I have been working on some prop pieces along with the Riviera, I am building “kits” that can be tiled and configured in different ways to quickly create dynamic scenes . The above image is an example I threw together in about 20 minutes. I will be updating the scene tomorrow, and I will post another render when I am finished.

Below are two progress renders:

I’d say I’m about 85% done now. There’s some details I still plan to add, a few areas need touching up, and the weapons need textures… Other than that this asset is pretty much completed.

From this point on I wont be posting anymore renders from 3DSMax. I will be posting in-engine images from UDK. They will give a better indication to how the car looks.

-Johnny

Also, my internal clock is all out of whack from sleeping long hours, and then modeling long hours. Hence this early morning post.

I finished a couple smaller assets earlier this week as a sort of personal practice before I tackle unwrapping/mudboxing/texturing the Ram. The model is deceptively complex. The individual armor plates demand to be each modeled separately, as extruding them all off the base mesh results in it looking really low poly, rather than covered in unique angle metal pieces.

At this point I just need to clean up the armor a little, and model the weapons. Here’s a couple WIP shots:

After quickly finding front and side line drawings of the Mustang, I started the process using a technique that I’ve learned relatively recently which involves using splines to create a cage of the model.

From there, using a surface modifier and converting it to polygons, I ended up with some pretty rough geometry, but it was a start.

More time working on it (and temporarily borrowing wheels from my Ducati Motorcycle model)

Having the general shape of a 2005 Mustang, I load up my movie reference and realize my front end needed tweaking.

She’s far from finished, but I’ve got her rolling.

Click the image for full size.

I’m pretty much 100% done with the model, I have a few poly’s to tweak that you can’t on the bottom, and then it’s off to mudbox for some sculpting. After that I’ll be working out the final details in Photoshop. Can’t wait to finish and drive it around in Unreal!

Here are in-engine shots of an undamaged barrier.

We needed to be able to use these barriers to direct the player around the track. Using the red and green channels of a mask, we’re able to flip flop the direction of the arrows. You’ll also notice the large yellowish color parameter that can be changed on the fly, which in turn will change the color of the masked arrows. We plan to use this type of technique to color coordinate sections of the track.

After finishing up the undamaged version of the barrier, I imported it into Mudbox to add a little bit of damage to give us another version of it that we can use in parts of the track where the player might slam into the barriers more often.

Or rather, Box.

Anyways, Boom! Progress is well underway with PDR. A few recent team meetings have really helped, as each team member shares their areas of expertise with the rest.

So, uhm, what am I looking at?
What indeed.

Apparently Terminal Island, home of Death Race, was once a lush forest of rebar and tarnished brass pipes. When they cleared the land to make room for their glorious prison/race track they went ahead and crushed the local vegetation into cubes. Afterwards, they used said cubes to line their track, and to provide shelter to unwitting Pit-crews in times of danger.

Click the thumbnails above to see a full size image. The armor still needs a lot of work before I’ll be satisfied with it, but I will admit it’s looking better than I had anticipated so far.

Started work on the weapons for the Riviera. In the film, the car only has machine guns. I plan to up the ante a bit and add a few RPG’s to the roof, and possibly a door mounted weapon.

The plan is to have the armor and weapons modeled by next weekend so that I have plenty of time to texture, rig, and setup in UDK.