Category: Cars

  • Back in the Funfactory

    On the occasion that I am turning 28, I look back at the chapter of my life when I was a player and modder of games by Synetic: The Funfactory, a small German studio that, without meaning to, taught me to be a designer of cars, a scientist, and, somehow, a resident of Germany.

    (Cover screenshot: a modded “Excellence” / [unlicensed Aston Martin Vanquish with a Jaguar face] in front of the alpine observatory in Crash Time 5: Undercover. Taken in 2016)

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  • Rendezvous with Elva

    I’ve never really had photo albums dedicated to one car, seen one time only. Well, even my 2018 Visit to Petersen Los Angeles didn’t earn a blog post. That said, tonight thanks to Auckland University FSAE team and their sponsors, I was fortunate to have spent a lot of time near a McLaren Elva, with pretty much all my camera lenses handy.

    The $1.7 Million USD base model price tag probably isn’t (solely) why I am so excited to see it, I guess.

    Enjoy the photos. More text soon.

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  • CC2020 – My First 3D Car

    video


    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.

    S.T.M.

    • 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. (and Arts)

    • 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.
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