One of my projects for FTX involved creating an animation of a Formula 1 car driving past the famous "W Hotel" on the Abu Dhabi circuit. At the time, FTX was a sponsor of the Mercedes team, and they wanted to reward attendees with a commemorative NFT. So, I designed a Formula 1 car from scratch in Gravity Sketch VR and animated it in Blender.
Role:
3D Artist
Industry:
Marketing and Promotion
Duration:
2 weeks
Challenges
Hard Surfacing: Apart from s few projects in Industrial Design school, this was one of the first times I really dove into hard-surface modeling. Gravity Sketch VR made this super easy by allowing me to surface using subdivisional modeling in an immersive space.
Showing Speed: Another challenge was giving the illusion of speed in the animation by using just the right amount of motion blur and animation speed.
Lighting: Getting the proper lighting to create a moody let realistic graphic was challenging but resolved using the power of HDRIs.
My Approach
Design Phase
Modeling: For the 3D model of the formula 1 car I used Gravity Sketch VR to surface a wireframe that I initially traced out from exiting images of Formula 1 cars. I then used those wireframes as a guide to lay out the surfaces and contours of the car
Set Design: Using a model of the "W Hotel" I created a road and barrier system that was on a large circle to make animating much easier.
Animating
The Car: The car itself was pretty simple, all I had to do was keyframe the wheels to rotate incredibly fast and that was it.
The Background: To give the animation the illusion of moving at incredible speeds I actually just animated the fence and the road moving in a circle while the car stayed still and only the tires rotated. The hotel was just animated along a single axis very slowly. This paired with some tasteful motion blur gave the appearance of the car moving fast along the road.
Rendering
Optimizing Settings: Not much can be said about the rendering process other than I had to do some trial and error to find the perfect combination of sample size and frame rate.
Conclusion
The end result was a beautiful animation that formula fans could appreciate and keep forever in their NFT wallet. I really challenged myself with complex hard-surface modeling and some movie magic in the animation. This is one of the projects I am most proud of because I especially love motorsports and racing.
