2022 Flying Cars Contest - Project "Afterburner"

Used the rough mock-up to put down some surfaces and masses.

It's a simple shape so body itself is probably easy, but getting it all to look realistic and creating enough of interesting detail will be a tougher challenge.

Also I'm still pondering how to get the "Drag racing" feel into it even more.

Anyway first 3d stuff kicked off.

Defining shapes, adjusting proportions little by little, and thrown in some mock-up detail as pipes etc.

Trying to get the shape good enough to nail it down and move on to creating cutouts and such.

Perhaps I'll do a pass or two with drawing on top of the 3d mesh to improve the design more freely.

Made a rather quick overpaint. Not sure if I found out anything great on the design, but it's a step forward. Next, locking the main shape and modeling the panel gaps and such.

Cut the panel gaps, added some details and thought about further how the whole thing would work.

I tried to learn a bit about how rocket engines work (I'm not a rocket scientist, duh!) to get some more authentic look. These are the first steps but at least it seems there's a chance to add a lot of interesting detail in the end.

Also took a while to think about the seating and controls inside, I think they'll be more like in a space rocket than car. But nothing really modeled or designed yet.

Added two ballistic parachute canisters on the back so the thing could land after a race. The other one is a spare just in case the first fails. 🙂

Bit slow progress on this but I'll push through.

Added details, cleaned up mesh and made more sense of the rocket engines that also had an effect to the design.

Need to mak door openings and cabin basics next, I think.

More work done, created a simple interior space, and some kind of a seat with joystick controls.

Opened the doors and created their insides - they are quite a hack but I don't want to spend too much time detailing those since they won't most likely be visible anywhere.

Some other cleaning up and detailing done all around.

Need to sort the front suspension and engine mounting/cut more panels next.

Again slow progress, but I'm still moving forward.

More details and parts in the main engines, made the main body "solid" with the rear wheel well, defined front suspension more, details and improved geometry here and there.

I need to move on to UV mapping and texturing soon, and try to find the basic rendering setup - I know all of that takes a lot of time.

Almost everything UV mapped now, but no textures yet.

First test renders in Blender, it's now flying in Californian desert (the name of the HDRI) with placeholder materials to see out reflections etc.

Tekstures next, then finding out the lighting and materials and endless tweaking as always...

Block-outs for the background city and test-rendering.

Created UV's for the engine and added some early textures, still needs a lot more work.

Tested with simple jet-blasts, they're just cones now with no real material yet.

Can't really see much of the interior, so all the work is bit of a waste in this camera-angle. I guess I need to try and bring some of it more visible.