Pontiac Grand Am in Unreal

I have been teaching myself to use Unreal Engine over the last few months and I really wanted to create a drivable vehicle to see how it compares to the old days when I made drivable vehicles for the Source Engine.

The original Pontiac model was originally created in Maya and modified in Blender to fix the proportions to be more realistic. I then added an armature in Blender and after a LOT of trial and error I found the correct way to set up the mesh and rig to work correctly in Unreal Engine. Once there I used the Control Rig functionality to animate the suspension realistically and in real-time, with correct camber changes under compression and when steering.

The next thing to do was update the old textures for the car for a more modern rendering engine using PBR workflow. I still think that some of the surfaces could do with further improvement but I am very impressed with the refraction and translucency effects on the light casings.

Finally I did some fine tuning on the handling by adjusting slip values and spring rates as well as adding some additional switchable cameras and extra camera control to show off the suspension as well as the interior of the car.