Only had tickets for the Friday this year (which I'm glad about given that Alonso won...) - here are some pictures.

There was also a cool camera on a wire at Luffield, which used to be the final corner until they changed the layout for this year.

They opened up the old track for us to wander onto:

And here's the new pit paddock:

Kobayashi made a mess of his Sauber in FP1:

Hamilton:

Button:

The safety car, which at this point of the season had led the second most amount of laps this year, after Vettel:

Moved to Luffield for FP2, and saw this GP2 driver getting a sneaky tow:

For a long time only the Toro Rossos were out:

And then more came out, including Rosberg, which produced a crisp photo:

I won a place at the FOTA fans forum, which the best thing I can describe is that it's like Comic Con but for F1 instead of TV and movies. It was worth the 4 hour drive. The place is really impressive - difficult to believe that it's a factory for building cars, everything was spotless. I got to sit in an MP4-12C! The panel gave interesting although at times generic answers. The drivers (Hamilton and Kobayashi) came across really well. Hamilton buggered off immediately though, while Kobayashi stayed behind for autographs and things, which was good of him.

We weren't allowed to take photos inside, so the only photos I managed are of the exterior of the building. I'd love to work there. They gave us a book as we were leaving too - it's £40 on their site!

There are videos of the event here:

Session 1: Martin Whitmash [McLaren], Ross Brawn [Mercedes], Graeme Lowden [Virgin Racing] and Bob Fearnley [Force India]


Session 2: Paddy Lowe [McLaren], James Allison [Renault], Paul Monaghan [Red Bull]


Session 3: Lewis Hamilton and Kamui Kobayashi


And photos here:
http://gallery.me.com/latphoto#100330

Was a good day out - I'd recommend it to any F1 fans if you get the chance to go to one!

I went to Silverstone this weekend for the Formula 1. Spent FP1 at Luffield, FP2 at Copse, FP3 and Qualifying at various points in the new Arena stand, and at Vale for the race, so a nice selection of vantage points.

Took my new camera with me for one or two or 1586 photos (half of which were hilarious amounts of random blur), here's are a selection...

McLaren
Button:

Hamilton:

The on-show McLaren:

Red Bull
Vettel, before he stole a front wing:

Red Bull's number two driver:

Alguersuari peeking through the fencing:

Chandhok recovering from an off:

The drivers waving at me before the race:

Ferrari, including Alonso deciding to drive within the race circuit instead of cheating to overtake:

Hulkenberg, for no reason other than the photo came out nice:

Kubica (who gets my approval for having a hand in destroying Alonso's race):

Schumacher on his failing way to 10th place while his team mate was fighting McLarens for a podium:

GP2
A random car (no idea who since I can't follow it as BBC decided not to use their rights to show it):

A different random car doing it wrong:

Red Arrows, impressive as always:

Lots of photos came out like this because I failed at photography most of the time:

Just about finished my motorsports calendar. I've added options for links, mostly aimed at the BBC website, which have highlights of previous races, but no logical way of finding them, so this should keep them all together. I opened the ability to post links to anyone, but left them invisible until I approve them, so the page doesn't get abused by dirty spammers.

Other than adding links, the whole thing is automated, after the initial entering into the database of the various events. This also means it's very easy to include another series I may decide to watch, or if one is requested by anyone. The calendar counts down to the next event, and automatically produces iPlayer links when available, and removes them after 7 days, when they are deleted.

It needs tidying up, especially on the style front, both visually and code (I added inline styles rather than using up the main stylesheet, when I should have really added a unique stylesheet for it but realised too late as I expanded it), but for now it does its job.

This is a version of the BBC F1 intro I made in Lego-like bricks.

The actual TV version can be seen on YouTube. You'll notice I've focussed on the first section of it, despite the second part containing car motion, which I have done a lot of in the past. This is because, well... I've done a lot of this in the past. And the first part is more interesting and better made too.

I posted this video on YouTube as well (link) where it has so far been met with praise, and quickly spread across sections of the internet, mostly via Twitter, eventually arriving at the BBC F1 homepage where it was linked to!

It has received over 5,000 views in its first week, so now I guess I'd better make part 2, which I didn't really originally intend to do, but one day I'll return to it.

A quick video to show progress on the project I'm currently working on, along with a model of the real life car I created a while back for comparison.

Has an engine...

... and is going to involve lots of these blocks.

This is a project that formed part of my postgraduate degree which I have continued to improve afterwards, and the videos in this post should demonstrate some of its functions. I'll also explain the methods used, although I won't go into too much detail, but feel free to ask me about any specifics in the comment section after the post.

The intention of the rig is so that you can quickly and easily animate a vehicle that has been modelled without having to worry about the physics, as the rig will handle that with scripts.



The project started off life as a reactor-based rig, which was fairly easy to set up, and can be seen in a tutorial I wrote on building it. This method works well for simple animations, particularly over bumps, but I found to be quite limiting for manipulating the steering or for swapping the vehicle for another one without having to change all the settings.

I soon decided that scripting was the way to go. I followed techniques similar to this tutorial. I didn't actually follow this tutorial, but it does contain many of the techniques I did learn how to do, and I wish I'd have found this while constructing my rig. The main difference is that that is designed for a tank with tracks, while mine needed to be to suit any four wheeled vehicle, which I later expanded to allow any (even) amount of wheels, but not tracks.

The first thing I needed to do was to allow the wheels to determine where the ground was, so they could travel up and down terrain. This allowed the vehicles to not be stuck in flat, boring car parks. To do this, as in the tutorial mentioned above, I used the Conform tool on a plane and attached the wheels to it. I then used a spline curve as the path and made the conformed plane controller move along the path.

I now had a path and height sorted, the next thing was for the wheel rotation. A scripted expression was needed for this and required knowing the radius of the wheels, the length of the path, and the percentage of the path that the vehicle is situated at any given moment on the timeline. After adding these as variables in an expression for the z-axis rotation of one of the rig's wheels, the following expression should then calculate the correct rotation at each frame:

where pathpercent is the current percentage along the path that the vehicle has travelled, distance is the total length, and rad is the radius of the wheel.



The rig was now at a point comparable to reactor, minus the bump physics, but allowing the vehicle to have direction without having to pause the simulation and create new settings. The problem with the direction change is that the wheels remained pointing forwards, rather than in the direction the car intends to travel - it needed steering. This was done in a similar way to the wheel rotation, in that it was done with expressions, although it required further objects to be placed in the scene. One such object was for a marker to follow along the spline curve path slightly ahead of the path that the main rig is about to travel. This meant there was a way of knowing which direction is coming up, and so the wheels could face this direction, taking care to ignore the axis controlling the wheel rotation.

The final major obstacle was getting the vehicle to bank realistically on corners or when traversing bumps. In the following image, you can see a couple of controller points to act as the main chassis, and these were used by adding position and orientation constraints in the motion wheel tab, then making the geometry that is following the spline curve bank on corners and using appropriate settings, and making one of the two objects in the rig mirror this position. The other object remains static. A third object is then placed and takes the average orientation of these two objects, and it is this that the main body of the model will be attached.



For acceleration and braking banking, the current speed was calculated using an expression, and set to a slider manipulator in the interface, and this speed controls two objects in the world space, one of which moves in the vertical axis depending on the speed. The difference between the two objects (one of which remains static) is then used to determine how much the car should rock forwards or backwards - ie, it calculates how much the speed has changed from one frame to the next. This is then multiplied by a multiplier variable set by the user using a slider manipulator to control how much the car should move - so how stiff the suspension should be. An F1 car for example would have stiffer suspension than a road car and thus be less visually active on weight shift.

The rig is controlled by the user using sliders (create > helpers > manipulators > sliders), which are tied to various elements of the rig. Things like the wheel size and heights of the front vs the rear wheels, ride heights and wheel base and widths can all be controlled, allowing easy addition of any wheel-based vehicle. Other elements such as the steering look-ahead, steering override (to allow for oversteer - see below), speed and weight shifts are also controlled in this section to cater for different vehicles - a truck will clearly behave differently to a Mini Cooper, but they can both be used on the same rig without needing to change any of the scripts.



The sequence below will demonstrate how to add a custom model to the rig, and give a further insight into how the rig is put together.

Start slideshow

And that's the basic story of the rig. I went on to add further controls such as oversteer and the ability to add a driver, and these can be seen in the Motorway F1 video. The oversteer, which is a slider attached to the y-rotation of the main rig, ties in with the steering override, and is to be done manually, as it is difficult to predict how much oversteer is required. Wheelspin is a further addition and behaves in a similar way, allowing the front and rear wheels to rotate independently and at varying speeds, or to behave normally - this is a choice left to the animator.

I hope this helps someone, and that I have the balance between detail and being boring right.

Links to other videos containing the car rig on my site:
Motorway F1
Bugatti Veyron vs Eurofighter Typhoon
Reactor Physics
Car Rig Tutorial - 3dsmax
Car Rig - WRC
Car Rig - F1

Demonstration of my improved car rig, updated to include a driver, oversteer and wheelspin options. It includes a blend of reactor for when the car needs to bounce, and the rig. The transition could be more subtle, but it works well enough.

Also an expansion of mental ray rendering, with glow effects and lighting systems. I also developed some After Effects skills, adding lens and video effects and manipulating time, as well as creating some extra special effects to composite over the top of 3dsmax effects.

The motorway is also scripted, looping and independent from the main animation - it's just a shame that it isn't really used all that much in this section, but work in progress videos of the motorway construction can be found elsewhere on the site (search for 'motorway').

Here's what I got up to this weekend and took a few photos and videos. Despite the FIA and FOTA's best efforts, a race happened and everyone was happy for a while.

The video above is of the start and isn't great as I was trying to actually watch it rather than video, but it'll do.

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Friday
Pits Straight - Free Practice 1
Mark Webber entering the pits:

Rear of McLaren:

McLaren interior after asking the guy guarding the car to take a photo, who surprisingly obliged:

Safety car:

Abbey Chicane - Free Practice 2
Lewis Hamilton:

Felipe Massa:

Timo Glock:

 

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Saturday
Luffield - Free Practice 3
Robert Kubica:

Giancarlo Fisichella:

Nico Rosberg:

Sebastien Vettel:

Rubens Barrichello:

Copse - Qualifying
A Red Bull following a BMW and running slightly wide onto the dirt:

The remains Adrian Sutil's broken car after brake failure:

Porsches:

Becketts - GP2
Lucas di Grassi forcefully overtaking:

di Grassi again with a cool exhaust:

 

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Sunday
Stowe - Race + Buildup
Driver parade:

The Stig being a chauffeur:

Jackie Stewart forgetting to turn up in a recent car:

Red Arrows:

Nick Heidfeld, Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton and Robert Kubica:

Jenson Button struggling on to 6th place:

Sebastien Vettel after winning:

Lewis Hamilton about to entertain the fans supporting him with a couple of doughnuts, which I thought was a nice touch and most likely earned him a fine from an FIA determined to prevent a show:

A demonstration of my car rig using an F1 car model I made, which clearly has very wobbly suspension. At some point I'll go back and redo this using my advanced rig, and also improve/redo the track environment.

The car rig project is intended for anyone wanting to create a vehicular animation in 3D Studio Max, and formed a module on my postgraduate degree. The project has since been updated to include oversteer, wheelspin and the option for a driver, as can be seen in the Motorway F1 video on the videos page.

A scripted rig is set up to allow for any four wheeled vehicle to be applied to it, which is manipulated using the sliders as you can see in the image below. All that is required is a model of a car, to edit the ground plane for any bumps if needed, and to draw the desired path the vehicle needs to take.

Speeds can be set to automatic or manual, allowing more control. The relevant forces that need to be applied to the car are automatically calculated, and the user then defines how much impact these forces will have. So a very heavy car with comparatively light suspension can be set to lean more in corners, while a lighter car, such as an F1 car with its stiffer chassis and suspension, will tend to bank less.

Similarly, forces applies upon acceleration and braking can be applied. This is accounted for by referencing frames in advance and behind to judge whether the car is accelerating, braking, or remaining at a constant speed. The faster the speed change, the greater the angle the vehicle will dip or raise. So under extreme braking, the front of the car will be pushed onto the front wheels, while the opposite will happen under heavy acceleration. A multiplier slider function is added to allow the user control over the amount that these forces should be applied - a cartoon dragster for example may have exaggerated effects and do a wheelie on acceleration, while a more conservative and realistic road car would react more gently.

Some of the features are automatic - such as the wheel rotation. This is calculated by working out the distance travelled in relation to the diameter of the wheel. A future development would be to allow wheel spin. On a similar theme, tweaks to manually control the steering may be beneficial, to give the impression of over or understeer. Oversteer in particular would be useful for rally cars. A change in grip levels could also be a future addition, to show the effects of driving on ice for example.


To control the steering and path, a spline is drawn. There is a look-ahead function to control the direction in which the wheels are pointing, so the vehicle begins to turn fractionally before the actual cornering effect begins, as in real life. As with everything else about this rig, this is also controllable how far ahead the function views to fine tune depending on the vehicle applied.

One thing that perhaps needs some work is the reaction over bumps, which seems a little forced. This obviously isn't a problem over flat ground, but over very harsh hills, the car should give the option to bounce a little more than it does, and this is something I shall continue to work on.

To demonstrate the rig, here are links to two further videos using a rally car and an F1 car. The F1 car has skinned suspension, as it is more of an unusual vehicle, with protruding wheels, and you will see it has an over-exaggerated effect to demonstrate the vertical movement, particularly as it bounces over the curbs.

Finally, a larger version of the video above can be found here. Other video sizes of all the clips here are on the videos page.