Sometimes you get the opportunity to work on the project when you don't expect it. Such was the case here, as I had to spend a day at home, waiting for the watermeter to be replaced at essentially random time of that day. That at least gave me few extra hours of productive time I opted to use for further improving this mod.
Early on I tackled with the LOD2 and LOD3, as these were non-existent up to this point.
Shortly after that I completely reworked the tube mass model to get the accurate weight distribution of the vehicle.
Afterwards I had a thought about improving the quality of the wheel rims. These were extremely basic and initially I did not intend to work on them further, however I was in a mood of giving it some extra 20 minutes of care. Of course 4 hours later in the rabbit hole I ended up with completely remodelled rims. I'm actually quite proud of this though, I mean, have a look:
Initial version:
Reworked version:
IRL design:
I still have to play a bit with smoothing groups and mappings, but I gotta say it already looks pretty good.
Also tried to have some fun (with occasional desperation) in the engine editor, as I kept trying to perfectly match the irl engine specs. Sadly with the tools available I can only get it about 90% right, so some compromises had to be made.
Oh and I remodeled the steering wheel as well, so now it is much smoother with way more polygons.
One more version of the steering wheel is planned (movie car had different steering wheel compared to the original/displayed design). Should be a quick job though.
The to-do list is now getting very small, I believe by the end of the week I should be able to send the mod for manufacturer's approval.
Cheers!