My Game Development Dynasty

For any hiring managers stalking my personal site; the front page is filled with blog posts, NOT portfolio pictures. That being said, most of my posts give insight to my newest projects and learning processes.

I love cars, and I love modeling, however, modeling cars is a time consuming task that requires a lot of practice. Well, this latest project is considered more practice and another piece to build on to my growing portfolio.

Thanks to some awesome feedback and help from industry vet, Randy Greenback, I have a better understanding on how too present my work from here on out.

The Idea:

I knew I wanted a new portfolio piece before I shot out another wave of applications. I also knew I wanted to practice my high fidelity car modeling skills. Me, being the hipster weirdo that I am, could not just settle on some normal boring sports car.

Nope, I chose a 1993 Dodge Dynasty. As seen below.

Yeah, you see that lovely lasting relic of the late 80s? I wanted to model that haha. So I set out with gathering as many reference photos from Google, Youtube captures, and even managed to find one poorly made blueprint. I saved all of the exterior measurements I could find, and even tried to contact Chrysler myself for build sheets, but their staff said they didn’t have quick access to that information.

Before I started this, I knew I wanted my portfolio piece to not be a plain boring sedan, oh no. Instead, I decided to make a “what-if” custom R/T trim level for the 93 Dynasty using inspiration from some of Chrysler Corps other performance vehicles in 1993, as well as some other weird late 80s classics. A quick history lesson; Chrysler Corp and Mitsubishi had a partnership from the 70’s until the 00s. Mitsubishi engines could be had in the Dynasty; the same family of engines that powered the potent Dodge Stealth R/T and Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4. That’s when it hit me, the 296hp DOHC Twin Turbo variant of the 6G72 v6 that was in the 3000GT could technically have been available in the Dynasty if a Dodge executive was crazy enough.

The Execution:

Before I started making the R/T version, I first had to make a normal Dynasty as close as possible with the sources I had. Using Maya I started to get to work.

After I modeled this sucker in Maya, I imported each component to Headus UV Layout Pro to UV. After I returned the UVed objs to Maya, I applied the appropriate materials and sent them over to Unreal.

Unreal 4 turned out to be my big challenge. I thought I could just plop the Dynasty into a scene, drop an HDRI image in for lighting, and call it a day. I was surely mistaken. Below was my first Unreal attempt using the normal Dynasty. Note that these vehicle materials are made by Epic for free.

I was satisfied with the model smoothing and poly count at the time. It worked with the materials and lighting well, so I moved on to the R/T version.

After I was satisfied with the Dynasty R/T in Maya, I modeled out a quick little Forza inspired track environment. I then had to teach myself how to convert HDRI images to DDS cubemaps for a skybox. After downloading cmft Studio and an NViddia Photoshop plugin, converting everything, making the necessary scripts, and creating the necessary objects, I did it!

I also spent a good hour modifying vehicle paint materials to look more like early 90s consumer grade automotive finish. Here are my results of all of that work!

The Results:

The Postmortem:

I think for my second major project in Unreal 4, it turned out pretty solid. I had some odd shadows from the “real-time” shadow option, as well as the smoothing, but it is SO much better than my Unity vehicle attempt.

I think the poly count is much better on this, and would be great for a resource sensitive application. I am however, aware that the poly count could be pushed a lot more next time I do a vehicle.

Honestly, the hardest time I had was figuring out a good way to present it. I was originally just going to throw the Dynasty on a turntable, but decided to a make a little environment for it.

I ended up with what you just saw, but I have a bunch of other family emergency issues to attend to, so I’m calling quits on it for now.