Cars Toyota 7 (578A)

[Joshua Prematta]

It's only gone and done it again. At least it's now been pinned down to me most likely doing something horrendously wrong with making the door seams, as that is what seems to trigger this in both yesterday's and today's model. And to add salt to the wound, I had overwritten the copies that were made in between last night and now. I only have one other backup from a week and a half ago. I'll see what I can salvage from them.

 

[Dirk Steffen]

These might be ventings for the front wheel arch.

( source: https://en.wheelsage.org/toyota/7/13368/pictures/dslxiz/ )

I second the wheel arch air evacuation vent.

Some prototype cars from that era showed first designs of this aero feature and it appears that the Toyota engineers went even one step further in efficiency:

It looks like they created a deliberate low pressure zone due to the Kamm design of the integrated rear view mirror pockets which then is fed with air evacuated from the wheel arch.

These clever engineers killed several birds with one very clever stone - lower drag due to integrated mirrors, additional wheel arch air evacuation, thereby reducing aero lift at the front.

It looks like a beautiful solution.
Do you have any access to aero figures for this car?
Could you find any mention of the front wing design perhaps by looking which prototypes first have used such vents?

I remember the Chaparral CanAm cars having been some of the first to show extensive venting on front wheel arches.

 

[Joshua Prematta]

I second the wheel arch air evacuation vent.

Some prototype cars from that era showed first designs of this aero feature and it appears that the Toyota engineers went even one step further in efficiency:

It looks like they created a deliberate low pressure zone due to the Kamm design of the integrated rear view mirror pockets which then is fed with air evacuated from the wheel arch.

These clever engineers killed several birds with one very clever stone - lower drag due to integrated mirrors, additional wheel arch air evacuation, thereby reducing aero lift at the front.

It looks like a beautiful solution.
Do you have any access to aero figures for this car?
Could you find any mention of the front wing design perhaps by looking which prototypes first have used such vents?

I remember the Chaparral CanAm cars having been some of the first to show extensive venting on front wheel arches.

I unfortunately do not have any access to such information, but I do believe I have the means to run the final model through some sort of CFD, which might be of some use when it comes to aero analysis. I have contacted Toyota once about the possibility of getting a workshop manual of sorts for the 7, but was met with no response. I plan to try again in the near future, with other Toyota affiliates.

When it comes to prototype wing designs, all of the imagery I could find of the 7 is in the status they're in to this day. Toyota destroyed their first chassis of this car, which I believe was their test vehicle.

 

[Dirk Steffen]

Yes I figured as much :-(
I would guess that perhaps in native Japan one would maybe have more luck to get in touch with enthusiasts who may have some background info on technical specs.

 

[Joshua Prematta]

Yes I figured as much :-(
I would guess that perhaps in native Japan one would maybe have more luck to get in touch with enthusiasts who may have some background info on technical specs.

I do have the Linkedin profile of the lead engineer behind the restoration of Chassis no. 6, but I have no idea if the account is active, whether or not he will respond, or what to say since I know as much Japanese as I do quantum mechanics.

My next leads are through Toyota UK, possibly, since they seem to celebrate their race heritage more than they do stateside, I have a Toyota Super GT driver who I might be able to reach out to for some information, and I might just try the E-Mail I had previously tried for the administration of the Toyota Museum in Japan. I am pretty much certain that I'd get nothing from them given how hard I was told for Kunos to get them to comply, but it's always worth a shot!

 

[AccAkut]

I do have the Linkedin profile of the lead engineer behind the restoration of Chassis no. 6, but I have no idea if the account is active, whether or not he will respond, or what to say since I know as much Japanese as I do quantum mechanics.

My next leads are through Toyota UK, possibly, since they seem to celebrate their race heritage more than they do stateside, I have a Toyota Super GT driver who I might be able to reach out to for some information, and I might just try the E-Mail I had previously tried for the administration of the Toyota Museum in Japan. I am pretty much certain that I'd get nothing from them given how hard I was told for Kunos to get them to comply, but it's always worth a shot!

Tried TMG Cologne?

 

[Joshua Prematta]

Currently the project is at a bit of a standstill, since every time I try to add panel gaps, the file either ruins the mesh, or crashes Max when it opens. I have asked for help on the Autodesk forums to see if anyone knows how to find a workaround.

Chamfer ruins model / crashes Max after opening file.

Hello, all. I apologize in advance if this is an amateur question, since I have just picked up Max a few months ago, but I have run into an issue creating the panel gaps for this vehicle. To begin, my process of creating these seams was to create an open chamfer of 2.5mm, and extruding those new...

forums.autodesk.com

I have recovered all of the work that was lost when the file went and did what the file does best, but I left the smoothing groups out since I would have to re-do them once the panel gaps were added.

In the meantime, I have been working a little more on the details that are not dependent on the panel gaps being completed, so I went and made the fuel cap and the pins that hold things like the shell, and the fender to the chassis.

I also reached out to the guys at TMG, and have yet to hear of a response, so I am fairly confident that we aren't getting real data for now. I'll follow up with another email soon, but the chances are looking slim to none.

In the meantime, I'll keep on playing around with what options I have to circumvent the chamfers from Hell, and we can finally get this project back on the right foot.

 

[Joshua Prematta]

Tried to make a new fuel cap today, but the chamfer tool thought otherwise. I've deleted Max and currently I'm re-downloading it to see if that fixes anything (Edit: It didn't). Once again, if anyone knows what's going on, or knows a solution, please let me know. You would single-handedly save this entire project.

 

[Ghoults]

I don't use 3dsmax but if you have any addons it might be worth it to turn them off. Also maybe some 3dsmax user could help you if you provided exact steps how you use the chamfer tool. If it is deleting faces clearly there is something very wrong.

 

[AccAkut]

View attachment 345763
Tried to make a new fuel cap today, but the chamfer tool thought otherwise. I've deleted Max and currently I'm re-downloading it to see if that fixes anything (Edit: It didn't). Once again, if anyone knows what's going on, or knows a solution, please let me know. You would single-handedly save this entire project.

This looks like something that I'd fix in Blender by letting it recalculate the Normals and then play around with the Edge Split modifier.

But regarding Normals, do you have Backface Culling switched on? Maybe there's flipped Normals that mess up the chamfers.

 

[Joshua Prematta]

This looks like something that I'd fix in Blender by letting it recalculate the Normals and then play around with the Edge Split modifier.

But regarding Normals, do you have Backface Culling switched on? Maybe there's flipped Normals that mess up the chamfers.

Backface culling is turned off, but I’ll get on Blender and try to see what’s going on.
Just so I know, do the normals mess with geometry, adding new edges, deleting some ploygons, and creating others?

 

[Joshua Prematta]

A massive thank you to Gary and everyone else for helping to for helping find what could have been the issue. To our knowledge, the issue that was causing all of the chamfers to go nuts was the file being saved for 3ds Max 2020, or there were too many modifiers in the mod stack. So far, the file has no issues so far with chamfers failing. Let's hope it stays that way!

 

[Joshua Prematta]

Since finding the fix for the chamfers messing up everything, I've been making up lost time by continuing adding details. Over the weekend, I threw together things such as a new fuel cap, a mirror, and messing around with fenders to get their shapes correct. When it comes to the mirror, though, I am conflicted on whether or not I should turbosmooth it to round out all the rough edges, at the cost of ~500 polys before manually playing with them. The housing behind the pane itself leads to the wheel well in the real example, but after trying to connect the two, I wasn't able to seamlessly join the two nicely. So now it leads to a dead end, since it would most likely not be seen unless you are specifically looking for it.

Now, this next item has been the bane of my existence over the past few days, since we have no idea what the hell it is. We think it's an ignition box of some sort, but I wasn't able to find something similar to it. When the time comes to texture it, I might just slap some Nippon Denso branding on it and make sure it looks vaguely similar. To whatever that thing is. In the near future, a friend of mine might be going to the Louwman to see if one of the 7s are still there. Fingers crossed so we can nail every last detail.

I also finally got around to doing the smoothing groups, but I am also in the process of re-making the wheels since they were not as good as I hoped they would be.

 

[Joshua Prematta]

Small update: TMG Cologne have finally responded, saying they have nothing to do with the Toyota 7. The person who responded said he is meeting someone in the coming weeks from Japan who might know where I can go to get a workshop manual, or if it's even available. He said not to be too optimistic about it, so all we can do for now is wait and hope.

 

[Joshua Prematta]

It's been a busy week, the wheels are re-done, at around 40% of the polygons compared to the previous iteration, and the tires actually look like tires this time!

One of my favorite subtile changes is the new chamfered wheel nut, which looks a lot better than the old wheel.

I'm also starting to stitch the rest of the body back together, since all the details I could find have been added, so here is the obligatory, mildly-decent camera match.

I'm split on whether to do the interior, or the engine next. I'm personally not looking forward to either, but there's noting else left to model.

 

[AccAkut]

You're really trucking along great
I'd do the interior next, as it's ofc more visible while driving, do it well without restricting yourself, than do the engine afterwards. Tho I guess you're not in a high number of tris or textures/materials yet, right?

 

[Joshua Prematta]

You're really trucking along great
I'd do the interior next, as it's ofc more visible while driving, do it well without restricting yourself, than do the engine afterwards. Tho I guess you're not in a high number of tris or textures/materials yet, right?

Good point, plus I have a couple decent references for the space frame that can be done. I am currently away from my computer, but I believe with wheels and everything, I am hovering around the 50k tri mark, with no normals or textures made yet. I’ll edit in the actual number when I get back to my computer.

(Edit: I was not around the 50k tri mark, I'm currently at 76,494 tris. So there's some room to play around with things, but not as much as I hoped. I do have a bunch of geometry on the underfloor that I have to clean up still, so there's maybe a thousand or two tris that I can get rid of.)

 

[AccAkut]

Good point, plus I have a couple decent references for the space frame that can be done. I am currently away from my computer, but I believe with wheels and everything, I am hovering around the 50k tri mark, with no normals or textures made yet. I’ll edit in the actual number when I get back to my computer.

(Edit: I was not around the 50k tri mark, I'm currently at 76,494 tris. So there's some room to play around with things, but not as much as I hoped. I do have a bunch of geometry on the underfloor that I have to clean up still, so there's maybe a thousand or two tris that I can get rid of.)

everything below 200k is probably fine. i mean yes Kunos once had guidelines (iirc it was 150k exterior and 150k high res interior), but that was rather shortly after release some many years ago.

 

[Joshua Prematta]

Work has been started putting together some bits of the interior. I started with the space frame, since it shares a space with the driver's footwell, much like most cars of the category and the era.

I've also paired this with photomatching, so it's turned out relatively well, and the beginnings of the suspension mounting points are being located.

Now, it wouldn't be a thread of mine without asking the presumably amateur-esque questions. In the here and now, each of the tubes of aluminum are modelled with 8 sides. How many sides should these tubes have once it gets closer to the driver?

And the last question; when it comes to the wheel, should the stitching on the wheel, similar to this be modelled? And if so, how would I go about doing that? What should the tri budget be for a simple wheel?

 

[Stereo]

12 or 16 is usually good for cockpit tubes depending on the way they're visible (and then eg. a hole the bar goes through may double it to 24 if it's right in front of the driver). 8 is probably fine for anything under/behind the driver though.

Stitching gets textured on with a transparent overlay that uses a normalmap, you can check it in most Kunos cars.