2013 Chevrolet Caprice PPV - Los Santos Sheriff’s Department​

EDIT(18/03/2017)
The released model can be found below:

File

2013 Chevrolet Caprice PPV - Los Santos Sheriff’s Department

A 2013 Los Santos Sheriff’s Department​ Chevrolet Caprice PPV​ based on the radio vehicle used by the LASD for testing purposes.

Kane104

Mar 18th 2017

Alrighty, on to the long awaited Caprice. So it goes without saying that some might've noticed through the teasers posted that I've ditched the scratch made Caprice for IV in favour of another model which can ultimately be described as a blend of worlds. I never released the IV Caprice because I was unsatisfied with the model itself, there were quite a few inaccuracies that just toppled my will to put it out there. Nevertheless, recently I decided that a re-attempt was in order and that I'd finally put my all into producing the perfect Caprice that the community has always wanted.

It all started off as the Pontiac G8 from Forza, a car built on the same platform as the Caprice and featuring generally similar panels and dimensions. After a few intense internal debates I decided to source the front end from an unfinished scratch modeling attempt by EVI and the rear end from my previous attempt. Other alterations that had to be done were namely the changing of the C-pillar quarter glass area(Pontiac has them in the door whereas Caprice has them in the C-pillar area), the wing plastic snap inserts, as well as the interior. Luckily the interior differences between the G8 and Caprice weren't major and the general shape was the same, though the center console area of the dash had to be remodeled as well as custom symbols and cluster had to be made. Seats had to be customized as well as shifter and steering converted to the Caprice variants. On the other hand, the merging of the front and rear end was mostly a matter of refitting to a blueprint and welding the previously made parts together neatly with the G8's existing body(an extremely long and tedious process).

Anyhow, I'll rather spare any more long explanations and let the pictures below of the before and afters tell the story.

Exterior - before and after following completion of all the merging and remodeling of parts

Interior - before and after following completion of edits

Exterior - finalizing and templating before conversion to V

Current ingame screenshots after port

I'll keep the thread updated with further updates as I go along. I just initially felt it'd be better to share the progression of the conversion and modeling process once it was done rather than get that feeling of pressure being put on me to complete it. Currently, the model just needs a few final additions like the license plates and LODs, as well as some other fine tuning of dummy placement, etc.

Quote from Ridgerunner

Now the big question is what kind of models are we going to see using this base model??

Well, definitely a handful of lore inspired models. I will have a go at the California based agencies that make use of the Caprice too, though.

On the other hand, since my last post I've made a few edits. I've set up the headlights, high beams and parklights(triggered by headlights). Altered the interior mapping, I've remapped the dash entirely as well as the doors and floor to more suited materials resembling the textures they have in reality by means of some good ol' bump mapping.

Headlights

Updated Interior

Edits aren't final as I'm still working on perfecting them as well as mapping the seats to a cloth-like material.

Loving the feedback, thanks guys.

Anyways, I believe pretty much perfected the interior materials now. Almost every interior part is bump mapped for a realistic look and the feel of depth in the materials as well as the specular maps tweaked to perfection for the best possible look. Additionally, I've also remapped the seats to the appropriate cloth textures too.

From here onward its pretty much a matter of finishing off a few tiny dummy positioning bugs and then making LODs before its finished. On another note though, Cj24 and I have spent a lot of time on researching and experimenting with specular maps and we will be posting a very in-depth guide soon on creating good specular maps that are appropriate to whatever material look you may be trying to replicate ingame.

I wasn't quite happy with the taillights and had a go at remodeling them too. After struggling for the last two days with scratch making textures and eventually being forced to bake some brand new ones, I've finally gotten them to a point that I can at least show off. Of course, they still need some fine tuning but below are some pictures of the progress:

From here its a matter of perfecting the taillight emissive texture and then I can finally proceed to making LODs.

As many would've noticed, I've been quiet lately and unable to continue the project as a result of my work and studies. A slight update I can give is that I've completed setting up all the LODs and there are just a few slight changes to be made to the model before I can happily say its ready for release. I might get to posting an update a bit later on today but if not, expect it to be around next Sunday again when I've got some spare time to work on it. Regardless of how long it may take me to finish with all the delays facing it, I'd like to reassure those following the project that it will be released.

As promised, here's some pictures of how the LODs currently stand after the optimization and their polycounts. I'm limited to posting only 10 pictures so the previews will range from L0 to L2, the L3 and L4 aren't really worth showing anyways.

Front

Rear

Interior(L0 & L1)

The current polycounts are:

• 91 117 polygons / 82 862 vertices for L0
• 33 013 polygons / 31 940 vertices for L1
• 17 547 polygons / 18 421 vertices for L2
• 7 671 polygons / 8 685 vertices for L3
• 2 348 polygons / 2 868 vertices for L4

All that's pretty much left to do now is add plates and then it'll be ready, but releases will be dependent on how much time I have free to work on the model. Cj24 has already created liveries for the LSSD model I've previously referred to that I'll be doing first, although in reality the sad truth is that the LASD only appears to have a single Caprice in their fleet(I could easily be mistaken but from research every photo search for an LASD Caprice always returns a car bearing the same unit number in each photo). At least if its LSSD, one doesn't have to bother about such though, hence why I prefer lore.

Obviously, I'll have to update my SL Arjent modules to S2 modules to correspond with the year of the car as well as model the interior equipment, all of which might take quite a while but I'll see what I can work out over the weekend again and hopefully get to posting an exciting update for once.