Ford Sierra Cosworth RS500

This is a model of the Ford Sierra RS500, fully modeled and textured by me as a personal project.
I chose this car due to its iconic design and history in motorsport, and I aimed to capture its distinct lines while keeping the poly count low, making it suitable for use as a game asset.

I used Blender for modeling and Substance 3D Painter to bake normal maps and create the textures. My focus was on achieving realism with efficient geometry, optimizing the model for real-time rendering in game engines like Unreal or Unity.

One of the challenges I encountered was preserving key aerodynamic details without overloading the poly count. I used hard-surface modeling techniques and edge loop optimization to maintain accuracy in the design. I did this as a modeling and texturing exercise, while I gained a lot of experience in both fields in my opinion.

During the texturing process, using custom masks in Substance Painter, I had the opportunity of creating some fun car paint variations, I leave some of them at the bottom of this page.

Unfortunately, Sketchfab doesn’t handle 16-bit normal maps well on such low poly designs, which leads to some visual artifacts on the surface.

Poly count: 26.6k triangles
Textures: Two 4K sets, one 2K set, one 1K set
Rendered in: Blender with HDRI lighting and post-processing in Cycles