Was just thinking about how Americans use Imperial and my car looks pretty small unconverted. Here is a comparison to the Covet. The car is supposed to be 3997mm long, 1525mm wide and 1270mm high. If gabester is looking, you should know the sizes of the covet, right? That means you can tell me if it's right. Also another quick render while I'm working on the engine.
Size looks perfect to me. The Simca 1200S is a very small car. The Covet is built to the same dimensions as a 1987-1991 Honda Civic. The wheelbase is 2500mm (on the Covet and the Civic) and the width is also nearly the same. Same height, too. Also looks to me like the Covet and Simca are almost the same overall length, which is correct - the Covet is 3910mm long. Simca is only 87mm longer, which you can see in your comparison pic.
Fiat 142? No idea about this car you speak of. Looks a bit like a Karmann Ghia. I believe back when Czechoslovakia was still together and part of the USSR Skoda imported some Simcas and based the Skoda Rapid on the 1200s coupe model. Sorry for no more progress, like I said: I work slowly. Like, way too slowly.
I have to correct this (sorry ). The Skoda Rapid (1980's coupe model derived from the Skoda 120) had its predecessor in the 110 R which I'd say looks more like a Simca coupe. However, the 110 R was built after the factory agreed on keeping a sporty model in its lineup even after the failure of the 1000 MBX (it lacked structural rigidity with no B-pillar). So what they did was that they took the 110 LS sedan and gave it a Coupe bodyshell. I still have to agree that Simcas were quite popular here along with other western manufacturers (Fiat and Renault mostly) and that the base of your story might be true.
Don't worry about correcting me. It's just what I overheard. Anyway after a long time of not actually doing anything with the model, here is the front suspension: What is that weird thing in between the two wheels you might ask? A leaf spring. Oh! And if anyone can guess what model of car this is: I'll post pictures of my own.
I mean, technically it's wrong because the 1301 was never sold in New Zealand (only 1501) but then who cares: Here is a restoration album: http://imgur.com/a/OFTWc#1
Sorry for bump, but here is an engine pic: Is it too high poly? I hope I'm doing this right. EDIT: statistics are wrong, more like 2000 polys and 2400 verts. Had the Moonhawk engine in the scene for inspiration.
Thanks! I am trying my hardest to squeeze this between study and school. Anyway, onto the model. Is the engine too much? Someone said that the polycount didn't really matter too much because it is usually the JBeam that slows the game down. Is 60-70k too much (Tri-wise)? I am currently at 52k tris. All I've left is the engine (added would make 60) and rear suspension.
Oh boy it's perfect :O Both looks and polycount. You are also right about the polycount not slowing down the game that much. Gabester himself wrote that many times so it should be right
Yes, the jbeam is what eats performance the most, especially the collision triangles (as far as I know). The model generally does not effect the performance much as all, so anywhere up to about 100000 triangles should work fine. Most of the official vehicles are in the realm of 60000, so your car should fit in nicely
Remember that the game has to map every vertex of the flexbodies to the nodes in the jbeam, so it must be more overhead than just rendering polys with the gpu. I'm not sure how much overhead it really adds though. As long as you are in the ballpark (you are) you should be fine. The transverse leaf spring suspension is crazy! So simple, but I can't imagine it being very rigid under braking :0 My 1969 Corolla also uses a transverse front leaf spring, though in comination with a lower control arm for rigidity, and mcpherson strut with coil springs. So really the springing is shared by the leaf and coils, which is odd. I neglected to model the leaf out of laziness. My Corolla likely has a lot of inspiration from the Simca 1200 as well as the fiat 850 coupe.
Thanks for all the comments. I realize that obviously if I, say, turbosmoothed the mesh it would probably slow the game down. Maybe the engine is too high though. There is obviously some optimization I could do like deleting invisible polies. Also, are N-gons bad? I've got some but I imagine as the model will be triangulated it will disappear. Anyway here are the latest WIP shots: All I've got left now is the suspension and then texturing. I will try to do the Jbeaming before the textures though.
Awsome detail, this looks great. I don't think N-gons are bad, but you can influence how they're converted. I think it just depends on what you what the final product to look like (polyflow-wise, It doesn't affect the appearance of the model I believe).
The engine looks great! True, lots of polys, but it looks too good to change now! I'm not sure how you've progressed with the body since the wires posted on the top of this page? From those pictures, I would recommend reducing the number of polys on the flat panels of the car, especially the sides, but add more definition to the very visible sharp curvature, for example to the bottom corners of the rear window.
I always see actual feedback posted on forums and it is usually ignored and I hate that. I have gone ahead and fixed the bad looking corners on the rear window, but, I plan to finish the model and get it into the game before I optimize and texture. That way I can still make changes when it is in.
