Oh wow! You made my week Bart. Honored. Thanks brother!
1 Like
Awesome. Thanks for sharing. I’ll add this to my reading library.
Thanks rombout.
You bring up a great point about the rings. Honestly it’s a big question mark for now. Since we haven’t gone fully public yet, we haven’t brought legal in just yet. They could argue that it’s not close enough to be confused with Audi since they don’t have a monopoly on ring logos or in the opposite, that it’s too close an association to audi logo and cause market confusion.
My instinct is telling me that it shouldn’t be too much of an issue since there are plenty of logos with rings (the Olympics for example), and we don’t occupy the same type of market value Audi does. Of course I could be wrong and will find out once we go to legal 
it’s a valid point.
Sliver orb,
Thanks man! Great feedback. Honestly, the original concept was a fully electric idea and I still want it to be.
However the builder who approached me about this specializes in traditional combustion engines, so it took him a few weeks to convince me to “let’s just start this traditional, and if we can build a big buzz and get the additional investment, we can get crazier”.
I honestly am more of a “Tesla” thinker in that I want to see good looking electric designs. It’s only logical that’s where things are going. It even makes design that much easier since it occupies less space than a traditional motor. On an independent level, at least from how I understand right now, the cost is still very limiting per capita as it’s still an emerging trend. Meaning all fully electric, with electric dials and fully digital readout (like I want). All that would definitely blow up the costs quite a bit.
However the builder works for a really hi end custom shop and he sees investors drop millions on this stuff without blinking all the time. Who knows what’s next. I’m already working on tie next design for that reason.
2 Likes
Thanks by the way! The builder is actually funding this out of his own pocket to start. And he says half a million is still a “shoe string budget”!
Which after I learned more about the process, it really isn’t a lot of money! Crazy stuff
Right. I guess we will see what happens closer to release. If the lawyer clears it. Good.
If not I have backup logos ready to go. Blendersrtists seems to be a good testing place
1 Like
My first thought on seeing this on the feature row was that someone very talented just designed a very futurist cool cgi concept car and that this is where this would end, but oh boy was I wrong! You are actually building this for real, insane! 
The mechanical engineer in me is very, very jealous. Good luck to you and the rest of the team.
1 Like
What an incredible project to undertake and to do it well. Really appreciate how you were able to share some of those steps. Loved reading about this and seeing the incredible renders. You have a great team!
1 Like
Pretty fun project.
I always like seeing Blender being used in stead of Alias.
While I know class-A surfacing I just hate the busy work aspect of it.
Alias now also has build in Pixar sub-D that converts sub-D to NURBS on the fly.
Out of curiosity, even while this is going to be a show car, why did you not decide to use the new Alias version?
1 Like
Great Job!!!
1 Like
Trust me I went through that for the first few months. Even now that im used to it and I’ve been focused on working through the problems, I still go, “yeah this is pretty cool.”
Just a lucky dude to have someone crazy enough to invest into my design.
thanks! Yeah this is definitely not a single person effort. I’m learning new stuff everyday about fabrication.
To be honest it’s more of a time thing. Even though it’s a pretty major project, I still do alot of other design work. I’ve been using Blender and Solidworks so much more in most of my jobs that I’m pretty rusty on Alias.
So it became a time constraint and a creative constraint. However, the plan is if this thing does take off and we get the investors we are hoping for from displaying this concept, I would restructure the design studio to focus on Alias and make the investment to add another dedicated Alias designer to get me back up to speed.
I’d still have the final say as the lead designer on projects, but I acknowledge the need of having a fast and skilled Alias modeler if designing cars becomes a full time job. I consider this the “garage” stage of the company
Blender just has excelled so much in this situation where speed and creatively go hand in hand. Even if i still have to fight against some of the Blender shortcomings.
I’ll have to check out that Pixar converter. Does Autodesk have a trial version of the new Alias?
Thanks Anderson!
I forgot to mention, for anyone interested in learning a different way to get great surfacing techniques in terms of vehicle design in blender, @anon81202127’s Master Car Creation Series is by far a valuable tool in applying complex surfacing. No, they didn’t pay me to say this
Alot of the techniques I used in building this car have come from this tutorial series.
https://cgmasters.net/training-courses/master-car-creation-in-blender/
1 Like
I would suspect using blender is also cost effective. 
1 Like
Wow… what a fantastic work!!!
1 Like
It is not really a converter. You just model and use nurbs or sub-D tools.
The killer is that NURBS tools work on sub-D surfaces as they are converted to NURBS patches on the fly. Thats kinda killer!
You can download Alias and start the 30 day long trial.
Here some videos:
Finaly subd modeling with nurbs detailing.
Another application I want to look into this summer again is SolidThinking from Altair. It is now called Inspire.
I had few attempts of building a car with Fusion360 but the parametric timeline gets so complex.
I have actually few graduated students who work now for Henry Ford in the concept office. But they use Maya instead of blender to sculpt the concept cars.
3 Likes
Alias doesn’t use Pixar’s (Catmull Clark) Sub-D. They use a technology called T-splines, which up until Autodesk bought it, was available for anyone to license. 
Rhino also has SubD to nurbs support (V7 WIP) which they claim produce higher quality nurbs surfaces than what both Catia (IMA) and Alias (Speedform) has.
But perhaps more importantly, Rhino costs a fraction of the subscription for Alias and you can keep it forever, plus you don’t have to sell your soul to Autodesk (which amongst other things enables them to at any point they desire audit all the computers on your network). 
We have already converted a few parts from Blender and milled them for fiber glass molds where I work, and it went surprisingly well!
3 Likes
Its usually difficult for me to be impressed by car renders, especially when its so overdone and perfected at this point. But this really had me interested, incredibly cool design and great renders!
2 Likes