Highly detailed (photo realistic) Audi R8 3D model

Remember in my last post about the scrapbook cards where I was feeling uncomfortable about creating a series of designs which were slightly out of my wheelhouse? Well, today I’m happy to report that I am fully back in my “manly man zone”. Yep, 3D modeling something that I’ve had a lifelong passion for, and I’m happy to present my highly-detailed Audi R8 3D model.

Before explaining some of the features of this model, I do need to say a couple things about it:

1. This was my first ever automotive 3-D model. I learned a lot during the process, and it took about a month of blood, sweat, and tears to get it done. But I was so proud of the results!
2. It’s good, but not 100% perfect. I am a perfectionist through and through, so I tried my best to get everything as accurate as possible. Looking back on it though, it probably wasn’t a good idea to build an Audi R8 as my very first automotive 3D model.

Screenshots of the model itself

I was never much of a fan of the Audi R8 before building this, but once I got up to my elbows in polygons and vertices, I started to appreciate how beautiful of a car it is. Check this out:

Fully rendered front 3/4 view

Fully rendered rear 3/4 view. I wonder what this thing would look like with the 14″ Pontiac aluminum wheel 3d model I built recently?

Ambient occlusion front 3/4 view

Ambient occlusion rear 3/4 view

The wireframe

Was is this built using polygons or splines?

Polygons! Polygon modeling is much more intuitive for me, and I tend to move a lot faster pushing and pulling vertices then I do trying to get nurbs curves looking just right. Perhaps one of these days I’ll be comfortable using nurbs, but for now I am fully in the camp of people who believes that polygon modeling is the way to go for building cars.

Is this a high poly or low poly model?

Very high poly, Although, the tires that I put on this thing make up the bulk of that. I tend to prefer my 3-D models as detailed as possible, therefore I built the tires using polygons instead of adding tread texture using bump maps. The specific numbers are as follows:

• Verts: 5418770
• Edges: 10781694
• Faces: 5362092
• Tris: 107223864
• UVs: 5829050

As you can see, the high poly count of this particular Audi R8 3D model makes it one not well-suited for games. Instead, it’s much more suited for high-resolution renderings where photo realism is the main priority.

That being said, please know this: On a scale from 1 to 10 (1 being extremely low poly and 10 being a perfect 3-D representation of the car itself), I’d give this particular model a score of 7. It is extremely detailed, but this being my very first automotive model and all, there might be a few small errors here and there.

If you’re comfortable (and experienced) with polygonal modeling, fixing these errors shouldn’t be any issue for you.

What format is this model available in?

As I said earlier, I built this 3-D model of the Audi R8 in Maya. That it’s native format, and you’ll have the most flexibility making edits and changes if you’re a Maya user yourself. However, I do realize that there are many other extremely powerful 3D modeling programs out there and not everyone has the exact same setup as I do. Therefore, I’ve exported the wireframe into the following formats:

• .MA
• .FBX
• .OBJ

Most modern 3D modeling software packages can read (and process) OBJ and FBX files, so I figure that it probably wasn’t worth spending the time exporting it to any other formats.

Does this Audi R8 model come with textures?

Yes. And no. More specifically, the Maya file contains all the textures that you see in the renderings above. Please note that while there are some textures included with the OBJ and FBX files, they are not optimized for photorealistic rendering as depicted in the images above.

What about the lighting and environment? Is that included too?

Again, just as I mentioned above, it will be included with the Maya version of this model. I will note that it’s a fairly basic setup anyway, with a simple gray backdrop and three area lights pointed at the car. One on the top facing down, and two in the front and back facing towards the vehicle. That’s it. Most any 3D rendering software package can emulate this same type of lighting style.

What software did I use to create these renderings?

The photo realistic renderings that you see above were created entirely in Maya 2020 with the default Arnold Render engine (which is what I used to render out the images of my 3D watch model).

Also, it’s very important to note that some of the textures that I used are specific for Arnold Render only. If you’re not using Arnold Render, you will not be able to use the textures that I created to texture this 3D model.

Are any of the objects in this model animated?

No. This is a 100% static Audi R8 3D model designed for static renderings only. However, every body panel is a separate element, so it wouldn’t be all that difficult to add rigging and animation elements to various parts if you need to do so.

What’s the file size?

62.6 MB. See what I mean about this being a very detailed model? Honestly though, most of that file size is because of the very detailed wheels and tires. I built that wheel and tire set up separately several years ago for another project, and thought it might look good on this R8 so I threw them on there.

If file size and efficiency is important to you, you could very easily cut this down by 1/3 (or more) by using a much simpler tire and wheel set up.

Speaking of the tires, it is the very same Michelin Pilot Sport 3D model you may have seen me post here on trashedgraphics.com recently. Think of it as an extra little bonus you get for purchasing this 3D model of the Audi R8.

Oh – and the brakes? I built those based on the vector brake illustration I posted a while ago. I also posted a 3D model of a wheel and brake rotor which was based on that drawing as well.