NASCAR racer for animation project

This car will be used in an animation with the character below. It’s to promote the opening of a new school. Decaling is a combination of Dale Ernhardt Jr and the schools mascot. I intend to use different decals and color combos on lattice distorted versions of this car to fill out the “field” in the race. The characterization turn around below, is of the district head who will be discussing the process (race) to get the school completed. The character was made for last years new Middle School intro, and will be reused for this one, which is a good thing as the deadline is the 22nd. :wink:

http://www.clipsandscripts.com/bHaase/NASCAR/Car_19.jpg
http://www.clipsandscripts.com/bHaase/NASCAR/Car_16.jpg
The interior is somewhat detailed as a lot of shots are going to be “in car” but in general I’m trying to keep things simple.

One issue I’ve had was with making the cars decals work on a fairly reflective surface. I ended up using composite nodes to map them in using render layers for both the wheels and the body.
All my attempts to use UV mapped image masks (no compositing) to control the reflectivity of the surface where the decals are located were failures, perhaps someone can provide, or point to good information on this. :o

Here’s a look at the driver.

http://www.clipsandscripts.com/bHaase/Jack_spin_2.avi

C & C welcome,
Pappy

in my personal opinion it looks to boxy… maybe try rounding off the back end a little bit and where the headlights are…

Vitaliy, thanks for the feedback. I’m happy to hear that you think it’s too boxy, as my feeling was that it was too soft looking… I’m working with a plastic model kit for reference, and it has edges that are in my opinion even harder then I produced here. :confused:

Of course the plastic model kit could easily be very inaccurate.

I’ll see how I like it with some rounding off.

Pappy

Nobody lika de NASCAR eh? -

Oh well, here’s an update and a short animation to present the racer. I did round the corners more as suggested, and it’s nowhere near perfect, but it’s on to the track and time to animate. Clients happy, so I’m happy. :wink:
http://www.clipsandscripts.com/bHaase/NASCAR/racer.jpg

Link to animation: (please right click and save) 560k

Oh, the animation was done to test Respowers output from 2.43. I’m happy to say that they handled the three render layers combined with the UV compositing with zero problems. Fantastic!

Pappy

I do, but if I hear boogity boogity boogity one more time I’m gonna shoot my TV.

About your car -just two words. Rear spoiler? :eek:
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maybe it was just the render that made it seam boxy… but it looks very good

Uh… I better look a little closer at the reference model… thanks for the heads up.:eek:

Pappy

Lots of updates, but mainly the car is rigged and ready to animate so I’ll keep entertaining myself here.

http://www.clipsandscripts.com/bHaase/NASCAR/racer_tst.jpg

And a short animated look. 1.6 megs (yes, I need more light on the front and rear) http://www.clipsandscripts.com/bHaase/NASCAR/racer_2.mov
Please right click and “save-as”

Pappy

Ah, the spoiler made a big difference. Now it looks like a race car instead of a grocery-getter with decals. The body’s bottom edge flaring looks much better too. It all looks pretty good to me. Pretty close. Looks even better in the turnaround vid than it does in this still. Should look really well when you get her in motion.

Go fast. Turn left. Don’t crash. :RocknRoll:
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Projects done, and there’s a whole day left till deadline. :yes:

For those interested here’s a link to a short reduced quality segment of animation from the final project. The total project came to a 1:40 with the majority being animation.

http://www.clipsandscripts.com/bHaase/NASCAR/Donut.wmv 1.2 megs Windows Media
Please right click and save

This time I used Blender for sequencing the project and am ecstatic about how well it worked!

I ended up rendering somewhere around 2000 frames for the project with raytracing/shadows and AO - thanks to Respower.

Pappy