the rear head protection and the seat and airbox area of the cockpit...

GP4 1995 Mod

 Again this is very basic stuff in GP4. There's a generic visor, but the rest of the cockpit is very basic. The cockpit itself doesn't have any detail with a generic low poly driver body. The airbox again is very basic.

Real Racing 3

The Real Racing car has a good cockpit detail, with a nicely detailed head protection, cockpit sides and airbox. The seat is also pretty reasonable too. You can also see the small horizontal triangle where the side of the cockpit narrows into the engine cover.

F1 2017

The Codies car is has more polys than the RR3 version, but contains the same amount of detail, perhaps with a bit more on the seat.

WIP

My car then follows the RR3 structure and shape very closely. I put a bit more detail into the seat to make it more inline with the F1 2017 car. 

GP4: 1995 Ferrari 412T2 WIP 3

It's been a particularly busy month for me, but I have been chipping away at this car when I had a spare half and hour here or there and the car is not too far away from being complete.

In my last post, I was showing a work in progress of the nose, saying that there was still some fine tuning to be done.

WIP

As you can see, I've emphasised the wavy shape on the top part of the nose which you can see from the front view, but from top down, you can see the bottom of the nose is a smooth taper.

WIP

As you can see, I'm pretty happy with the front of the car now and baring any 3D bodylines which I'm still 50/50 in whether to add them or not, but this is pretty much the final version on front half of the car.



The front suspension was only more or less completed last night, but before I show you my new version, let's have a look at the other models.

GP4 1995 Mod

So my original car took Nick Ovey's suspension created for his Jordan 195. It's pretty basic compared to the models you get nowadays, but it had all the elements in a very generic way. The brake ducts on the actual Ferrari are quite unique, where as these are pretty generic.

RR3

The Real Racing car has some good suspension elements with a nice amount of detail, but there was no wheel hub that I could find, so the details kind of stop at a generic plate. What's there though is pretty accurate and is pretty similar to the F1 2017 car.

F1 2017

As you can see there's a lot more detail on the wheel hub itself on the Codies car, as well as more detail on how the suspension attachs to the monocoque. I love the work on the wheel hub on their car.

WIP

As you can see, my car is mostly based on the F1 2017 model. I couldn't help myself with to include all the lovely details on the Codies car though I did not use quite as many polygons. I did however add some of the cables that run along the rear of the lower front suspension arm which are clearer on the shot below. The only thing missing at the moment is the brake disc, which I will take off one my other cars.

WIP

Moving to a shot of the underneath of the nose and quite a nice touch is the mounting of the front element of the lower suspension arm. This is recreated in the Real Racing car...

RR3

and the F1 2017 car...

F1 2017

So of course I had to add my own version. 

WIP

You can see how busy it is from this angle, with the front wing vanes, the bargeboard supports (and there are additional ones that aren't on the F1 2017 that I've added based on photos) and the suspension elements. Again I just couldn't help myself but put a bit of detail in there that I have done for my 1994 cars.

GP4 1995 Mod

Moving to the bargeboard area and the sidepod opening, the original GP4, I rather cheated on the beginning of the sidepod joining the monocoque in that they aren't joined at all. The bargeboard was rather crude, it's very basic.

RR3

The Real Racing car doesn't have any bargeboards, which was how the car was launched. The sidepods are nicely created on this car. 

F1 2017

The F1 2017 car throws lots of polygons at the sidepod opening, and you can see the inside of the sidepod runs quite deep into the car and the radiator, whereas the Real Racing car stops much sooner. Again there are lots of polygons used to make a nice smooth curve on the bargeboard.

WIP

On my car, I continue to use the philosophy of keeping close to the RR3 polygon structure, but keeping close to the Codie's contours. The bargeboard has a lower polygon count, and the Codies car was missing a mount which I have added. For the inside of the sidepod, I have decided not to model too deep, as GP4 doesn't have a lighting algorithm that projects shadows onto itself.

GP4: 1995 Ferrari 412T2 WIP 2

In this update, I want to look at the front wing, the nose cone and the monocoque area (the bit between the nose and the cockpit).

GP4 1995 Mod

As previous mentioned, the front wing is pretty generic. The endplate is reasonably done. The front wing has three elements, and it has the two vanes underneath. It's pretty basic and not particularly accurate.

The nose is quite smooth, but the tip is quite low poly and basic compared to the monocoque region.

Real Racing 3

The Real Racing 3 front wing is a generic two element which doesn't really look anything like the real car. The bottom frong wing actually extends the full length of the end plate. The end plate is nicely done though.

Thankfully the nose is pretty nice along with the monocoque region. There's a lack of bargeboards on this car.

F1 2017

The front wing is the correct 3 elements and has the vanes underneath, two larger ones and one smaller one. Though there are some nice curves to the upper front wing elements, but the inboard section (bits by the nose cone) are almost flat on the real car. The outboard section should be more flat rather than tapered from front view.

The nose is nice and the monocoque seemed a bit thin and skinny to me. However, I think it captures the essence of the front endbetter than the RR3 car. If you notice on the nose, there's a concentration of polygon lines on the side, because the sidewall of the nose tapers in. That's why from some angles, the nose looks more curvy than it actually is from the top and front view.

So taking all these things into account I tried to incorporate these lessons into my car. Sorry for the screenshot with the black and you can't quite see it, but my gripes with the F1 2017 car has been improved upon in my version and more than halving the poly count. The bit of red you can see on the front wing is the underside of the front wing poking through, so I will fix that.

Onto the nose, and I have taken a slightly different approach to the nose tip. I've tried to take on some of the subtleties of the F1 2017 nose. I'm pretty happy with the basic shape.

F1 2017

WIP

Here is a comparison from front view. On the Codies car, there is virtually no gap between the two upper front wing elements. You can see on my model, how by the nose, there is very little front wing to see, but there is much more visible by the endplate. The contours of the trailing edge of the upper most element is much closer to the real car.

GP4 1995 mod

On my original model, you can see the nose tapers out from the top of the nose cone to the joining with the monocoque, where it is pretty much straight and parallel around the suspension before continuing to widen out for the cockpit. Back then I struggled to get the nose looking quite right from all angles, and having now come back it, it's because I assume from top down the top edge and the bottom edges were identical, with the side of the nose and monocoque being flat. But it's not on this car.

RR3

You can see how the bottom front wing extends the length of the endplate from this angle. You can also see that out of all of the models shown here, the RR3 is much wider than the others. If you look at the front of the cockpit, you can see an increase in concentration of polygons used to make the curved cockpit smoother. That's a trick I've been missing for my 90's cars, as I've always tried to make do with the number of polygons used around the monocoque.

F1 2017

The Codemasters car from the top view looks pretty straight forward and is essentially the same as the RR3 car but with more polygons used.

WIP

For my car, I tried to use a similar contour to the F1 2017 car, but making it a little thicker, but only marginally so. The front wing vanes are pretty much exactly the same as the Codies car, but the smaller barge board has much more of a curve. I tried to give it a little curve when I made my original car, but I made it a little more pronounced on this one.

GP4: 1995 Ferrari 412T2 WIP 1

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.

GP4: 1995 Ferrari 412T2

When I started out making cars for the 1995 mod, I was simply looking to bring some simple updates to the existing CTDP cars that were very basic. So the cars towards the rear end of the field were pretty much an updated version of the CTDP cars, whilst a few of the cars near the front of the grid were created from scratch.

The Ferrari that I shaped for the 1995 mod for GP4 was one of the first scratch cars I ever made, and admittedly it wasn't great. It bore a reasonable enough resemblance, but I had no modelling experience other than starting out with somebody else's car and moving things around and took it from there. Tony took the car to map and he almost remodelled it to make the polygons line up and the normals look much better. One of the things he took out were the diamond shaped vents on the top of the sidepods. If I remember correctly, the car was painted by Ross Hunter.

Anyway, the car has existed a long time and has been converted into other games.

I've been playing the mobile game called Real Racing 3 for a few years now and when I saw this car pop up, I just had to buy it - it was one of my first really fast cars in my garage. Thanks to the guys at gamemodels.ru I was able to have a look at the model in Zmodeler.

The car itself is quite a low poly shape, these cars are supposed to run on mobile devices. The car is pretty accurate, with nice detail in the cockpit and the rear suspension area. It does miss some rear winglets, the front wing is a bit strange and it is missing the bargeboards, but by and large this is a nice car and easily convertable into GP4 without too much editing or scaling.

The car was also featured in F1 2017 of the Codemasters range and subsequent releases. The car is a high-poly work of art and GP4 would not be able to handle the polygon count if you were to put it straight into the game. Having said that, I have noticed a few bits that I think could be improved, but I'll mention them in subsequent posts.

So it got me thinking, can I use these two cars as references and update my car or rather recreate it from scratch. The time consuming thing with my 1994 cars is that I'm trying to put lots of detail in there. For this I needed to step back a little bit and do a simpler car, we'll call it the 412T2 Lite for GP4. So I aim to use a similar polygon structure and level of detail on the chassis and rear end from the low-poly RR3 car, and then use the Codies car for reference for wings, suspension and bargeboards.

Having done a very similar cockpit for the 1994 412T1, I aim to add some detail into the cockpit so that the onboard shots will look nice.

RR3

F1 2017