Nice start on the interior. What are you using to model the interior? Is it purely reference photos while matching the dash to the body of the car or do you have top-down interior specific blueprints?
A lot of Audi blueprints I’ve come across have some of the interior visible in the blueprint as well.
The blueprints I use are official images from Mazda that were meant to show engine, transmission, steering and chassis. From those I can make out the steering column and the shape of the seats. Other than that I’ve got what is to see from the top down view of the car’s interiour. The rest, like pretty much evey vertical position, is mostly eyeballing and using photos as backgrounds to get the basic shape right. It’s very convenient that the MX-5 is open, so I have at least a clue where the parts have to go.
This is what they roughly look like. I use higher resolutions than that.
Amazing! I own a 1991 NA 
Cool, I’d love to own one myself. May be a great future project, a render with old vs new could be quite fun to do.
So that’s the current status:
Loads and LOADS of modelling. I bet I’ll need about 5 times more time to finish up the interiour than it took for the exteriour. I believe most of it comes from the fact that there is nearly nothing to give any orientation where to place the meshes here, most of it is eyeballing and hoping that the proportions turn out good and you don’t end up with a gap that shouldn’t be there. Until now it is working quite well though. Apart from the time it takes…
So the basic shapes are pretty much finished. Next will be details like the screen and buttons for the infotainment system, then the buttons on the right of the steering wheel, the vent in the middle and under the windscreen, and everything under the dashboard. Then in further future the floor of the cabin, the seats, the back of the cabin and finally the roof and mechanics. And everything has to be fit with materials and textures (that have to be made), and rigged. Hopefully the effort will be worth it. I’m thinking positively:yes:.
Love it! I know it’s a painful process, eyeballing everything, but I think the attention to detail definitely pays off in the end! How do you plan to make your textures? panting in PS/Gimp, procedural or Substance?
Unfortunately I don’t own substance painter, so I’ll have to go with Gimp or for normal maps even with Blender. Some textures will of course also be downloaded, but it’s impossible to find textures for the stitching or the icons on the buttons.
Great you appreciate my work! Yours is incredibly awesome, I’d really love to reach the detail level you’re working with.
I love the instrument cluster, steering wheel, etc. Great work. Tires are flawless. This is going to be an epic model when it’s done!
Thanks, mate! You’re really goving me some motivation here :yes:.
So i’ve worked a little bit and that’s the current status after a very long day (and a bit of blendering at the end):
There’s really not that much more to do with the dashboard and the middle console, and it’s turning out pretty great. Maybe I’ll do the windshield frame after that, because it pretty much flows into the dashboard. Then I’ll be able to update the exteriour renders. You’ll see soon enough.
Hi everyone,
again, only a small update. It needs a lot of time, but with the detail level I want to reach it is really no surprise. Additionally, I don’t have very much free time at the moment. But I do what I can and I’m happy with how it turned out.
The shift knob and the shift cover are already rigged, just as the handbrake will be. I’m still not happy with the stitching on the shift cover, I’ll have to play a little bit there. The bump mapping just didn’t turn out as good as I’d hoped. So there’s only a few things left, the stitching on the steering wheel and the shifter, the handbrake, a rubber material for some parts, a few textures here and there, and some details, after that the dashboard and middle console will be finished and with it the most tedious part of the interiour (and of the whole car).
Honestly, I don’t think you need to spend too much time on the stitching. From any distance other than an extreme close-up, it looks good. But of course, it’s your project!
Yeah, I see what you mean and you’re right. I played around with it a little bit and honestly it does look good enough now, even for me :yes:.
So here’s the current status:
I converted the interiour to left hand drive, added the horn and airbag symbols on the steering wheel, modelled the vents in the dashboard and started with the frame for the windshield. I’ll have to do some tweaks to it and add the sun visors and the mirror. I also started with the back side of the interiour. I’ll put it all together soon, then do the doors and the seats. And I finally got some updated extreiour renders to see how the dashboard fits into the car:
The front and
the back of the car. Looks pretty good to me. What do you think?
Perfect, as usual! Would be cool if you had a few wireframes, really interested in the topology.
Those I can give you:
I can also do some for the exteriour if you want to see more.
And a first render from the door into the car:
Thanks - beautiful topology!
Hey there,
after a bit of break I am back! And I’m backer than ever before! 
I’ve concentrated on the seats and the doors, but both are still in prototype state. Still a lot of work to do, especially considering I want do have the doors be openable. But that aside, this is how it looks:
Still not 100% happy with the mapping of the stitching on the seats, I’ll have to tweak that a bit, as well as the geometry in some places. With the door though I think it’s come out pretty nicely. Again, still not finished, I’ll have to give it some more thickness to make it look more realistic. And then of course the sealing around the top of the door and then finalizing the cabin floor, with materials and pedals.
So with the inside of the door finally covered, some new renders of the whole car:
I’m pretty happy. And I look forward to give it a rig and make some animations with it. :yes:
So what do you think?
Hey there,
Happy 2017! I hope y’all had good holidays! I had and also I finally had some time to work on my little MX-5. Even though there are some other things that had to be done, I started working on the top. Or, better said, on both tops that Mazda offers, the softtop and the RF’s “retractable fastback”. I already started rigging the softtop, even though that is a horrible task… The characteristics of the fabric are extremely difficult to reproduce, especially with an armature and weight groups. I’ll upload a video about how it looks in action later.
This is what it looks like when it’s closed (material of course not finalized):
Then, I began with the hard top which now looks like this:
The design from Mazda sure is gorgeous, isn’t it? I absolutely adore it.
And finally, I got to finish up the stitching on the steering wheel and the shift knob, as well as the light leaver on the left of the steering wheel. Still problems to find good pictures for the windscreen wiper leaver on the right, but I’ll look to that. So I couldn’t resist to do a render from the driver’s seat:
Yeah, the mirror is missing, but apart from that it looks pretty much finished. Still need to work on the pedals and the floor, the seats and the doors. But the big stuff is pretty much out of the way.
Here’s the video:
Looks amazing - especially that interior.
Beautiful, loving everything! Do you already have plans for the final renders - lighting, environment?
btw: video doesn’t work, is set to private 
I don’t really have any concrete plans what to do with it, but I’m pretty sure I’m gonna animate it, with a custom physics based rig. And then I’d like to do some wallpapers with a nature/landscape or urban background, even though I havn’t really thought about that yet. As you can see I have been trying out quite a few backgrounds and lighting situations, to see that the materials work. And there are some setups I really like, especially that last one with the autumn colours.
And I hope the issue with the video is fixed now 
Anyway, my computer has been rendering for the last 40 hours or so, to produce a little camera flight around the car. It’s 300 Samples and 500 frames in total:
The camera movement is a little too fast, but I didn’t want to make the animation even longer.
