These past few months I’ve started grad school for software engineering, while continuing to work full-time at the University of Scranton.
Even though I may be forced to work full-time at this maintenance job to pay off my student debt, I have not lost sight of my career goals, and the creative force inside of me continues to push me forward.
I’ve recently gotten a hold of Keyshot 9 through nefarious methods, and have been practicing rendering some wicked vehicles utilizing HDRI and backplates.
My main inspiration has been some of the largest automotive designers on Instagram, and in the industry at large. Khyzyl Saleem, Abimelec Design, Walter Kim, and a few other industry recognized folks have not only been a huge inspiration, but also a huge help. I’ve spoken with Walter a few times, and he’s offered critique on my earlier work. Abimelec, and Khyzyl as well. These are all extremely busy industry folks, and having them lending me their time was extremely kind. My automotive rendering from last year, compared to today, is night and day. My automotive modeling, design, and rendering pipelines are all completely revamped, and if I’m being honest, my portfolio can use an update later this month as I put out some new projects I’m working on.
So let me just give a brief run-down of what I’ve been exploring, why I’ve been doing it, and where I plan on going with this.
So as the title suggests, 3D rendering in Keyshot allows me to be the automotive designer a person a few decades ago would have dreamed to be. Taking this design work into a 3D space allows limitless creative possibilities compared to someone in a fabrication shop.
I’ve always liked unconventional classic cars, and that can be well observed on my Instagram, v8_or_die. These classic cars go so under appreciated, that people will hardly even maintain them in their stock form, let alone build a resource heavy custom of them. The only classics that get the “radical” custom treatment are the already mainstream ones. Camaros, Mustangs, and Chargers can all be found in a multitude of interesting builds.
For my first project, I wanted to get a feel of Keyshot and explore some racing design elements I’ve wanted to put on a few American full-sized sedans. This exercise wasn’t intended to be one in modelling, and my time is limited, so I found a stock 1973 AMC Matador model and a Viper V10 engine. I converted them from Sketchup to OBJ files, brought them into Maya, and then cleaned them up with the proper materials and geometry.
Next, I moved on to throwing in a few design elements I have always wanted to see on these American full-sized 4 doors. I cut the fenders out, and added fender flares. This allows for the vehicle to sit lower, while also fitting wider wheels. I then added a front and rear air dam, with side skirts. This allows the vehicle to appear even lower, while also providing better high speed aerodynamics. Lastly, I put on a rear spoiler that I believe fits the vehicle’s intended functionality. I had to do some research on that one.
The last touches were a set of BBS style mesh wheels I had to custom make, a dual exhaust, and dropping the Viper V10 into the engine bay with a custom air intake on it.
With that, I was satisfied with my wild race-spec AMC Matador 4 door.
I exported it into Keyshot, and little by little, I started applying materials. At first I only used default material presets, but I quickly had to learn to modify them to suit my needs. Next up, I was determined on having stickers and logos all over my vehicle, so I learned how to use the sticker/label feature in Keyshot, which allowed me to juice up my model a bit more.
The real magic happens in the real time rendering of Keyshot using HDRIs, combined with their backplate feature. I have a had plenty of HDRI experience in Maya, Unity, and Unreal 4, but I’ll be honest, I have not used backplates in a long time. Freshman year was the last time I had explored the technique, and my experience at the time did not yield sexy results haha.
So here’s some basic iterations I went through. The finalized render had a pass through photoshop with some added color and depth of field effects.
I’m genuinely happy with what I learned, and this is going to be a stepping stone for even better automotive design work later down the line.
Right now, my biggest anxiety inducing issue is my lack of time. Between work and grad school, I’m losing my time for creative work. It takes so much time to model out vehicles and engines, especially when I can’t find any pre-made models online to work off of. Considering most vehicles I like aren’t extremely mainstream, if I can find them, they usually end up being extremely expensive premium models I can’t afford to dump money on. Even if you ethically ignored pirating, you can’t really find pirated 3d models. It’s not really something people save and redistribute often enough.
However, I have been exploring 3d scanning using an opened source software called Meshroom. It basically takes a batch of photos, and slowly analyzes them to create a 3d model. The goal is to get my 1988 Eldorado scanned in, and then I’ll use that complex scanned mesh to create a new clean properly sized mesh.
We’ll see where this journey takes me. As of right now I’m working on another race spec sedan. However, this time around, I have a much better grasp of the design, modeling, and rendering techniques I’ll be using. The greatest thing about practice is that your efficiency tends to go up exponentially. A project that would take weeks turns into only days. It’s a great feeling.
I’m currently still looking for design work, so if you happen to know any openings in the industry, send them my way. I really would rather not be a janitor anymore. It’s detrimental to my mental and physical health at this rate. It’s odd, but having the rug pulled out from under me has made me realized the true strength of human nature. You think you hit a breaking point, and then you suddenly adapt to it, and dig your feet in more as you push back. A great professor I talk to recently said to me, “You’re digging yourself a deep hole right now, so that you may have a stronger foundation.” It’s really cheesy, but I appreciate his words of wisdom. Something that fits me has to come eventually. I feel it. Perhaps it’s some misplaced optimism, but I’ll use that energy to put back into my portfolio and game projects.
