What do you do? Freelancer questions too.

Re-evaluated life choices and back here modding for AC haha

I love cars and design and being creative and AC is a good platform for doing that and enjoying the work and sharing it with like minded people.

I'm still gutted that Cruden/Ruud stopped bothering with Free Racer... one of my things I'd like to do if I can make it happen is start something more 'open' like Racer, and with quality beyond AC, and get it churning forward with enthusiast made content.

 

First ever PC game I really spend time on was the Microsoft Flightsimulator 2002. Made a bunch of (awfully poor) liveries for it with MS Paint. Following a gaffe of typical teenager games (CS, COD, BF, NFS) I came across a magazine test for RFactor, which also listed its rival Live For Speed, and mentioned a free unlimited demo, I had a Sidewinder wheel I got for free...

Stayed with LFS for almost 7 years, made skins, made small mods, participated in a hand full of leagues (without success), at which point the non existing future and content for LFS became too apparent. But at the same time another sim from some small Italian studio started Early Access, so why not check that out...

In 2014 after having experimented only with changes in the data folder of badly made mod cars some private stuff happened, and that same night I downloaded Blender and started learning..

Bunch of months later I could post this on the official forums:

which three years and 15k downloads later had become this


Then came all the other projects, both the KRB cars, a few conversions of LFS cars that haven't left my harddrive, a failed Rallylegends project, a 100% fantasy hotrod car... just stuff I spend my evenings with instead of watching TV



so far its all hobby, haven't made a dime with it, have a normal 8-4 desk job and a rather normal real life. But who knows what the future brings, I have had some people/institutions showing interest in me doing freelance project for them

 

Your cars look great! You should definitely try to do some freelancing for others it will open other doors.
I became a freelancer myself about 7 years ago. Damn job had me all battered!
Anyway I wish you the best of luck in modding, and I'm hoping to see some of your work for AC.
Godspeed

 

No, I made a GTR version of the RAC (initially to test working gullwing doors, turned into a test balloon for all features AC has. It has animated standoff injector spray ) and converted the XRR, FXR and FZR (only XRR is what I would call feature complete). I could give the XFG a go some time, I have the files here...

 

God, I just love seeing 'then and now' photos. Especially those early blender pics of the 911 and Audi, they are almost nostalgic for me now - I remember seeing them in the modding section of the AC forums, definitely one of the most influential factors in making me want to pick up 3d modelling to make stuff for AC too.
Being able to see someones progress from almost nothing to something was actually really inspiring. You could literally see that with a little bit of time and effort, you can pick up a brand new skill and get decent results without having to be in the trade for a few decades.
In the early days, I actually found seeing work from the likes of A3DR and other pros quite disheartening and almost depressing, being able to push out very high quality work with relative ease and in record time, which seemed like an impossible target to aim for. But we have to remember that he and those like him have being doing this a long time, and with the relatively short time the rest of us have been trying out hand at it, I reckon we're doing alright

 

you didn't start your stuff before me? That surprises me, thought your Transit was among the new projects when I made my Alzen 996 thread.

and you're absolutely right about being depressed by all those pro's churning out AAA models - and your RSS group does exactly the same currently.
Interestingly enough it seems like making "low quality" cars is rarer than doing low quality tracks

 

I had to check, I was beginning to doubt my memory

I started the Transit thread (my first project) in Oct 2015, you started your KRB Audi thread in Feb 2015. Your 996 thread was Aug 2014.

So yeah, my memory is correct. I spent a lot of time browsing that car modding subforum, and seeing projects like yours grow from scratch was definitely a integral factor in giving it a go myself. Got pretty close to giving up a few times mind you, the learning curve was fairly steep in the beginning, glad I stuck with it though.

 

interesting, wonder how much else I remember wrong or forgot



Also cool and a little sad to look through this thread again, so much forgottten stuff
http://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/the-what-are-you-working-on-thread.26422/

 

You guys are an inspiration...

I'm a Geomatics Technologist (fancy word for a surveyor) and have been for 40 yrs. Early in my career I figured out I liked the office part better than being outside in the field. (Being outside and doing the same thing every day while baking in the sun or freezing in the rain, or being inside and doing many different things that make you think and encourage your creativity.) I've always liked art but was never artistically inclined.

I went through the whole computer adoption and transformation in the industry. In my early career, I worked for a gov't entity and we had a staff of 16. By the late 1980's, the cut backs in gov't services began. By the time my crew was dissolved (2003) and all the staff let go, we were down to 5 people - still putting out the same amount of work if not more. During those years, I became very well versed in 3D terrain modeling as I was constructing 3D terrain models for our road and highway Design guys to design on. I learned 4 different softwares for doing that and became a pretty much expert on one of them as I was asked to teach a course and wrote a manual on it. So for me - terrain creation is not much of an issue (getting the data and decimating it is).

I've been interested in 3D visualization for over 20 years now, but haven't found what I would consider a 'production ready' software yet... I've ruled out 3D Max - too complicated and AutoDesk is so restrictive about how much effort (and $$$) you need to put into things. (I should know - I use Civil 3D every day).

A candidate for about 15 years was 'Vue d'Esprit'. Great for single images but the animation results were never really adequate.
The shading is a bit off - too much brightness, but it is one of my tries...


Now that I tripped across AC, it's probably my best opportunity. I'm learning Blender right now, and aim to practice by making road furniture. LilSKi's UTube tutorials are freakin' awesome... please make some more.

My eventual goal is to create an AC model of the canyons I love to run - about 1,000km of them. The rural highways in my area (BC, Canada). About 2 yrs ago I felt my 'middle' age and imported a LHD Audi TT (63K kms) from Japan and I almost have it 100% restored to stock. (Who the hell puts a TV into a car?)

Luchian's TT is another inspiration, and I'd eventually like to create one like below to drive in AC (but a 225 like mine... ).

 

I liked discovering this thread after 4 years and reading what was in my mind back then