Cars SCCA Race Truck Challenge 1988 pack (WIP)

[turbochicken25]

Hey folks! I've been slowly working on a series that I have always wanted to see in a sim: the SCCA Race Truck Challenge, specifically the 1988 season. It's one of my favorite racing series ever, and at the time was some of the most fun and exciting racing to watch, but today it's almost forgotten. The idea was to fit showroom stock pickups with basic safety equipment and let the manufacturers show off what their little trucks could do right off the lot. But, like most factory-backed racing programs, the word "stock" was open for interpretation. The result was vehicles that revved like dirt bikes and handled better than a truck has any right to, beating and banging around North America's road courses. The trucks lacked outright speed and had the aerodynamics of, well, a truck, which made drafting incredibly important. That meant most of the race was bumper-to-bumper, door-to-door action. It was fantastic to watch, but rising costs meant the series ended too soon. thankfully, there's sim racing.

My plan is to have every factory-backed truck represented: Nissan D21, Ford Ranger, Jeep Comanche, and Mitsubishi Mighty Max/Dodge D50. I'm very new to 3D modeling, and there isn't a ton of good reference material for any of the trucks so I'll have to take some artistic license, but I'll do my best to do them all justice.

I've made some decent progress with the Nissan. Most of the major details are there, just need to keep refining and make everything pretty.

Next up is the Jeep!

 

[turbochicken25]

I also made some placeholders for the other trucks for testing. They all use the Nissan body but each one has accurate physics for their respective models. It's an absolute riot to race these things!
Dark red: Jeep
Grey: Dodge/Mitsubishi
Yellow: Ford

 

[Emery]

Now that's an amazing reach back into time! For those that weren't around, this was the peak of mini-truck modifications and SCCA took a chance (7 years before the NASCAR truck series) to see if anything would come of the trend. By the time NASCAR got around to trucks, the mini-trucks were Federally outlawed due to highway safety.

[SCCA trucks are probably more popular than my own preference for a retro-mod of the Renault Le Car Cup]

 

[Stereo]

Cool project! Good luck building all of them without deciding to scrap the first one for no longer meeting the standards of the 4th.

General tip for the bare metal / chrome stuff, the material properties in play for a dielectric material (ie. clean unpainted metal) are near 0 diffuse, very high reflectivity. So in practice you want near-black textures and fresnelC fairly high, as much as 0.9 for polished metal, maybe 0.4-0.6 for satin/matte finish. Dropping back down to the 0.05 range of normal clearcoat if it's even rougher than that, such as direct sandcast parts.

On a more "one weird trick" level you want isAdditive = 2 for clearcoated paint, = 0 for anything making direct reflections like satin finish or metal. If it's 0, ksSpecularEXP also controls the reflection sharpness, lower values making it softer. It's a bit hard to tune this kind of thing in kseditor because it doesn't have the relevant scenery, just sky in every direction. Usually the reflectivity that looks good in kseditor is not enough ingame since the scene's less bright.

 

[turbochicken25]

Good to know. Texturing is by far my weakest area, so tips like that are always welcome. There's already some things on the Nissan that I'm no longer happy with which I will eventually redo. My plan right now is to get all the trucks in a usable state to keep the project moving, then go back and improve as necessary. Like I said, there's very little reference material and basically no blueprints, so accuracy is never going to be the best, I'm just hoping to get the look and feel good enough to have fun.

 

[turbochicken25]

Main geometry on the Comanche is going well. No smoothing or modifiers yet, obviously.

 

[jq4764]

Wow! This looks amazing!. I just recently discovered the SCCA trucks and am obsessed with them. What a coincidence to find a pretty recent mod project for these awesome little trucks. Any estimates on when we might get to try them out?

 

[turbochicken25]

Due to some not fun personal things, progress has been slow since the last update. Assuming things settle down soon, I hope to have a playable beta sometime this spring or early summer.

 

[Ryan Soucy]

Wow! Great idea. I remember watching these back in the day, it seemed like a batsh!t crazy idea. I've watched some of the races on youtube since. Hope everything turns out well with the project and of course the outside stuff.

 

[Ruttman98]

Main geometry on the Comanche is going well. No smoothing or modifiers yet, obviously.

View attachment 524597View attachment 524598View attachment 524599

Your jarred my memory back to some photos which are unfortunately at my mom's house. The Archer brothers I believe prepped and raced the Jeep Commanches with Sears Craftsman sponsorship, while either Saleen or Roush campaigned the Ford Rangers with General Tire livery. - somewhere from the corners of my mind!

 

[Moorea]

Great read on Road and Track

How We Started a Racing Series That Almost Killed Jason Bateman

Our magazine showdown turned into the bare-knuckled, bump drafting, manufacturer-backed SCCA RaceTruck Challenge.

www.roadandtrack.com

 

[Crivitz Chris]

Hello! I just stumbled across this thread. This would be fantastic! Hopefully there has been progress going on since the last post

 

[cheeveer]

I thought that this sounded like such an awesome project, just wanted to check in whether it is still being worked on?

Sorry bout the bump, but damn, these cars (trucks) need some appreciation!