US Patrol cars

[ROUBAL]

Hi, as you might know, I really like american cars of years 1957 to 1980, and I am currently modelling some of them. Some time ago I modelled some Lincoln cars of years 1961 and 1962, and now I make some patrol cars.

My choice has gone to the most known models of Plymouth and Dodge, seen in every TV series of years 70-80.

As I have found almost no blue prints and had difficulties to find some acurate and reliable dimensions, I had to work from hundreds of photos found with Google, often taken from weird angles, so it has taken much time to get the right proportions and see every detail ! Added to that, I had to redo many things, because many photos are photos of repaired cars and often, the bumpers or other parts were not of the right year of the right model !

Movie studios have broken hundreds of these beautiful cars !

Modelled in Blender, and rendered with Octane :

http://3d-synthesis.com/42-PlymouthFury1977.html

I have made the Plymouth Fury 1977 the car of the chief of Blenderville Fire Department (it took me some time to create the insign in Blender, inspired from several images found with Google !), and I kept the Dodge Monaco 1977 and Dodge Coronet 1975 as police patrol cars.

I’m not very happy of the UV mapping of texts and insigns, but I will try to improve that later.

I still have to add few details, like texturing the leather of the seats. I will also try modelling them better and see if geometry requires more memory that texturing, or the opposite. The inside of the cars is not detailed yet, but I will focus first on the surrounding of the car and the characters, now.

I’d want to make a scene with two officers. One in the car (the current one, is very simple and has no legs and no hands !) and one outside the car. They would be parked in front of a Do Nut shop, and one would bring coffee to his partner that is in the car.

Stay tuned…

[sundialsvc4]

Picky?

They didn’t have “911” in 1977.

I know. I was there. :spin:

[ROUBAL]

I had verified on Wikipedia, and I discovered that the 911 began to be in use in Canada in 1959 and in USA in 1968 and then spread progressively until 1980 when it became a standardized emergency number over most countries of north America.

Maybe some of these cars are still in use in small towns… ? Anyway, they were in use in 1980 !o)

Emergency telephone number

[ROUBAL]

I have just updated the page with new images.

I have modelled the seats of the car and added a character. It is only a first trial, and I used the main parts of my character “Elisabeth” to make the cop standing near the car. I will add her some props and modify the clothes later.

http://3d-synthesis.com/42-PlymouthFury1977.html

[zeffii]

impressive materials/modeling i think the humanoid is the weakest link

[ROUBAL]

I agree, I have never been good at modelling humans. I have built a good rig, but I’m also not very good at applying weights to the mesh to get nice deformations. I have to work more in this area !

[ROUBAL]

Hi, I started to model a surrounding for my cars. As I wondered how to show several of them on the same image, I decided to create a police station with a parking area.

As I’m french, I work from reference images, and I have been inspired by a photo of the building of the NYPD police station (45th precinct) found on the web.

Currently, many things are still to be added, and many textures are missing.

The scene is modelled in Blender and rendered with Octane. As it is GPU rendering, the scene is limited by the amount of memory available on the Graphic card !

As I have already used 650MB of the 877MB of memory available on my GTX260, I will have to convert some parts of the geometry into texture and compare the amount of memory used. There are many individual stones modelled on this building, and I will break it into parts to remove the hidden parts according to the point of view, to save memory. it is important, because I would like to add at least one other car and one character,and maybe a motorcycle, as well as a surrounding with walls, plants and an image to reflect into windows ! I fear that it is "a bit"ambitious for a simple GTX 260 !

If The scene becomes too big, I will try to render it with Blender, but I don’t know if I will achieve a realistic result (I’m hopeless with Yafaray and Luxrender) . I may also try with Indigo, but I don’t master it as well.

Other cars images here :

http://3d-synthesis.com/42-PlymouthFury1977.html

I’m used to give names and nick names to my characters, so let me introduce them :

The driver of the car is Johnson, and the woman is Isabella Coplan, and her nick name is “Bella Cop”.

[BleedForMe]

It’s looking great. I’m just not convined the officer standing beside the car is a good idea, it makes it look less realistic, the one in the car gives it something extra, but the one outside it takes it away.

[ROUBAL]

Thanks for the comment. Maybe I will use this character for something else. I could make her going inside the building, seen from back, or put her on the other side of the car, like she is going to seat in the car, or give her a helmet an a motorcycle… I’ll see.

More textures and more props :

[patricia3d]

Hi Roubal. Nice Car and Nice Render. for just to fill my curisity, how much time it took to render a frame?. Great Work.

[ROUBAL]

Hi, kkrawal,

It is difficult to say, because it is unbiaised rendering, so you can stop rendering when you want.

As I was modelling while rendering (it is possible because almost all the work is done by the external graphic card), I didn’t pay attention to the render time. It depends on the number of samples per pixel you decide to be acceptable.

For this heavy scene on my Geforce GTX 260, I think that the image was neat enough after 4 minutes (around 100 samples per pixel), but I stopped it after around 500 spx.

A GTX 480 would work 3x faster I think.

[gregzaal]

nice, but the bike has no shadow

[ROUBAL]

You are right. I noticed that : it was due to the fact that the motorcycle had been moved upward by accident in Blender and was 10 cm over the ground !

New version with the sidewalk textured and the manhole changed from a modelled to a textured one with Nor map and Spec map mad from photos I shot last summer, and treated in CrazyBump.

I have to fix something else : there is to much chrome on the motor of the motorcycle : it is due to the fact that I had not enough materials (16 in Blender 2.49b). I have to separate some parts and add some materials with less shinning aspect for the heatsink part of the motor for example.

@kkrawal : I forgot to say that the image is rendered at 2560x1440 pixels and scaled down in Photoshop Elements to get a 1280x720 image with less aliasing. So the rendertime of 4 min for 100 samples per pixel is for 2560x1440.

[3dementia]

That render time is unbelievable! This is very nice work Philippe, Everything except the humans is perfect! I would spend some time concentrating on the human body, and push yourself to get some more extreme and natural poses.

[ROUBAL]

Well, I have modelled few characters so far. I’t the most difficult thing in CG I think, and I really have to improve myself in this area !

For the building itself, I still have to texture the clear stones.

[PorkFist]

Two crits, hope you dont mind.

But please, please remove that creepy guy in the background, he looks totally wierd.
Oh and whats with that random guy in the window? lol

Other than that its a top notch job, well done.

[ROUBAL]

A new image with more textures. I am not yet happy of all textures, and I think that it was not a good idea to apply this flower texture to the stones of the second floor (at the base of the windows).

Maybe the stones of the first floor are also a bit too dark…

I have removed the second officer (maybe I will put her on the bike).

I modelled a detailed metal sign over the door of the building, but the version used is a low poly version with Nor Map.

I did that to save some memory space, but it is not possible to read the writing at this distance.

An other test with some post prod in Photoshop Elements for the moisture and dirt :