FITE ME Part 3: Modern Hypercar (postponed due to UE4 changes. RERUN PENDING)

Were the explanations at least vaguely helpful? Please tell me that it gave you some ideas about how you might make things work in future.


Judgement Round 1: The Walkaround Part 5

I forgot to title the previous part

16 entries down. 4 in. That’s more than I expected.

I had to take a break from the judging process as work is getting more complicated (I’m required to help our unit transform our Nursing Home outreach service into a Nursing Home COVID Response unit and when we cover 47 nursing homes and our nurses keep getting pinged for fevers that require screening and takes them out of work for 3 days at a time, it’s not that easy). But here we go again.


Pulsar Neutron Mystablue

Choice quote from @Lordred:

There was none. He was far too matter-of-fact.

Well, at any rate let’s get into the car.

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This is actually pretty promising. The arrangement is on the simple side, yes, but it’s cool and tastefully done. The lineup of things isn’t entirely perfect but the ideas are pretty strong. If this was a competition about making the most out of minimal fixtures this would do pretty well. But by that same token since this is not that competition, a bit of cleaning up or judicious selection may have enhanced the idea further.

This said the vents over the wheel arches go the wrong way: you’d be hard pressed to find real-life examples where the strakes don’t go the other way because the way shown here would only increase drag and lift. That’s a minor detail but one that I frequently encountered.

This unfortunately is where things kind of started falling away. I’m entirely unconvinced by the front vent. It was placed to line up nicely with seams, but not much else. Same with the rear vent, for that matter.

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The approach remains consistent, and it’s solid. But it’s also a bit piecemeal if you look at the fixtures on the bootlid. I mean,

It’s just not what you come to expect from a 2020 hypercar. The window doesn’t actually integrate with any of the bodywork, there’s no… real poetry about it.

Aesthetics

It’s like what may happen if you tried to turn the Automation “Sea of Information” scene into a car. Retro-rad, which is actually a compliment.

Impact

this is a fucking old reference and it takes a whole 2 minutes to show that Usopp made Perona think he was lugging around a 10 ton hammer when in fact the whole head was made of canvas and not much else.

Yeah look when I first saw it I thought it had great promise and was expecting to be blown away but eh it kind of faded…

Construction

Solid, to be honest, though extremely basic and not really of much note on the sides and top.

Coherence

Front and back is, again, rather solid.

Verdict

If Yang’s entry was the one that squeaked in, this is unfortunately the entry that squeaked out. There’s bits I genuinely like. But it’s just not of the construction level to be convincing enough as a hypercar.

I do like the paintjob though.

Lordred’s :wastebasket: count: 0 (it’s not bad, it’s just not good enough)


Reaper EOS

Choice quote from @crimsoneon:

figured I’d create a user and throw my favorite car to the wolves

  1. Flattered that you’d create a user for this

  2. But I’m not a wolf, uwu

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Dahlink, could you fetch me the eyedrops? I snorted some Tabasco while doing my eyelashes and now the mascara is running everywhere aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Okay so basically that’s an errrr unique? arrangement of fixtures but it’s just… awkward because it’s really fussy detail (again, too many strakes in that vent!) and then big fat slabs of “blank”. And the headlights are extremely small and squinty (even accounting for the popups?) It kind of looks like someone tried to make a Miata NA out of a Murcielago which is kind of not what you’re aiming for. It’s the proportions, Munro! this is an in-joke, I’m not assuming your name is Munro

Eh it’s about normal I guess. This body doesn’t exactly give you much scope for doing wild things and keeping it period correct for modern, but I’m still underwhelmed.

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This is like what happens when you try to get enough “riced up” stars to land some magazine slots in the starter class of Need for Speed Underground 2.

Aesthetics

Lambo meets lo-rent Fast & Furious. The first one.

Impact

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Construction

At least nothing was egregiously out of place I guess

Coherence

If you make the car dark enough you can almost ignore the fixtures :joy:

Verdict

It’s hardly a “my first Automation car” but the saying goes an artist will draw a thousand bad pictures before they draw a good one…

So no it doesn’t pass.

CrimsonEon’s :wastebasket: count: 0 (because it didn’t make me vomit like several of the other entries here)


Haapala Saatanan Kokemus

Choice quote from @Mikonp7:

Hewwo big guy UwU
Pls except my humble suwubmiwwion

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ngl, this is pretty wild. The execution is not the cleanest, but the idea kind of reminds me of if Toyota had gone full send and made the FT1 both hyper and in the style of the old FIA GT class, and if you like the sound of that then obviously that’s a good thing.

But what were you trying to do here? What is that side? And I can see where you’ve tried to mask the window but it’s also not very clean.

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Those fins are poking out the back of the grilles which is a bit careless. Some intimations towards shape changing of the car on what is a very, well, 90s GT body, but didn’t fully commit so the rear fascia is a bit too low. The exhaust placement is a bit… well it’s alright, but I wonder if you shouldn’t have used something more angled instead of bent.

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These are pointing the wrong way. You want the driver to do a Dumbreck?

Aesthetics

This is a part compliment. Intentional or not, this car seems to be full of feline motifs. But it’s also cobbled together with a hodge podge of conflicting features, hence you get the Michelle Pfeiffer version of Catwoman where she stitches her costume out of scraps and garbage bags. If you don’t look too closely it’s kinda rad.

Impact

Construction

Yeah it’s a bit of a car crash I’m afraid.

Coherence

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Like me after 3 beers: I can remember everything but I’m slurring my speech and can’t really be bothered to make sense.

Verdict

The idea is very cool and would be great to see in action, but there are too many errors and carelessness in construction for it to ever look good in Beam. If it were tidied up and refined it could be a contender, so I won’t bin it, but in this field I can’t take it through either.

Mikonp’s :wastebasket: count: 0


Zephorus Project AA

Choice quote from @Sky-High:

I’m gonna get screwed over by a few things probably

Such as not wanting to spend more than 4 hours thinking about any one car? Or perhaps the penchant for making the car look better than it is using photomode :grin::fire:

Get ready!

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This is clearly not the car that you posted in the thread, as you had forewarned.

This is a very interesting fascia. Sleek, aggressive but also restrained. I can see why you wanted to do electric hyper. The construction is quite simple, but I am not actually complaining.

Ok do you see what the problem is here?

I too am very fond of the deep cutout in the side bodywork. Not many people attempted to go full modern and start doing Valkyrie kind of things.

But you can only go so far because you can’t easily model the underside of the car, plus the monocoque chassis peeks out from beneath. I spent many hours making workarounds before chickenbiscuit’s hyper mod (which you’ve used here), because it’s not a good look.

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This edge here. That’s not very clean. This kind of uncleanliness is everywhere in many entries (so I’m not singling this one out).

Beam mods tend to be unkind to this kind of construction. I was hoping for more refined.

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You really REALLY like this decal don’t you!

This is a cool idea. I like the general direction.

It’s just that if you leave the rear open it’s not flattering on Automation cars for reasons I explained earlier. So it makes the mod look really lo-rent.

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Let us now turn our attention to the elephant in the room: this hideously disproportionate canopy.

I can see what you were trying to do. It was a daring idea. And using this:

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For the front windshield, was daring. But why did you have to do it? You forcibly changed the proportions of the entire top side and turned it into a tent.

The kicker is that it would already look quite a bit better if you had used “cutaway” instead of “1-axis conform”. But it still wouldn’t have solved the issue of this ridiculously looking blank canopy. Plexiglass bubbles are definitely a thing some manufacturers consider but they’re not shaped like this and are finnicky to make look good.

Also the construction on the rear end is a bit messy too. Lots of edges that really shouldn’t be there, imo, and the gaps between fixtures are larger than the manufacturing defects in a British Leyland. Most players at this level take some care to clean up, you know!

Aesthetics

This car has fully rad cues like electric hypercar of the future like:

But then it went and put a fucking tent on top, so here you go:

Impact

ngl when I took a look I was electrified.

But then you went and put a tent on it so here you go:

Construction

along with the hype, comes

your build quality mate

Coherence

yeah it was actually solid so I’m not gonna roast you on this point

Verdict

This is far from the worst car. It really is. What I found galling was that if you did ever come around to take the due care to make the car look perfect when exported the excellent ideas that you do have could be realised with vibrancy.

As it is, yawning panel gaps, bits showing that shouldn’t, weird creases and edges where edges shouldn’t be all have curious parallels to the British Motor Manufacturing Industry which not surprisingly doesn’t exist anymore.

It isn’t exactly a bin, but I really can’t export this anywhere like it is now.

And also why did you put a fucking tent on it.

Riley’s :wastebasket: count: 0


Oh for real, nothing made it through this batch either?

It’s gotta pick up sometime, I hope.

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