Research

On this page i will be showing off all of my research i have done starting off with primary research i did with google forms, then moving onto secondary research, looking into websites and different games.

Primary Research

To start off with i did some primary research to get me a head start on this project so i know what it is i am looking for in a game and on the modelling side to the project. I asked a few questions on google forms to help me get some answers i were looking for. These questions were personal to me so that i know what i will need to do and need when modelling in a group project.


Question one

For question one i made sure to ask a question i knew would be important to me so that i can take the answers into consideration when starting the main idea. I asked the people what type of cars they would like to see in a low poly racing game. With the answers i received from this question i knew i could start somewhere as the majority of the answers were along the lines of street cars or cars that are very customizable. I took this into consideration and found a bunch that i thought fits the answers and i think would look great in the game.

These are 4 of the cars i chose to give some quick feedback of the responses i got. These were the type of cars i was thinking of when i saw Tokyo and HyperCars. The reasons behind it is that these cars are very popular cars for being modded which fit the theme of japanese/ Tokyo 

Ferrari F40

Nissan R34

BMW M3 E46

Nissan 350z

Question two

For question two i wanted to move onto the tracks to get to know what i need to be looking for on the races part of the models. I needed to make sure i had a great understanding of the importance of a track so i asked what details people would see on a race track and i got a great variety of answers to help me solve my questions. The answers that stood out to me were the 4th answer of tires, fakes advertisement boards and crowd stands and the 2nd answer of spectators and the finish line. After seeing these responses i made sure i would get into some research quickly to find out a set idea of what i want on these tracks.

My response

After doing some research i managed to find a great variety of tracks that would be suitable for my game and i think match up to the responses i got on my question. I found a variety of tracks that have finish lines and road marks around the tracks aswell as the crowd stands to fit the atmosphere of it being a race.

Question three

Going back to the cars, i wanted to know a little bit more about them and i wanted to know what else i could do to them. I found out what kind of cars are great for the game but now i would like to know what kind of things they would like to see on the cars, so thats what i asked the people. And here are the responses. I liked answer 4 as this really made me think about unique designs i could do to the cars to make them different. Numbers and decals would be something incredible that i would love to do to the vehicles. Stripes is something i think is very basic but makes the car that much better when in the game. The little details like the stripes really give the cars a whole different look and give that feel of a racing car. Other great responses i found was spoilers and wings. This really made me think of an idea of customization for each car. I like the idea of being able to customize cars so thats a thought that i would like to consider.

A great example i found with car customization is this car above. Although it looks very basic, it has the racing stripes along the whole car making it less bland and giving it a cool unique look to it and really makes the whole car look sportier. Another thing i would like to point out is  the attention to detail. So some examples is the wing mirrors, front grill, headlights, rear spoiler, vents etc. This another point that got brought up on my third question which is another thing i would like to consider doing to my cars i make. 

question four

For the final question, i didnt really know what to ask as i got what i wanted out of everything but then something came to mind that i thought could be something to consider which is the colours. Now it may seem something unnecessary to ask but i thought it would be a great idea to get multiple colour combinations to keep track of so that i may be able to consider them when creating other models in the future. Now a got some great colour combinatios such as whites and blues, black and reds, yellows and black, red and oranges etc. i managed to get a great variety that i may be able to consider using with different models than just the vehicles.

They were all the questions i asked and all of the responses i got. Overall i am very happy with these results as i got a fair few responses on each question allowing me to take notes down to really bring this idea a few steps further. All of these answers really got me a plan going and really pushed me on further to create a big lead. i am glad i did something like this as it helped a lot with the questions i needed answers for.

Secondary Research

With secondary research needed to guide me in the right direction i started off with some tutorials on how to model cars in 3ds max. I started off with how to setup blueprints, which are extremely important if i wanted these cars to turn out great. So i went on youtube to find out how to get this sorted out and found a video that seems to have caught my eye with how short it was and how well he explained it in the video. This video was created by someone called MurkEmur.

With that video in place and my blueprints setup in 3ds max i needed to know how to start off with the cars and how to get the model going. I ended up looking on YouTube once again to help me get started on modelling. I came across a lot of videos that were modelling cars but they were all time-lapse and i didn't want that as it weren't an explanation video, they were more of a show off kind of of video. But i eventually found one and that was this one was by Paul Neale. The video on the right by Paul Neale was a more detailed version of my cars i wanted so rather than doing what he does i decided to be more simple. I knew that he started off with a plane and to go from there i just had to extrude and shape around the car. So that's what i did and ignored all the details such as door handles, vents etc.