Modelling like Lightning McQueen.

From racing to the classic car scene, my interests are broad. My father started buying Matchox cars before I was born. We still have them, along with a growing collection of 1;18 scale models. I started collecting car magazines when I was 10, so that means 36 years of Motorsport, Autocar, Road and Track etc etc etc. My wife does not bother opening the door to my study. I also have all issues of Cavallino, which my wife wants me to sell as I once made the mistake of telling her what they are worth.

Beside my 1967 250SL Pagoda, which I got my licence in and have been driving for the past 29 years, my main car-related hobby is building 3D computer models.

Essentially I use the same technology and software that Pixar used to build Lightning McQueen and the other characters in Cars. However my interest lies more towards photo-realistic modelling of real cars.

If you are looking at getting into a car-related hobby and have a reasonable computer I can highly recommend it. 3D modelling has two significant advantages over all other hobbies relating to cars.

It is free and it takes up no room in the garage.. so there can’t be any complaints from the wife.

After my magazine and model collection I have no room left.

And I’ve precious little expendable income left, either.

Luckily, one of the best 3D applications around is a free open source program called Blender (download it from www.blender3d.org). The initial learning curve is steep but perseverance pays off. There are many free on-line video tutorials and Googling 3D car modelling tutorials will deliver more than you could possibly ever need.

Just to the right you can find a link to a gallery one of my early models. It's a 1954 Ferrari 375 Plus. One of the images is a rendering in the livery of the Carrera Pan-Americana entrant. This was the first model I built using the box polygon method. Previously I was using a technology called NURBS, which stands for non-uniform rational b-splines and while very accurate is as big a pain to use as its name suggests.

Here in Australia, there is a very active community of modellers, and a number of them use their models for race-car sims (which is a whole world in itself).

If you are interested in race car sims you could visit rfactor.net where you can find the best non-game race car simulator around. At rfactorcentral.org you can download everything from a GTHO to the V8 Supercar grid and highly accurate models of most Australia race circuits. Bathurst can be found in the Hall of Fame section.

So I am sitting on one of our fabulous trains typing this, at least it hasn't broken down yet. I guess I'll just continue modelling the Zonda I am working on ..... that will kill the next 45 minutes it takes to travels the final 10 kilometres to the office.