critique my F1LM model

Hi everyone,

I wanted to post some test pics of the F1LM model I've been working on over the past 6 weeks. I posted a few threads asking for reference photos and this forum has truly been gracious about sharing the extrememy hard to get imagery of this beautiful car. This forum has been a godsend and I just can't thank you all enough!

Anyways, so here's some test renders (I guess I never mentioned it was a cg model, not a scale one). of the outer body and I wanted to post the images for you all to look at. I have a great respect for the people in this forum as mclaren experts so please be honest in your crits. I want this to be a truly accurate and believable recreation of the LM.

http://home.comcast.net/~prwsjl/f1lm-side.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~prwsjl/f1lm-rear.jpg

I really wanted to do an interior, but I'm having a really tough time findind a decent amount of reference material covering the entire cabin of the LM. I've found a few pics for the roadcar, but from what I can see alot of the specifcs are different between the two cars. I'm also stuck on finding images of the brembo brake caliper, all of the pics ive found only show parts of it. So its another part I had to improvise as best I could. I also don't have decent reference for the engine compartment so for now I've left that off.

Mr. Selldoff has agreed to help me out with some additional reference pics when he visits the car next, and I really look forward to that! It would be the ultimate reference. And I think I'd ike to make a FINA motorsport #39 version, and peloton25 has agreed to help me out with some photo's of his scale model so I can re-create the decals (thank you!).

Anyways folks, please let me know what you think! Any corrections I need to make would be very helpful, and if you have reference photo's for anything please post a link!

links don't work man

My initial impression is that it is very, very good. I can imagine how much work it took, so :thumbsup: to you.

The one thing that sticks out immediately to me is the three openings in the center of the bumper have screens which cover each opening and they fit flush to the face of the bumper. On your model, it appears you have the screens inset into the openings, rather than having them flush.

There's a photo of them from directly in front of the car here (http://www.centralcoastweb.com/nsxb/media/pics/mclaren/img180.JPG) and as you can see, the openings themselves do continue inside the front of the bumper, but the mesh screen is right out to the edge.

I'll have to compare notes with my photo collection later, but other than that one detail I think you've done a very impressive job.

>8^)
ER

Hello !

Wouaouaoauaoauaoaua :)

Impressive job ! I want to say "Bravo" to you jonathan

Ciao
Phil

PS : Is it possible to make a animated gif with your car please ?

omg, thats an amazing model man. thats incredible. good job

Some critics :

there is something wrong with the brakes.
You should extrude a little bit more the windows
the support of the wing are not good, you need a "orange" part at the bottom

these execpted, your model is better that mine (http://membres.lycos.fr/tnyssen/index3.htm) ;-(

(but I'm working on them again :-) )

Wow! Very good job!

The first thing that hits me is the lack fo detail in the wheel wells, I'm sure it is quite difficult to find pictures of the inside, but that orange just stands out.

fantastic, simply awesome, put it in NFS underground PLEAAASE
and there's another thing, the rear bumper is a bit different, less of the rear tyre is visible, but i think it's the best i've ever seen,if only you could make the thing reflect better it'd be hard to spot the difference between that and the real thing

the support of the wing are not good, you need a "orange" part at the bottom


There is no orange at the bottom. The black continues down into the cover.


Here is a good picture that almost matches the angle of the first computer image:

http://www.turnermotorsport.com/F1LM/lm_road_front.jpg

Use your alt + tab keys to look back and forth at the pictures. I think this is a great rendering of the actual car. A few minor notes:

- reshape the window so that it extends more into the roof and make it a little rounder
- add more definition to the front fender flares. on the car it appears to be more a tack-on piece rather than molded right into the front section
- the rear valence around the exhaust tips seems a little tall. this might be tough to explain though (I love this picture: http://www.turnermotorsport.com/F1LM/lm_inside_rear.jpg)
- the rear bodywork doesn't really encompass as much of the rear tire. i thought so too but when i looked at a picture of the rear it looks pretty darn close to the computer image (to wit: http://www.turnermotorsport.com/F1LM/lm_left_rear.jpg )

I may add more later but for right now this looks great!

Thanks for the great crits guys! I'll have to go work on some of these issues for awhile so it'll be a few days before I post any updatesd (some of the changes are more dofficult to solve than others). This forums has really made the difference, and you guys' familiarity with this machine really helps!

Peloton25, thanks for pointing out the front grills, I'll need to investigate that further, but I totally overlooked that anything was there at all :cheers:

cabrio92, Thanks! As far as an animated gif goes, sure. Did you have any specific type of animation in mind?

mini magic, thanks for the compliments :) and i also appreciate the pics you posted of the cabin, I did find that big one you mentioned!

jkbon, you are right about the brake disc, I have no idea whats going on with that I'll troubleshoot that out. And the windows do need a bit of tweaking I agree. I checked out your link, and I thought your mclarens looks great! The wires showed them to be low-poly so its not really a fair comparison. This beast is a hi-poly monster (175K faces). But I can see you know all the details well, so I have no doubt you could turn out a sweet hi-poly model too if you wanted (and sounds like you will :))

Porsche, thanks! yes the wheel well details have been a problem. I only have three pics of the wheel wells close up, and I know I'm not capturing everything. This is an area where I need better reference materials. :1zhelp:

maartenvanthek, thanks for the kind words! I wish I could put it in a game, but like I mentioned to jkbon, its way too hi-poly for a game engine. Maybe the low-poly cage I started working with (its about 7k faces), but certainly not this one. I've been looking at the rear bumper and I agree with you that it might be showing a bit too much of the tire. I think more of the issues lie in the back end. Funny you should mention the reflection, cause thats been a total b*tch to get even to this point. its been driving me nuts, but I agree that its still not quite totally realistic. I know what it needs but I'm kinda stuck (right now anyways) on how to get my shader to represent the glossy reflections properly... :bloated:

drewwtms, thanks for the fantastic crits :) I'm not sure I undertand what you mean about reshaping the windshield so it goes into the roof more. But I think I do know what you mean about making it rounder. That'll take some tweaking, but I have to admit its been bugging me too. About the front fender flares, they seem pretty much right on to me, are you thinking that the seam/gap between it and the body should be more noticable (ala wider)? You are right about the rear valence at the exhaust end. this will be more of a problem to fix. I think the issues lie in the fact that the inlet where the grill/rear brake and turn signals is not big enough vertically. this cause spacing issues which propogates down the rear end, and I made up for it by having the rear valence higher than normal. Let me work on it :) (great eye on that one) And I think you are also right about the rear end covering too much of the tire. I'll try tucking it in a bit horizontally (just a tad), that might fix it up.

Thanks again for the comments guys! I'm taking notes on these things so I can go back and work on it for awhile. I'll keep you posted, and please if anything else seems apparent, let me know. Of course, if you have pics to demonstate what you mean thats even better.
:bigthumb:

you're welcome jonathan.
another point of criticism:
the rims are not what they are, the spokes are a bit to thin i think, and the overal wheel-tyre diameter is a bit larger i reckon. you agree?

I'm not sure I undertand what you mean about reshaping the windshield so it goes into the roof more. But I think I do know what you mean about making it rounder.

Not the windshield - the side windows themselves. I said roof when I should have said "top of the door". On the model it appears that they are not tall enough. On the car the window is taller and makes its way into the top part of the door a little more.

About the front fender flares, they seem pretty much right on to me, are you thinking that the seam/gap between it and the body should be more noticable (ala wider)?

Make the line at the top of the flare more noticeable. I can see it at the bottom of the flare near the ground but then it seems to be blend more with the stock bodywork. I think it needs to stand out more at the top that it's a add-on piece. It is most likely the light and the angle of the image that is throwing me off. I threw in this (somewhat crappy) picture of the left front fender.

http://www.turnermotorsport.com/F1LM/left_front_closer_up.jpg

Best,

Drew

you're welcome jonathan.
another point of criticism:
the rims are not what they are, the spokes are a bit to thin i think, and the overal wheel-tyre diameter is a bit larger i reckon. you agree?
I know what you're talking about, I went through alot of ref material on this. IMO the answer is yes and no. Depends on which rim we're talking about.

Alot of the ref pics I've found for the LM's show OZ racing rims, but I've discovered they're actually two variants.

The rims that have "F1LM" imprinted on the spokes have thinner spokes. The rims that have "OZ" decaled on them have thicker spokes. I've decided to go with the former rims although from the distance of my renders you can't see that I have F1LM on the spoke (as well as "magnesio" and "OZ racing" along the outer diamter of the rim
:)
http://home.comcast.net/~prwsjl/rim_example.jpg

Make the line at the top of the flare more noticeable. I can see it at the bottom of the flare near the ground but then it seems to be blend more with the stock bodywork. I think it needs to stand out more at the top that it's a add-on piece. It is most likely the light and the angle of the image that is throwing me off. I threw in this (somewhat crappy) picture of the left front fender.

I think i see what you mean :) bear with me. Ok just to be sure, I edited your pic a bit. Do you mean crease A or line B needs to stand out more?

http://home.comcast.net/~prwsjl/example.jpg

I think i see what you mean :) bear with me. Ok just to be sure, I edited your pic a bit. Do you mean crease A or line B needs to stand out more?

B. It's a small thing in the great scheme of things. But I found it interesting that the LM (and GTR?) have this add-on rather than a full width front body section. I guess cost and timing played a role in that. Aesthetically I would have liked a wider nose rather than the flares; they remind me of those chrome fender strips you see on Camrys.

it looked to me as if they were just that little bit to thin, maybe i'm used the the wider gtr rims

drewwtms, I'll make it a bit more noticable. part of the problem is that my reflective paint is sorta hiding the line there.

maartenvanthek, they might still be a bit thin. I eyeballed it so it still could be off :)

B needs slightly more definition. Jonathan, I am very envious of your talents! That is just an amazing job.

Couple of quick questions...do you know how many poly-faces there were in animated movie character faces like Toy Story 2, Antz, etc.? Those took server farms months and months to render. Is yours even higher definition? And what kind of machine are you doing this on?

Finally, if it can't be used in video games, is there an application? Are you doing it for a school project? Or are you doing it just to hone your skills and challenge yourself?

It's awesome stuff. Stunning. Even if today's game engines and hardware cannot manage it, I hope to see this in a game one day.

Thanks tvrfreak :)

well, Pixar used a different type of modeling surface called NURBS (non uniform rational b splines) for models in toy story. Modeling has since evolved to use another type of higher order surface called "subdivision surfaces". These surface types get tesselated to polygons at rendertime, but the density depends on how far the camera is from the model. Mine is pretty hi poly but I'm shooting for photorealism. This mclaren model is actually a combination of subdivision surfaces and NURBS surfaces. When tesselated to polygons, they come out to about 175,000 faces.

I could probably use the low-poly cage I started with for a game engine, but I'd have to remodel the parts I made out of NURBS (tires, fins, gas cap etc). My goal with this model is to make photoreastic renderings, maybe composite it into a real background plate (ala my driveway) And of course, render out some cool posters and windows backgrounds:)

Incidentally, inside of the wheel wells is black.
Rgds,
tvrfreak.