Snow-Trac (WIP)

[numbthumb]

What? Jack Nicholson?
Excellent work, unigami

[Bryan K]

Wow! One of my all time favorite toy vehicles as a kid and still is to this day, only now I'm old enough to be able to drive one!

Great model.

[unigami]

Thanks for all of the nice comments!

Here's an update showing work completed on the interior. Pretty simple stuff...these machines were very utilitarian.
Just a driver's seat, and two bench seats along the side.

You can't see it here, but the gas tank was inside the passenger compartment as well, under the bench seat in the rear.

snow-trac_dash2.jpg

[rangerrick]

That's some fine modeling

[Roidsan]

Unigami - anything with a track like that is awesome to us newbies. Most incredible! Did you just do that from the photograph you showed, or did you have some other better source?

Solo, you just HAD to show Jack Torrance. We all had his image in our minds. Obviously hard to resist and very intense.
Lloyd

[unigami]

Rick and Lloyd, thanks for the nice words! There are quite a few resources that I've discovered for the Snow-Trac...it is a beloved machine and I've found several owners groups online that have lots of pictures. One of the most helpful resources that I found was a parts manual with exploded drawings of the entire vehicle!

Another interesting bit of trivia that I discovered was that the FBI used one of these back in 1971 to search for D.B Cooper - the infamous hijacker who jumped out of a 727 near Portland OR with $200,000 and was never found. That machine is still in use today and is privately owned.

Here's an update with two SkecthUp views and a couple clay renders. Going to start working on textures now.

snow-trac_21a_scene1_lines.jpg

snow-trac_21_scene2_lines.jpg

snow-trac_21_scene1_clay_edges.jpg

snow-trac_21_scene2_clay_edges.jpg

Oops!

[Dave R]

[numbthumb]

Indeed,
Great stuff. Can´t wait to see it textured & rendered.

[majid]

wow , this is gonna be a great model, seeing forward to see the texturing/modeling

[Dave R]

Rick, that last render is really good. I almost thought it was a photograph. By the way, I like your clay renders with the lines overlaid.

[hellnbak]

Your modeling is so smooth, clean and detailed. Great model. I really love the lines of this vehicle, the shape of the hood and fenders, the way the body goes straight back and the tracks angle down. I'll have to take another look at The Shining, been awhile since I've seen it. I do remember that Nicholson was great, and the ending was terrible, nothing at all like the book. I don't remember what kind of vehicle the cook used to get back to the hotel, was it another Snow-Trak?

Anyhow, came across some sort-of interesting photos and thought I would pass them along.

[dereeei]

(for last image) - how do you steer a snowboard ? Now do it on a larger and tracked scale

[Dave R]

I want one now.

I've seen film of that second to the last one running. It looked pretty neat and went like crazy. A guy would wonder about what had made the tracks if he didn't know about the tractor.

That last one looks like some tinkerers idea and it never occurred to him until after he built it that he wouldn't be able to steer it.

[unigami]

I don't remember what kind of vehicle the cook used to get back to the hotel, was it another Snow-Trak?

Anyhow, came across some sort-of interesting photos and thought I would pass them along.

Thanks for the nice comments guys, and the pictures!

The cook drove a Thiokol Imp...it appeared again near the end...here's a picture from the movie.
(BTW, Stephen King is currently writing a sequel to The Shining!)

272.jpg

Of course, the other famous snow cat from Movies/TV is The Chariot from Lost In Space. This was a modified Thiokol Spryte.

1chariot15.jpg

[hellnbak]

(BTW, Stephen King is currently writing a sequel to The Shining!)

Wow, I had not heard that! I just hope it's more like the old King books, like he used to write back in the days of The Shining. Seems like every book he churns out nowadays is touted as "he's getting back to his roots", but he never really does. Maybe he needs a root canal

In all fairness I know a writer has to evolve, I just enjoyed his work a lot more before evolution overtook him

Even tho he'll be writing a sequel to the book, not the movie, it's main character sure to be compared to Nicholson, and that's gonna be tough!

Well, whatever it turns out to be, it's sure to become a movie, guaranteed. Ka-ching!

Oh, wait, this is a SU forum. Ummmm......nice model!

[unigami]

A couple views out of SketchUp...

[hellnbak]

Perfect. How did you get the soft ground shadows?

[Dave R]

Perfect! Almost looks like you set it down on fresh snow.

I bet I know how he got the soft shadows.

I was watching some videos of these things. I really want one although I have no place to drive it.

[unigami]

Perfect. How did you get the soft ground shadows?

I selected the shadow and added Gaussian blur in Photoshop. I also used a filter from Topaz Labs to give the red paint a bit of a rendered feel, and I put the profile lines on a separate layer so I could control them separately. That's about it...

I'm going to try some renders in Kerkythea next...I'd like to composite it on top of a nice winter landscape.

[bulbangs]

i love it! keep up the good work!

[EscapeArtist]

Well done. Super-clean model, fantastic detail.

[mitcorb]

Well, I am humbled yet again!

[unigami]

Here's my first attempt at a render for this model. I used Kerkythea with HDRI lighting + an omni light for shadows. No post-processing or any attempt to make things look grungy yet...

Any comments/advice from the render experts will be very helpful from this point on, because I'm such a newb with rendering and feel like I'm shooting arrows at a target in a dark room half the time...

My next step is to find a good background and see if I can composite this in some kind of realistic way.

render1-1000p.png

[Dave R]

That looks really nice. It would look great in my driveway and it would make my neighbors wonder.

[unigami]

That looks really nice. It would look great in my driveway and it would make my neighbors wonder.

Yeah...wouldn't that be great!!!! Thanks for nice comments Dave!

[Blah11]

WOW I been lurking this since day 1, it really looks real. GOOD JOB

[Marian]

Fantastic

[hellnbak]

Wow, this is looking better all the time! Your skills are impressive, to say the least.

My next step is to find a good background

Here's an idea....Dave's driveway
(or better yet, mine. Another Michigan winter getting ready to dump all over my parade )

[swagen]

simply perfect!!! stunning modeling technique!

[solo]

Nice model Rick, clean modeling, the way I like it.

I'd love to get a chance to render it if possible.