Canyon Car 2020 / FTD Sirius – My First 3D Car

Trailers

(Can’t tow)

2020

2023

This passion project, along with my (remote) lab duties during daytime, has been my source of joy during quarantine.

I intend to use this page in a manner similar to my previous build logs of various crafts projects, and to upload pictures regularly as I make progress.

Things I learned.

Main (STM)

Hermite Interpolation.
B-Splines and Catmull-Clark Subdivision Surface Algorithm.(Paper at Berkeley EECS)
Using Blender 3D as a Python IDE.
Basic Ray-tracing Calculus.

E

I DREW CAD SCHEMATICS OF A CAR!
3D Camera Movement in a pseudo-cinematic setting.
Believable in-engine lighting design.
Colour grading (on an iPad so this was a joke).
Basic usage of Simulink (R) for aerodynamic simulations… This is more “if” knowledge than “how”.
A deeper appreciation of the complexity of a real car. To be fair all I’ve been able to achieve is, physically, a metal box spring-loaded onto 4 bouncy wheels, and all the sub-systems are make-believe.

2011 – 2018: The Itch

Trackmania Canyon, a French game published by Ubisoft is responsible for maybe over a hundred hours delight in my teenage life. As a game released in 2011, its graphics and physics have aged gracefully, and so does the car featured in all the solo campaigns.

A mix of late 2000’s Porsche and Ford Mustang, with a hint of European contemporary styling here and there, that car (henceforth, CC) is quite an elegant V8-muscle car to roam the landscape of the Grand Canyon.

Over the years, I’ve created many a variants of it, mostly thanks to the game’s inbuilt livery designer. Exhibit 1 contains some source materials I’ve rendered in game.

**Exhibit 1.** Trackmania Canyon Car: Model by Nadeo / Stephane Sommer

Meanwhile, Exhibit 2 shows what I believe are its influences in the real world, 2006 Mustang Giugiaro Concept, 2009 Mustang, Porsche 911 Turbo, (and Peugeot 508?).

Dec 2018 – Mar 2020: Planning

On my iPad, I established a folder to keep scribbles related to this project. In early 2019, I even turned some of the sketches into CAD drawings once. Nothing went far in this period, and Exhibit 3 shows some representative work.

I also learned about cubic splines and graphs theory’n’stuff in maths during this period, so I no longer fear 3D modelling.

Apr 4, 2020: Explorations and Learning

This period is mainly about translating my drawing into a 3D mesh grid. After all, one hopes to retain a reference point. A few weekend evenings were dedicated to this.

The first version was a Grand-Touring-style thing, similar to Ferrari FF for some reason.

USB keyboards were not regarded as essential items for sale during COVID-19 lockdown, so I was stuck with my laptops’ lack of number keys for a while. Luckily Blender has an “Industry compatible” configuration.

Also it was decided that this car was going to be an EV quite early on because I am not going to model an internal combustion engine. That part was easy to implement so discussion is omitted for now…

List of angry car makers += Tesla.

Apr 7 – 10, 2020: Molten Soap

People whom I’ve shown my renders in this stage all agreed that my models resembled more molten soaps than cars (which is fitting given the Arizona setting of the game), so I won’t comment too much on this stage. You can skip Exhibit 5 although it’s the most funky.

Indeed it looked like some Bentley with taillights popped out.

By this point, there has been a healthy (ironic) mix of triangles and quadrilaterals in the geometry, and I haven’t found the button that smoothed normal vectors.

Apr 11 – 15, 2020: Identity

This is the period during which CC 2020 started to take on its own identity. It started with a false invocation of the aforementioned “smooth” function, but then the process became more deliberate as I used a massively simplified (5000 vertices) in SimuLink to identify the aerodynamically sharp edges. The car was at around 12,000 vertices at this point.

Frontend Version 2, where the headlights follow the same arrangement as the original CC. Wheels also got changed,

**Exhibit** 6B. Almost publication-ready

Apr 16 – 24, 2020: Details

At this point I’ve realized the original CAD drawings weren’t as modern as I had hoped. As Exhibit 6A might reflect, I might have managed to get my vertices to look like a car, but it’s still far from a 2020-model. Consequently, all the exterior details are re-modelled, while keeping the metal sculpting.

**Exhibit** 7. Latest CC2020 Renders as of April 24.

Apr 25, 2020 : The Last Mile

The yellow GT200 was glitchy in the game painter. It took me a little while to realise the mirror reference object for half its body had a nonzero z rotation … so half of tha car was off by 0.2 degrees.

**Exhibit 8:** CC2020 in its almost-publishable state.

Apr 27, 2020: Release on ManiaPark

**Exhibit 9:** CC2020 in the same state as above, but now every single Trackmania player can play with it.

April 28, 2020: Fun with Art

I have a lot planned for this car… But for now, I have to get back to work.

The Supercollider was designed to drive in the scenery blocks in Canyon. This is a made-from-scratch livery with electron-positron Feynman diagrams. Fitting (and simultaneously otherwise) for an electric car.

A fictional Canyon Sheriff livery design.

Exhibit 10′: A few more simple racing graphics.

Poster for Version 1.0.3

July 3, 2020: v110

The previous “Autoshow” variant, i.e. v1.0.3, was the most downloaded model on ManiaPark in May, and third in June. Furthermore, it has been downloaded over 350 times as of July 1, 2020. To celebrate, and to apply some new things I learned in Blender 3D, I built version 1.1.0.

On the sideline, Ubisoft Released the new TrackMania game on July 1, 2020, with incompatible art styles and technical standards, so imaginably not as many people will be able to drive this car in its full glory … That said, if you found this page from ManiaPark, welcome!

July 10 2020, Augmented reality showroom

FWPhys cannot host Augmented Reality by itself at the moment, but you are welcome (if you are an Apple user) to play with my car by downloading the file below:

Download .reality file (iCloud)

October 18, 2022: v1.2.0 through 1.3.1

Well, this section collects renders from the past two years. The general shape is kept, but I am largely using this assortment of vertices and polygons as Blender training.

An Attempt was also made to 3D-print a toy version of CC2020, for an eventual diorama display with a toy Mustang and a toy Hyundai Genesis (see above).

November 19, 2022: v1.5

Trying parametric modelling… I want to 3D print this at Hot Wheels scale for real. That is happening soon I hope.

Dec 2023: v1.4

This was my annual art project of 2023, against an uncertain background of academic job search. I grafted the v1.5 tailight assembly onto a v1.3 body, and storyboarded a small video to go with it.

It was quite hastily put together.

Jun 2026: Afterthoughts

The resin 3D printer is in place but the car hasn’t been printed. I visited the building where Nadeo works and rendered CC in front of their building using the AR demo.