Creating a Next-Gen Video Game Hot Rod: the Complete Workflow – Day 5

Creating a Next-Gen Video Game Hot Rod: the Complete Workflow – Day 5

on Mar 23rd 2010 with 30 comments
Tutorial Details

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

This entry is part 5 of 9 in the series Next-Gen Video Game Hot Rod

Ever wanted to know how the artists create those amazing cars for AAA video game titles? Well here’s your chance to find out. In this incredible CGTuts+ exclusive tutorial series, you will follow professional CG artist and teacher Laurens Corijn as he creates a high quality, next-gen, normal mapped Hot Rod for realtime use.

Now, in the fifth part of our mammoth series, Laurens will demonstrate how to carefully design your low poly model in the most efficient way possible, while still being optimal for baking the details from your high poly model into a normal map texture.

Video 1

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Video 2

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Video 3

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Video 4

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Video 5

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By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

I'm Laurens Corijn, a recent Digital Arts & Entertainment graduate from Belgium. I've been doing CG for 4 years now, mainly focusing on mechanical subjects such as vehicles. I equally enjoy working on high-end rendering, and optimized, real-time, video game art. Besides doing CG, I like to spend my time listening to music, and riding and maintaining my motorcycle. My website can be found at: laurenscorijn.com.  

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  • http://beautifulemails.com Mohammad Koubeissi

    This is great. Need to find the time to watch/follow all of these. Really need to step-up my CGI skills.

  • marco Ortega

    thanks for this tuts
    i like very very much your work Laurens Corijn,

  • Biker

    Video 3 seems to be from day 4 not 5, but it was still easy to follow along. I’m learning a ton of things about work flow from this tut. Nicely done. Can’t wait for the next set to see how you map it. I can only guess how much work it was to make these tuts, but I for one am glad you took the time.

    • http://kaleb-3d.com Kaleb Aylsworth

      Fixed. Sorry!

  • Matthias

    Video 3 isn’t linked right!

  • Johnas

    Looks like video 3 is from day 4. No wonder I had deja vu, I realised after 3 minutes that I ‘ve seen this already =)

  • jojanes
  • Andrew

    The tutorial is great!

    Sorry, for off-topic, but MORE MAYA tutorialias!

    Thanks, and sorry again.

  • Mark Bos

    Laurens when texturing is comming if u already planned it. Realy looking forward to it.
    Great vid btw

  • Jesse

    Nice tutorials.. I like your workflow

  • http://laurenscorijn.com Laurens
    Author

    Andrew: If you’re proficient with Maya, you should be able to follow this along with it. I really haven’t done anything that is “Max-Only”

    Mark: next up; unwrapping, then baking, then we move into texturing.

  • Mark Bos

    Ok realy looking forward to it.
    Till than and good luck laurens

  • http://www.darrinhoudek.com kid

    Thanks for all the videos, they really come in handy. Cant wait for the next ones.

  • Matthias

    I love this tutorial series.
    But in the last parts it gets really anoying :)
    I also see that it was pretty late when you recorded :P
    Unless it’s great!

  • dude

    looks like the druid plow from brütal legend

  • Vonster

    Thanks for tuts bro, great stuff

  • john_trueblue

    these videos are great thanks for sharing them :)

    one thing i have found is on the Day 4 page there isnt a link to day 5!

  • Mike

    Nice set of videos man. I work in the game industry too and am a big gear-head. I know things depend on camera angles, the art director, and if you’re going to have a hi-res UI model but there was a few areas that stuck out to me as mechanically sound parts and names.

    I saw Duke already corrected you on the cylinder head/valve cover mix up. Valve covers mount on top of the cylinder head and the cylinder head mounts to the engine block.

    The cylinder you modeled (on the front of the engine) by the supercharger idler pulley is an electric water pump. More reference would be needed, if you’re going to have close engine shots in the UI. Look up Hemi electric water pump on google.

    I didn’t notice your engine having an alternator (which is essential for vehicles, haha), power steering pump (some hot rods don’t have), lower radiator hose (upper/lower hose should connect to the water pump on the Hemi engine – other engines, the upper hose connects to the intake manifold), radiator fan (which would have to be electric because of your electric water pump – a regular water pump would allow for a fan and clutch assembly that bolts to the water pump pulley), oil filter, battery, and spark plug wires (which I assume may come in your up coming videos).

    Older vehicles used multiple V-belts to connect the crankshaft pulley, power steering pulley, alternator pulley, and water pump pulley (yours is electric so you don’t have to worry about that). However, V-belts would tend to slip at higher loads. Serpentine belts eventually replaced V-belts and most hot rodders switched to this setup because it was more efficient.

    U-Joints are also need at the back of the drive shaft to connect to the differential, otherwise the drive shaft would snap because of rotational forces (ie torque from engine/transmission or braking after acceleration).

    I know games are all about smoke and mirrors and most of this stuff would only come into use on a hi-res UI model for a game. So I hope you don’t think I’m knocking your work in any way man. I’m just throwing stuff out since the engine is so visible. You’re a good CG Artist so you can take my words for what it’s worth. Some of this may actually help your reference searching in the future, who knows. I enjoy watching other artist’s workflow to pick up things here and there – I’ve picked up a couple shortcuts. So thanks for posting your videos and keep up the good work!

    • Laurens
      Author

      Hey Mike,

      thanks for the big reply. I can see where you’re coming from, and I know the engine isn’t 100% perfectly accurate. Thing is, I didn’t take the modeling any further after this video. If you work in the industry, you should also know time is an important factor, and that you can’t just go pouring all your time into something until it grows way out of proportion. I like to keep things moving so i stay motivated: dabbling with one part for too long drains my energy and makes me wish I could move on so the results become visible. In this case I was limited by time (the engine in itself must’ve taken more than 10 hours…) and reference. It’s really hard to find good pictures of these engines, the few I found were just one angle, and there are no bigblock engines available for viewing in europe. I had no luck with exploded views either, so for details like you are mentioning, I had to go off my own accord. I can understand one’s perception on this can differ depending on how much knowledge a person has; i’ve been bothered by technical inaccuracies myself (big blatant ones that mean the model would be unriggable for example), but we all have to draw the line somewhere.

      • Mike

        Hey Laurens,

        I completely understand where you’re coming from man. I was throwing out part names that would help you, and any others here, that wanted to research a little more. Haha, yes, time is money in the game industry and it’s all about smoke and mirrors. I’ve worked on a couple off-road racing titles with an Art Director that’s a gear-head and wanted to stay true to the sport. So certain things got looked at a little more closely, if it was in the open with close camera angles. I was just throwing some of this out there because we had a coworker that got called out, by the Art Director, on some engine accuracy, mainly because the engine was so visible and there were UI models. But like I said man, I’m not knocking you. I was just putting info out anyone could use to help in research. You have good work, I’ve enjoyed your video series, and I learned a couple shortcuts for selecting edge loops and rings. So I thank you. Keep up the good work and I look forward to your upcoming videos.

        Cheers,
        Mike

  • boyluya

    Hey dude this is awesome! Did you use your shader in max in that screencap? Can you please share us how you set it up? Thanks!

    • Laurens
      Author

      Yep I did. I’ll probably go over that in the end. But it’s not too different from the video I did for CGtuts a while ago (the one where I set up the Skorpion VZ61 gun).

  • erick

    Thank you so much again for posting these videos, keep the coming!!!!

  • RowdyRobot

    I love it when guys like Mike come in with some really in depth help to improve my work. It really shows a selfless attitude because writing all about what he did, takes a lot of time and he gets nothing out of it except the gratefulness of people like me. And the length and detail of Lauren’s tuts show he really appreciates that kind of input too.
    Great stuff Mike. Thanks for the tuts Lauren!

  • http://mrjimmyos.carbonmade.com/projects/2634244 James F

    Thanks for this, I picked up a few things I can do in blender I think, also it made me remember that I should do a couple of high poly objects for my current UT3 project (it passed by me because it’s a large house and generally I wouldn’t think to do high poly normals for that sort of thing).

    Can’t wait for day 6!

  • Joerg

    First off, thanks a lot for these amazing tuts. I´ve a question about how you´ve used the snapping in the 4th vid. It seems that you are working in the perspecitve view and arrange one vertex by another in the yz-plane. Could you please be so kind and explain how that is done?

    • http://laurenscorijn.com Laurens
      Author

      That would be “Use Axis Constraints” in the snapping options window (right click snap button), second tab, at the bottom. I never use snapping without; it effectively limits your snapping to only work on the Gizmo’s active axes (the yellow ones).

  • Joerg

    Hi Laurens,
    I´ve used the same setting all the time but never realized that one could work with it that way. So, again thanks a lot :-). Ohh, I´ve to hurry, I saw that your 6th series is online and I couldn´t await it!

  • samepatel1024

    such A good work

  • Duke

    Hey Laurens,
    you did a wonderful amazing job. I am a beginner and a lot of time need me to finish all job throw videos. this is a tutorial for advanced users,. Do you have more tutorials? Where can i download them?