delahaye part 2

Update on the Delahaye project I’ve been working on: since the body on the 1936 Paris show car is long gone, the plan is to recreate the entire body and interior from scratch. The problem exists that this first car, and a couple after were built on a short wheelbase rather than the later longer wheelbase chassis. So, we only have a limited number of photos and a few Delahaye experts to rely on to recreate the body for the original chassis that IS the Paris show car.

Mike and crew at AMS looked the model over last week. The 1:5 Delahaye model that I previously showed on Instagram was 3d printed from a 3D scan of an actual long wheelbase Delahaye in a collection of cars in California. This car is about 150-200mm longer than the Paris shoe car. Mike was planning on cutting this model up to create the proper scale length but I mentioned that I might be able to do the slice and dice digitally. BUT it has to flow.

My job this past week was to use the original photos as reference along with some measurements and then see if I could work with the 3D scan to create a short wheelbase car. For those of you who don’t know, a 3D scan is only so useful for chopping and slicing and reconfiguring especially when it’s a big open car. The scan is helpful for certain, but it requires patching holes in the original scan, making it solid mesh with thickness (without loosing resolution), then converting it to a useable mesh that can be modeled (without loosing resolution), AND then the slicing and dicing begins along with modifying any place you cut, and restoring the proper shape. It took me a few days and some late nights but I found a workflow that works, and I’m on my way to editing the car. I still need to lower the door line and adjust the door belt line, and tweak the angle of the front grill and shape of the front balance, but my system is working and I have something that is fairly clean to show for last weeks work. It was cool to use some of the same techniques (only digitally) that I learned when I chopped my Beetle. Now I get to fuss with things until I can get the guys at AMS to provide their expertise to the model. Stay tuned…