Today I bring an end to a 10 year old project, my 1993 Tyrrell 021 Yamaha. The shape has long been created and has been available as an open source file since, but nobody had taken it up. Well I finally mapped it earlier this year, and I did have a painter lined up, but unfortunately he was busy with other projects, which is fine.
So I decided I would paint it. Having been painting several helmets and also the 2021 Williams, I had much more confidence going back to a mid-90s car. The livery is quite basic, the lines quite simple, and not many logos to search for. I decided to go for brighter colours, as it would have been in real life, but would have come across much duller on TV at the time.
I spent a bit more time on some of the detailing, using a mix of photo samples mixed in with my own painting. The front wing for example has an almost scratched metal texture to the real car, so that's worked into the texture if you looked close enough.
The dashboard was quite fun to recreate, though it was pretty basic compared to some of the cockpits I've been doing for 1994, but the textures help lift the low poly shapes quite nicely. I use an ambient occlusion baked shadows in Blender to create the shapes from the shape direct, and I kept them for the cockpit, so there's a bit more shadow in there than normal, I quite like the effect.
The driver body texture I created from scratch. Renault ran a driver suit competition not so long ago and posted a white template that was perfect for using as a template for my driver. The white stitching is hand drawn, the logos have a slight fabric texture applied over them, and the baked shadows from Blender make it look very realistic, despite my old basic blocky shape, I'm really please with how that's turned out.
I spent a bit of time on the damage model, again I didn't want to spend too much time on it, but there's enough there to make it interesting. Tyrrell ran one spring on the rear suspension tilted up at an angle. They also ran a reflective light metal floor, which I wanted to include, but I couldn't make it too bright as you'd see it from the back of the car.
Much of the modern cars are running matte liveries, so there's not much reflection and shine on them, so it was nice to go back to the 1990s and have a lighter alpha channel to work with. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the overall car. I could have gone back to the shape and made some more amendments but I would most likely have recreated the whole car again, I had to say this is fine as it is.
I think it looks good in GP4, testing it on various tracks with different lighting and reflections. Apologies that I'm running this car in my test setup in GP4, so it's got Katayama driving in De Cesaris' car. Anyway, it's nice to bring the 1993 mod nearer to completion with this car, the download will be available very soon.
