Evolution of a Formula One car

[Tom Castellani]

I am basically showcasing a quick GIF that I made tonight. I'd been thinking about it wanting to see something like this for some time and couldn't find anything similar already in existence. The obvious choice was to make it myself, although it was hard to find pictures of each of the cars. Ferrari is obviously the most... Documented manufacturer so they seemed like the logical choice. I forgot about the project for a while until I came across an amazing random Russian F1 site: http://wildsoft.ru/cha.php?l=F&id=195002028 (Really worth browsing even if it is hard to navigate.)



With this I quickly put the animation together. I had originally envisaged a morphing effect between cars slower although doing it as I have seemed to work well. As I said I made it quickly and the heights of some of the cars are slightly uneven, something I may fix at a later date. Until then I hope you all enjoy it.

I am also thinking about doing a McLaren version: http://wildsoft.ru/cha.php?l=M&id=196601002 . This shouldn't take too long and I'll have a look for other manufacturers that might be good so that I can make a series of this.

P.S.
It's weird, I'm really not a Ferrari fan but it seems I've just had a couple Ferrari-based projects recently. Other than this a while ago I made a video with rFactor (http://www.rfactor.net/) racing various Ferrari's around Fiorano (again, because I had more of them and it was Fiorano... What else?!). I'll probably put the video on YouTube soon and post it here.

[modbaraban]

I've seen similar stuff bit with really smooth transition between pictures (but with much less pictures of course). Do you know how to do it? I mean it looked as though the cars changed shapes gradually.

[Tom Castellani]

I've seen similar stuff bit with really smooth transition between pictures (but with much less pictures of course). Do you know how to do it? I mean it looked as though the cars changed shapes gradually.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking before is to have the cars morph gradually. I tried using Flash for this but it was no good, then I had a look at getting separate software but couldn't seem to download anything. I may try that again soon but I know exactly what you mean.

To add to the other manufacturers I think Tyrrell has a fair few cars as well: http://wildsoft.ru/cha.php?l=T&id=197011003 . The Ferrari's though seem to blend okay since they're all obviously red so I don't know how something like that will work.

If anyone can find previous stuff like this that has already been done I'd love to see it!

[Steven]

I think manchild could help you out a bit more

Great work though!

[manchild]

It can be easily done but it would take so much work to morph 53 cars two times. Unless you pick many reference points between two pics the transition will look just like fadeout&appear effect. In other words, there'd be no change of shape.

53 cars, lets say 6 to 10 frames per each two consecutive cars, even if it would be a 200 x 100 pixels gif that would weigh several megabytes.

[modbaraban]

It can be easily done but it would take so much work to morph 53 cars two times. Unless you pick many reference points between two pics the transition will look just like fadeout&appear effect. In other words, there'd be no change of shape.

53 cars, lets say 6 to 10 frames per each two consecutive cars, even if it would be a 200 x 100 pixels gif that would weigh several megabytes.

As I said with much less cars =)

Anyways, which software would you use for that?

[manchild]

Sqirlz Morph http://www.tucows.com/preview/365265

But first you'd need to make individual images in some photo editing program of each car with some reference positioning like vertical bottom center of the front wheel (point where wheel touches the ground). That must be done in single pixel precision as well as vertical position of the car. After that comes morphing. When you're done morphing than you save file as uncompressed AVI with 24 or 30 fps and once again open it in some photo editing program to convert it to 8 bit colors and save as gif.

Here is morph with only two reference points (where wheels touch the ground). Except the wheels you can't use any other reference point since not all cars have same bodywork elements.



Problem is also (if I'm not mistaken) that images don't show car size in real ratio.

[modbaraban]

Thanks!

[Tom Castellani]

Hmm, I don't reckon I have the time or patience for that and chances are it wouldn't be so great. As you pointed out the bodywork varies so on your version you notice the cockpit doesn't transpose.

That website is fantastic though, you can browse by driver and see all the cars they drove etc. Again, if I get a moment I will do the same with the McLaren and Tyrrell cars.