go-kart model

Me and my friends are about as hard core as you can get about mario kart, and I have been fantasizing about making a mario kart clone type game on the pc. I made a little kart model to ease my pangs.

just under 3k tri's one 1024 for the body and a 512 for the wheels. Both could be sized down if needed without much loss visually since they are mostly gradients and flat colors. These are just viewport shots but I'm planning on a heavy dose of specularity or env mapping if it ever sees an engine.

My next goal is to add a rider with a bobblehead-sized helmet and then animate him turning left and right as well as a wipeout anim. If I get that far then I plan to tackle an entire course for this puppy to drive on.

[Blocked Image: http://marshmonkey.googlepages.com/kartshot.jpg]

I want to keep it very clean looking, so I'm not sure about adding a ton of stripes and decals. Also I was thinking of keeping everything to just a spec and diffuse map. Scaling some of the stuff up is probably a good idea to get things a little more cartoony, I will also be able to tweak that stuff further once I get a rider in there and see how that looks.

I don't think it's too over the top in texture and polycount, It's going to be running on a very lightweight engine like ogre, and there isn't going to be a whole lot else in the scene. I just was using my textures at source resolution but they could easily be sized down without any issues if needed.

I want to keep a very polished and cartoony appearance, like double dash and mario galaxy, but would still like to add a few details as suggested . . . any ideas? A gas cap perhaps? Some more panel lines perhaps too.

[Blocked Image: http://marshmonkey.googlepages.com/kartshot2.jpg]

I started dressing it up a little bit but I keep getting to the point where I think it looks too distracting so I take it back off. I scaled up the exhaust but couldnt really find anywhere else to push the scale without wierding it up. This shot is also with textures quartered down to a 512 for the body and a 256 for the wheels. Thoughts? I'm probably going to move onto to doing a driver soon. I'm not sure I like the skin changes, it looks like an episode of "pimp my kart"

ok, I made some cubemaps to add specularity, I'm going to call the kart done at least until I finish a rider. I also made a bunch of different colors, clicky http://marshmonkey.com/colors.html to see them

I'd rather do my own thing.

holy crap, never played with rim lighting before. Very cool stuff!!!! I found a simple fresnel shader for maya and plugged it into the incandescence:

[Blocked Image: http://marshmonkey.googlepages.com/kart_rimlight.jpg]

thats without any lighting, would make a kart game look pretty ace methinks.

gah, must. start. on. rider.

thanks for the concern fonfa, I have plenty of experience as to what goes into creating a game, and I wouldn't be doing it alone.

I'm doing this for fun, not to release a finished product.