I have yet to go and play around with the little details, but I doubled the sides all around, and put them all together. I'll continue playing around with it in the morning.
Cars Toyota 7 (578A)
- Thread starter Joshua Prematta
- Start date
I have yet to go and play around with the little details, but I doubled the sides all around, and put them all together. I'll continue playing around with it in the morning.
The Toyota Automobile Museum in Japan has recently updated their website, and on it, came the confirmation of at least one Turbo 7 being housed there.
There is also the opportunity to request stock images to be used for media articles, which allow me to request no more than 10 photos of the Toyota 7. I already have 3 images in mind so far; a close-up of the gauge cluster, a picture of the footwell from the driver's seat, and an image of the plate containing the car's information, like chassis number, etc. Are there any other ideas for images of obscure angles to request? I have uploaded all of my reference images to Google Drive so you can see what angles I have, and what I am lacking. Feel free to throw any suggestions out there as to what angles I should request.
drive.google.com
In the meantime, I'll start working on an article to make sure it's worth their time to take those pictures.
There is also the opportunity to request stock images to be used for media articles, which allow me to request no more than 10 photos of the Toyota 7. I already have 3 images in mind so far; a close-up of the gauge cluster, a picture of the footwell from the driver's seat, and an image of the plate containing the car's information, like chassis number, etc. Are there any other ideas for images of obscure angles to request? I have uploaded all of my reference images to Google Drive so you can see what angles I have, and what I am lacking. Feel free to throw any suggestions out there as to what angles I should request.
Toyota 7 Images - Google Drive
In the meantime, I'll start working on an article to make sure it's worth their time to take those pictures.
D
Deleted member 223075
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Deleted member 223075
Wow really nice
While the poor attempt at journalism-ing continues, I've eyeballed a seat into the car to get a preliminary one in, when it comes to the turbosmoothing of it, I'm split on whether or not to turbosmooth once or twice. I've set up a little side-by-side to gauge your guys' opinions on the matter. Personally I think one turbosmooth iteration does fine, whereas two iterations looks a little excessive, especially with an extra 6k tris compared to the one.
When it comes to asking for the reference photos from Toyota, the form throws a couple curveballs our way for this situation. The form asks for a company name, which I obviously don't have. If you want to see the form, the terms and conditions, you can find them here. I've reached out to Davide about the hopes of using the RaceDepartment name as a credible company to give us a better chance about getting stock photos, so hopefully we can see where that goes.
This project has been such a blast, with all the ups and downs we've occurred, and I feel like I haven't thanked you guys enough for all the time, support, and advice. So thank you. Hopefully I can get this out to you guys in a relatively timely manner.
When it comes to asking for the reference photos from Toyota, the form throws a couple curveballs our way for this situation. The form asks for a company name, which I obviously don't have. If you want to see the form, the terms and conditions, you can find them here. I've reached out to Davide about the hopes of using the RaceDepartment name as a credible company to give us a better chance about getting stock photos, so hopefully we can see where that goes.
This project has been such a blast, with all the ups and downs we've occurred, and I feel like I haven't thanked you guys enough for all the time, support, and advice. So thank you. Hopefully I can get this out to you guys in a relatively timely manner.
Another week, and another post's worth of progress made.
Going chronologically from Thursday, I ultimately decided to keep the seat to only 1 turbosmooth iteration. With the smoothing groups, it seems to look pretty decent to me at least, but I have yet to cut out the area for the shifter knob to go. Additionally, I've also worked more on the visible elements of the space frame, adding a few pieces that I had initially missed, and contoured the tub surrouding it to fit nicely. I used a duplicate of the cowl to keep the shape consistent on both the inside and outside of the cowl. I haven't given much thought of why it is so dark for the time being.
We finally figured out what this box was; it was the igniter. It was also quite poorly proportioned, so I re-did it and added a couple details thanks to uncovering another image after searching all of Google for the 500th time.
After posting my last post, I realized how blunt the edges were on the edges where the fender becomes the cowl, or the transition from the top to the side, etc. After finding that out, I went and re-defined these edges to make sure they aren't as blunt as they used to be. Here's a bit of a before/after to show what I mean.
I've also started to work on having an actual steering wheel, rather than just a floating doughnut in its place. I have the general shape ready to go, but I need to wrap the leather around the spokes of the wheel to finish it, and I don't see a way to go around that in the here and now. If anyone has any ideas or advice, they are greatly appreciated as always. Until then, it'll be shelved for more pressing matters.
Most recently, I've started giving the doors some love, since they lacked any sort of thickness to them. They still seem to need beefing up in certain areas, but I would reckon they're pretty good as-is. I still have yet to cut out a hole for that protruding cylinder on the left of the image, and having the door's hinge, though.
I've got a book from automobilsport on its way from Germany which has a story on the Toyota 7 project, so hopefully that will be able to unveil some more crucial information. We're also doing some digging on a warehouse in Yokohama owned by TRD that houses two 7s, seeing if they can provide any sort of information or the likes of it. You can find that here. Overall, I'm happy with the progress made this week. Thank you all again for your advice and encouragement, I hope to get this out to you in a somewhat timely manner.
Going chronologically from Thursday, I ultimately decided to keep the seat to only 1 turbosmooth iteration. With the smoothing groups, it seems to look pretty decent to me at least, but I have yet to cut out the area for the shifter knob to go. Additionally, I've also worked more on the visible elements of the space frame, adding a few pieces that I had initially missed, and contoured the tub surrouding it to fit nicely. I used a duplicate of the cowl to keep the shape consistent on both the inside and outside of the cowl. I haven't given much thought of why it is so dark for the time being.
We finally figured out what this box was; it was the igniter. It was also quite poorly proportioned, so I re-did it and added a couple details thanks to uncovering another image after searching all of Google for the 500th time.
After posting my last post, I realized how blunt the edges were on the edges where the fender becomes the cowl, or the transition from the top to the side, etc. After finding that out, I went and re-defined these edges to make sure they aren't as blunt as they used to be. Here's a bit of a before/after to show what I mean.
I've also started to work on having an actual steering wheel, rather than just a floating doughnut in its place. I have the general shape ready to go, but I need to wrap the leather around the spokes of the wheel to finish it, and I don't see a way to go around that in the here and now. If anyone has any ideas or advice, they are greatly appreciated as always. Until then, it'll be shelved for more pressing matters.
Most recently, I've started giving the doors some love, since they lacked any sort of thickness to them. They still seem to need beefing up in certain areas, but I would reckon they're pretty good as-is. I still have yet to cut out a hole for that protruding cylinder on the left of the image, and having the door's hinge, though.
I've got a book from automobilsport on its way from Germany which has a story on the Toyota 7 project, so hopefully that will be able to unveil some more crucial information. We're also doing some digging on a warehouse in Yokohama owned by TRD that houses two 7s, seeing if they can provide any sort of information or the likes of it. You can find that here. Overall, I'm happy with the progress made this week. Thank you all again for your advice and encouragement, I hope to get this out to you in a somewhat timely manner.
I agree, there's no good reason to rush it. Update posts like those above make the process of waiting even more enjoyable - like smelling the aromas coming from the kitchen when you are waiting for your meal to be cooked
Keep up the great work, and please, continue to show us the progress updates - it's looking superb!
Keep up the great work, and please, continue to show us the progress updates - it's looking superb!
This week's been a bit of a slow one, with work (and procrastination) getting in the way of things. Pretty much having to eyeball everything since I don't have enough references to photomatch doesn't help either.
Excuses aside, I managed to get a steering wheel finished. In addition I added some more sides to the rim itself to make sure they didn't show themselves as much as they would before.
I may or may not re-do this dash since it just doesn't seem right. Since photomatches aren't much of an option, I can't figure out exactly what it is, but it looks passable for now.
There was also a support for the steering column mounted to the frame that I managed to get in, but upon finding an image from the magazine that I just received, it was completely off. So I am in the process of re-making the piece to as close to real-life as I can. Here's a bit of a side-by-side, left is the incorrect one, whereas the right one is the correct one.
I have yet to model what's on the steering column and what connects it to the wheel, or the column to the steering rack, but that's up next.
In other news, what free time I've had has been searching for more information. Although it is something a ways down the line, I found the proper racing suits and helmets of the drivers of the Toyota 7, their helmets, which car they drove.
I found a list of all the drivers employed by Toyota during the whole Toyota 7 project, but I've narrowed it down to the three drivers that made the demonstration run during the 1970 Fuji 1000km.
To my knowledge, there have been 4-5 separate chassis that were made, four in 1970, and possibly one in the early 2000's.
The first chassis (NA) was the test car, images lead me to believe this ran a similar livery to the others, but in black. This chassis was scrapped after testing. You have chassis' 2, 3, and 4, orange (Hosoya, Turbo), blue (Kukidome, NA), and red (Kawai, Turbo) respectively afterwards that made the demonstration run at Fuji. Kawai's chassis was seized by the police after his fatal accident at Suzuka.
Now where speculation comes in is whether the example that was restored in the early 2000's that showed up to Goodwood was Kawai's chassis that had been repaired, or an entirely new chassis. I am guessing this would be an entirely new chassis. Since the space frame was made partially from magnesium, and how magnesium doesn't hesitate to combust in situations like a crash, that's most likely the case. For chassis #5 I might use it to be the NA version that appeared at Goodwood in 2002, with Allan McNish at the wheel. As for the driver behind chassis #1, I might just use the gray helmet of Hosoya. That is unless any of you have a better suggestion.
In the meantime, I'll keep on keeping on. I've got some ideas that I'll be toying around with soon, so stay tuned for that. As always, your support, advice, and knowledge are all greatly appreciated!
Excuses aside, I managed to get a steering wheel finished. In addition I added some more sides to the rim itself to make sure they didn't show themselves as much as they would before.
I may or may not re-do this dash since it just doesn't seem right. Since photomatches aren't much of an option, I can't figure out exactly what it is, but it looks passable for now.
There was also a support for the steering column mounted to the frame that I managed to get in, but upon finding an image from the magazine that I just received, it was completely off. So I am in the process of re-making the piece to as close to real-life as I can. Here's a bit of a side-by-side, left is the incorrect one, whereas the right one is the correct one.
I have yet to model what's on the steering column and what connects it to the wheel, or the column to the steering rack, but that's up next.
In other news, what free time I've had has been searching for more information. Although it is something a ways down the line, I found the proper racing suits and helmets of the drivers of the Toyota 7, their helmets, which car they drove.
I found a list of all the drivers employed by Toyota during the whole Toyota 7 project, but I've narrowed it down to the three drivers that made the demonstration run during the 1970 Fuji 1000km.
To my knowledge, there have been 4-5 separate chassis that were made, four in 1970, and possibly one in the early 2000's.
The first chassis (NA) was the test car, images lead me to believe this ran a similar livery to the others, but in black. This chassis was scrapped after testing. You have chassis' 2, 3, and 4, orange (Hosoya, Turbo), blue (Kukidome, NA), and red (Kawai, Turbo) respectively afterwards that made the demonstration run at Fuji. Kawai's chassis was seized by the police after his fatal accident at Suzuka.
Now where speculation comes in is whether the example that was restored in the early 2000's that showed up to Goodwood was Kawai's chassis that had been repaired, or an entirely new chassis. I am guessing this would be an entirely new chassis. Since the space frame was made partially from magnesium, and how magnesium doesn't hesitate to combust in situations like a crash, that's most likely the case. For chassis #5 I might use it to be the NA version that appeared at Goodwood in 2002, with Allan McNish at the wheel. As for the driver behind chassis #1, I might just use the gray helmet of Hosoya. That is unless any of you have a better suggestion.
In the meantime, I'll keep on keeping on. I've got some ideas that I'll be toying around with soon, so stay tuned for that. As always, your support, advice, and knowledge are all greatly appreciated!
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I'll just put this point to bed so it doesn't get brought back up.
If you look back at the beginning of the thread I mentioned that I used orthographic images of the GT model to get a very generic shape together. The GT model isn't going to help any when it comes to what's already been done. Just to humor the point, I snapped a picture of the model's interior. There's practically nothing that can be learned from it that hasn't been learned already. If anything, it could be used only to make sure the powertrain is not hideously off, and even then it wouldn't do that good of a job at it.
The cockpit is pretty much useless on the GT model as well, since even the numbers on the tach aren't even legible, and there's even a e-stop button in there that is simply incorrect.
Another week, another update. I've been a bit busy over the past few days, so there's not much to show for this week either.
Firstly, there was some sort of QR on the steering rack in the shape of a giant nut, that's been modelled in, and since the wheelside QR is never shown, I went for a fairly basic wheel mount.
Most of the time has been spent figuring out what to do for the pedal situation. I have enough pictures to get general shapes of what I need, but of course, all of the details are either blocked or too low res to see, so these pedals most likely are mediocre at best. I personally think they'll do fine, but my only concern is the connection between the pedal and the rod leading to the hydraulic systems lacks a bit of detail.
Lastly, I went and re-re-did the smoothing groups again to make sure everything looks good. As far as I know, the exterior is pretty much finished, unless someone comes along and points out a blaring issue.
Firstly, there was some sort of QR on the steering rack in the shape of a giant nut, that's been modelled in, and since the wheelside QR is never shown, I went for a fairly basic wheel mount.
Most of the time has been spent figuring out what to do for the pedal situation. I have enough pictures to get general shapes of what I need, but of course, all of the details are either blocked or too low res to see, so these pedals most likely are mediocre at best. I personally think they'll do fine, but my only concern is the connection between the pedal and the rod leading to the hydraulic systems lacks a bit of detail.
Lastly, I went and re-re-did the smoothing groups again to make sure everything looks good. As far as I know, the exterior is pretty much finished, unless someone comes along and points out a blaring issue.
Weekly update time!
I'm happy to report that I've actually made a decent amount of progress in terms of modelling, even some minor changes that I didn't bother to capture, but are listed at the end.
Because gearboxes are a thing, at some point I had to make a shifter knob, thankfully the most complicated shape of the shifter was a channel on the lever itself, this was taken care of pretty quickly.
When it comes to where it goes, it currently leads to a dead end. Not sure what I should do instead, or if that will be fine, since any pictures don't have enough light to see what is down there.
I may or may not have put off making the brake caliper, but it was only a matter of time before it had to be taken care of. It's a little on the lower poly side it seems, but the shape is somewhat similar to the real life counterpart. I'm probably going to re-do it sooner or later.
The eyeballing continues to the radiators housed in the side intakes, where I was able to throw together the oil radiator, and the coolant radiator in their respective orders.
In preparation for gathering data and working on physics, I re-installed some old CFD from Autodesk (which is sadly no longer available for those who don't have it). Models seem to import without any issues, and will give us the best estimations of the car's aero characteristics. I'm definitely going to need more time with this software before I can get any worthwhile data for the physics. It'll also have to wait for the model to be largely completed, since the lack of an engine obviously will keep us from having the closest to the real life aerodynamic properties of the 7.
Speaking of aero, I've added the majority of the scaffolding in the rear, regarding the wing. Since most of the other scaffolding mounts to the gearbox, the rest will have to wait until that's taken care of. After taking the first image, I continued playing around with the bracketry, the second image is closer to the final product.
After these pictures were taken, I've since made a few extra changes, or some new features I didn't bother taking pictures of, so here's the list of the other changes made.
I'm going to be a little less consistent with these updates, but rest assured work will keep on going. I'll of course keep you updated on things, but only expect updates after major breakthroughs.
I'm happy to report that I've actually made a decent amount of progress in terms of modelling, even some minor changes that I didn't bother to capture, but are listed at the end.
Because gearboxes are a thing, at some point I had to make a shifter knob, thankfully the most complicated shape of the shifter was a channel on the lever itself, this was taken care of pretty quickly.
When it comes to where it goes, it currently leads to a dead end. Not sure what I should do instead, or if that will be fine, since any pictures don't have enough light to see what is down there.
I may or may not have put off making the brake caliper, but it was only a matter of time before it had to be taken care of. It's a little on the lower poly side it seems, but the shape is somewhat similar to the real life counterpart. I'm probably going to re-do it sooner or later.
The eyeballing continues to the radiators housed in the side intakes, where I was able to throw together the oil radiator, and the coolant radiator in their respective orders.
In preparation for gathering data and working on physics, I re-installed some old CFD from Autodesk (which is sadly no longer available for those who don't have it). Models seem to import without any issues, and will give us the best estimations of the car's aero characteristics. I'm definitely going to need more time with this software before I can get any worthwhile data for the physics. It'll also have to wait for the model to be largely completed, since the lack of an engine obviously will keep us from having the closest to the real life aerodynamic properties of the 7.
Speaking of aero, I've added the majority of the scaffolding in the rear, regarding the wing. Since most of the other scaffolding mounts to the gearbox, the rest will have to wait until that's taken care of. After taking the first image, I continued playing around with the bracketry, the second image is closer to the final product.
After these pictures were taken, I've since made a few extra changes, or some new features I didn't bother taking pictures of, so here's the list of the other changes made.
- The steering wheel now has a 'seam' in the leather in the same place as the steering wheel on the real one.
- Suspension arms have sneaked their way into the model, with holes going from the cockpit to the wheel well, so they don't phase through the tub.
- Vents have been toyed around with a little more to better fit the radiators on both sides.
- Shifter knob has been further smoothed, to hide any trace of edges.
- Obviously work has begun on the intake manifold, going to the compressor on the turbo.
I'm going to be a little less consistent with these updates, but rest assured work will keep on going. I'll of course keep you updated on things, but only expect updates after major breakthroughs.
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Don’t bother with that “CFD”...
I can see where you're coming from, since the program seemed half-finished at best, but what should I use in its place?
Even the best of CFD is sometimes 30% off in absolute value. Better to look for data of similar cars or ask around for people who might have an idea of the ballpark.
