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[Leadphalanx]

With the re-release of Star Wars Episode 1 Racer on GoG last year, I ran into JayFoxRox's OpenSWE1R project: https://github.com/OpenSWE1R/openswe1r  
After discovering that work was being done to dig into the guts of the game and will eventually allow for direct replacement of assets, I figured a fun project would be to start working on higher-resolution assets to eventually bring into the game. At this point, there are tools out there that allow game assets to be pulled from the game:


So far nobody has gotten to the point of injecting 3d assets back into the game, but they appeared to be close to that point.   Unfortunately most of the work on those projects has died off, mostly due to lack of additional developers to help them out (I am unfortunately not an experienced programmer).  At any rate, with the amount of time this project will take, I hope the modding scene will bounce back by the time I've got some substantial progress made.  

As I have only recently started working in Blender and Substance Painter, I'll be learning a lot as I go along and hopefully hearing from some other artists (so expect to see some funky or inefficient topology occasionally).  I will make more in-depth posts on where I'm at, but for now here's a bit of what I'm working on:

[Ordnas]

My god, that would be fantastic! I loved Star Wars Ep1 Racer, and I would love to see all remade with new assets! Do you think if it is possible to replace texture, particles, UI etc?

[Leadphalanx]

In theory all the art will be able to be swapped out, there's already a mod out there to replace the fonts in the game with high-res replacements, as well as another to replace the cut-scenes.  As I said above though, none of the developers who've worked on replacement modding tools are currently active (as far as I know).

[Leadphalanx]

PROGRESS ON THE ORD PEDROVIA (GASGANO)

Now that I've mostly finished up with a move, I finally have time to write up some posts on this.  

So once I started to work on this project, I realized finding good source images of the pod racers is a little bit of a challenge in some cases.  In the original film, Anikin's and Sebulba's pod racers have a decent amount of screen time, but the others may only have a close-up from one angle or long distance shots where detail is hard to make out.  I also realized that most of the pod racers have two versions used in the film: a full-size physical prop, and a CGI recreation (often very different from the prop).  Here you can see three versions of Gasgano's racer:
(left to right: full-size prop, smaller-scale model, CGI model)


With all that said, I have mostly stuck to whichever version I have the clearest images of, and sometimes mixed elements of the physical and CGI props when detail is lacking in one or the other. (in this case, the CGI prop looks much better, so I went with that).

Anyways, this is the original mesh for the Ord Pedrovia (the engine at least) in the game:


This is where I'm at with my new high-poly mesh:


The CGI model in the film is missing the pointed 'tail-pipes', most people tend to add them on when they model his racer (even when basing it off the CGI model) so I think I'll likely add them as well.  Thoughts?

[Leadphalanx]

FOUR EARLY WIP POD RACERS

Just a quick post showing a few pod racers that are currently in a very very early state (just started Boles Roor today actually). These will change considerably in the future.

Dud Bolt:


Ody Mandrell:


Ebe Endocott:


Boles Roor:


EDIT: did a little more the Boles Roor engine

[Leadphalanx]

BOLES ROOR'S ENGINE UPDATE

Since I was in the groove of things with this particular pod racer, I put some more work into it today.  Found an image of blueprints for the movie prop which has helped me figure out the general layout of the pod under the 'shell'.  Also removed the curve from the front two sections of the 'egg' to match the prop.

With much of the work done on this one, I'll likely be focusing on Clegg's engines again soon.






Just a random note, I realized that one of the exhaust bits is missing on the prop during the line-up scene in the film.  Likely due to the sandstorm that damaged most of the full-size props.

[Leadphalanx]

Clegg Holdfast's pod racer update

For this one I am sticking primarily to the physical full-scale prop as a reference.  I've got a decent bit of piping and greeble still to sort out. I plan to match the prop detailing somewhat closely, so I've been adding various pipes and such as I spot them. So far the front side of the rear cylinder has been somewhat difficult to find shots of, so I will likely end up using the digital model as a reference.  Also note that the proportions of the engine in general are a bit off. I've done this intentionally to match the dimensions of the existing in-game model (close to it at least).