http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=3205&page=
Title: Dacoit_concept Street Motorbike
Name: Nitin Khosa
Country: Switzerland
Software: Maya, Photoshop
This is my original concept motorbike design which is based on a sketch I did few years ago. I called this bike DACOIT.Dacoit?"Dacoit" - dacoit: (dȧ*koit"), n. One of a class of robbers, in India, who act in gangs and are usually armed.In the case of this bike I hope that it's armed with some style and evilness.
The last image in the "high resolution" link has my old sketch on which I based this new updated design.Some info-
* Dacoit is a one seater street bike for posers ...it's not a full blown sports bike.
* The front of the bike symbolizes a hooded man (robber/thief) with his eyes/face/headlights under the hood. The fluidity of the sweep is contradicted with the clean chop/cut of the front of the hood.* The back of the bike is short to enhance "man sitting on an engine" concept and to give it an evil Hyena like feel...short ass.* The knee hugs the orange circle area.
* There are 2 adjustable foot rests...one for "leaning in posture" and the other for "upright posture".Handle bar can be custom adjusted.
Anyway it's a concept bike so please enjoy and I would love to hear your comments on any aspect of this bike ranging from design, lighting, rendering to composition.Thanks
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1- New concept car added
2- Shakti- Concept car
3- Dacoit- Motorbike
4- Dacoit- Making of Article http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=246970
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One morning, I was tidying up my art studio and came across some sketches that I had done more than five years ago. The brief at that time had been to design a bike for a thirty-something "born again" biker who wanted to rediscover his youth with a stunning, aggressive, and evil looking bike. This bike would make the owner feel youthful and turn other bikers green with envy.
I decided to resurrect, revise, and model this design as my first submission to earn the coveted CG Choice Award. The original spark for this concept had come from seeing a hooded man. When viewing the front portion of the bike, you can see an evil figure whose eyes/headlights are peeping from underneath the hood. To compliment this evil and aggressive design I named the bike “Dacoit”, an old Hindi word for a class of robbers in India who act in gangs and are usually armed and dangerous.
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The majority of the sketches were created years ago which gave me a head start for this new challenge. The initial designs still felt fresh and contemporary, however I decided to continue sketching and revise some parts of the bike. For this project I created three distinct design directions. A semi-finished 2D Photoshop rendering was created for two of the design directions (orange bikes below). One idea was to combine many of the elements together into one final bike. I resisted that idea and focused on the strong linear/non-organic visual identity of the selected third design direction (sketches above). Some elements from the other two designs were incorporated into the final bike and some were used as inspiration, like the seat back rest, front mud guard, rear swing arm, and the brake disc area. In the near future I plan on revising and bringing the other two designs to life as well. |  |
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Dacoit is a concept bike and close to a fully engineered bike. For the general measurements I studied many existing bikes. I had a clear vision of how I wanted the bike to look so the modeling process was straight forward. A combination of Nurb, poly and sub-d modeling was used and I moved between them as needed. When the modeling was nearing completion I did several Final Gather test renders (render results below). I was pleased with the direction but not fully satisfied with the renders so I continued to do additional test renders using Global illumination (like the one below). Apart from a few artifacts I was happy with the GI test render, although my PC’s rendering time did test my patience on a few occasions. |
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At this stage, something else bothered me about the model. I was not happy with some design details so I jumped back into modeling mode and re-modeled the following areas:
a) Front mud guard was revised and made more aesthetically pleasing
b) Indicator lights were added on the front fairing (just above my logo)
c) The seat and thigh area of the bike was thinned out and made more ergonomic d) I created a new circular display stage for the bike.
The resulting wire frame screen grabs of the final revised model are below. |  |  |  |  |
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 |  |  |  |  | After updating the model I was satisfied with the design and started to re-focus my energies on rendering the bike. I concentrated on using Final Gather without Global Illumination to keep the render times relatively low. After some experimenting I produced this render on the left. The render had an appealing black and white photographic feel, so I continued to render the other views with the same set-up.
The setup uses a light panel that is placed right above the bike as the main light source. A couple of weak spotlights are added to achieve relevant shadows and highlights. All of the following final images are rendered in Maya using Mental Ray with Final Gather and no GI. |
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One morning, I was tidying up my art studio and came across some sketches that I had done more than five years ago. The brief at that time had been to design a bike for a thirty-something "born again" biker who wanted to rediscover his youth with a stunning, aggressive, and evil looking bike. This bike would make the owner feel youthful and turn other bikers green with envy.
I decided to resurrect, revise, and model this design as my first submission to earn the coveted CG Choice Award. The original spark for this concept had come from seeing a hooded man. When viewing the front portion of the bike, you can see an evil figure whose eyes/headlights are peeping from underneath the hood. To compliment this evil and aggressive design I named the bike “Dacoit”, an old Hindi word for a class of robbers in India who act in gangs and are usually armed and dangerous.
|
|
|
The majority of the sketches were created years ago which gave me a head start for this new challenge. The initial designs still felt fresh and contemporary, however I decided to continue sketching and revise some parts of the bike. For this project I created three distinct design directions. A semi-finished 2D Photoshop rendering was created for two of the design directions (orange bikes below). One idea was to combine many of the elements together into one final bike. I resisted that idea and focused on the strong linear/non-organic visual identity of the selected third design direction (sketches above). Some elements from the other two designs were incorporated into the final bike and some were used as inspiration, like the seat back rest, front mud guard, rear swing arm, and the brake disc area. In the near future I plan on revising and bringing the other two designs to life as well. | |
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Dacoit is a concept bike and close to a fully engineered bike. For the general measurements I studied many existing bikes. I had a clear vision of how I wanted the bike to look so the modeling process was straight forward. A combination of Nurb, poly and sub-d modeling was used and I moved between them as needed. When the modeling was nearing completion I did several Final Gather test renders (render results below). I was pleased with the direction but not fully satisfied with the renders so I continued to do additional test renders using Global illumination (like the one below). Apart from a few artifacts I was happy with the GI test render, although my PC’s rendering time did test my patience on a few occasions. |
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At this stage, something else bothered me about the model. I was not happy with some design details so I jumped back into modeling mode and re-modeled the following areas:
a) Front mud guard was revised and made more aesthetically pleasing
b) Indicator lights were added on the front fairing (just above my logo)
c) The seat and thigh area of the bike was thinned out and made more ergonomic d) I created a new circular display stage for the bike.
The resulting wire frame screen grabs of the final revised model are below. | | | | |
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| | | | | After updating the model I was satisfied with the design and started to re-focus my energies on rendering the bike. I concentrated on using Final Gather without Global Illumination to keep the render times relatively low. After some experimenting I produced this render on the left. The render had an appealing black and white photographic feel, so I continued to render the other views with the same set-up.
The setup uses a light panel that is placed right above the bike as the main light source. A couple of weak spotlights are added to achieve relevant shadows and highlights. All of the following final images are rendered in Maya using Mental Ray with Final Gather and no GI. |
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 | Dacoit is a one seater street bike designed for pure selfish pleasure. It is not a full-blown sports bike. The seat back rest is inspired by the shape of a shark fin. The rider’s knee hugs the orange circle area. Part of the orange strip on the inner wheel is self-illuminating, making the bike more visible at night plus providing an interesting look when in motion. The gear change controls are on the hand grip area.
Footrest and handlebars are adjustable for comfort. There are two footrests for leaning in and the upright position. The footrest is adjustable and rotates like a clocks arm and it can extend inward and outward. The back of the bike is short to enhance the "man sitting on an engine" concept and to give it an evil Hyena-like feel, with the short back-end. The underside of the bike takes its inspiration from a warrior’s shield and protects the underside from street debris. The headlight mimics an evil criminal who looks towards the ground due to a “guilty conscience”.
Note - Light beams are thrown straight ahead and not downward. Only the external casing points down and not the internal parts that creates the light beam. The gills on the side release and channel the air that gets rammed through the open front. The inner wheel has a mesh area that allows the crosswind to pass through. The bike can be easily customized with a front visor to improve aero-dynamics. |  |
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Most of the shaders are Blinn and Lambert. The orange parts use a Phong shader. I experimented and tweaked the shader settings to get the look that was most pleasing to me. The background images are photos taken with my Nikon D70 DSLR.
They are mapped to a simple rectangular background plate. I achieved the background texture by adding graffiti, dirt and cloning some parts. Simple textures were also added to the control dials on the bike. No major compositing work was involved apart from tidying and color correcting the rendered images in Photoshop. I thought about adding some dirt on the bike in post, but decided to keep it nice and clean just like a new show bike. |  |  |  |  | 
Nitin Design
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My name is Nitin. I am thirty-one years old, Indian by birth, British by nationality, completely cosmopolitan and global by thinking. I studied two years at Industrial Design College in England followed by a four-year BA degree in Industrial transport design at the world-renowned Coventry University (UK). In London I worked for several design consultancies after which I left England and moved to Zurich, Switzerland to be with wife of Portuguese decent.
In Switzerland, I initially did freelance Industrial design work plus took on a graphic/3D design position in a marketing communication company. After more than four years of full-time work, I decided to move on and pursue my career as an independent designer. Currently, I am in the process of growing my one-man design business. My greatest strength is creating unique and highly original design concepts.
My interests extend into designing watches, sports shoes, vehicles and gadgets for games and movies, among other things. I want to thank my wife Cristina for her love, support, and unconditional faith in my design abilities. |
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