Forza 4 photomode models are as good as CAD models.
Easy to take a look at them and think how you'd build your model.
I kinda agree on the creative side, but now poly levels are so high there isn't really so much creativity left in creating the form, we can fully realise the form of a vehicle for game purposes (and even photo purposes now nearly) in about 60k's worth of polygons!
Maybe back when you made content in 5-10k for a car there was some creativity in how you feigned curves and forms with the right mesh and texture work... but not so much today if at all!
Eventually your artistic interpretation is so close by definition to the original Audi, it'd be impossible to say that someone elses interpretation wasn't derived from Audi's car, but their model.
At 60k polygons you'd struggle to say what the original source was for a car, it could be cad from manufacturer, or another game, or a CAD model made by an artist. You'd never know.
It was different in the past, but today some models are very good and you'd be mad not to use them as *reference* materials.
I'm in two minds on the process. Don't know it till you try it. I'm making my BMW Z4 and it's a nightmare. Since I own it I look every day and see curves I can't reproduce from prints... even in photos they are really hard to see (resorted to putting thin masking tape lines down certain panels for photo matching!)
I've had prints that tell me so much, but then photo-matching to tell me more (even taking photo-match photos in GT5 haha!... but in the end the clearly CAD derived Forza 4 model is just as useful a guide in the end.
Indeed, I've loaded some panels in and still think MY panels look more like my car, so will be keeping them that way.
Their CAD models are sooooo high density for realtime use, that you have to totally rethink topology and poly flow for YOUR needs, your texture budget/process (ie, do you want livery, and UV unwrapping, or not), damage perhaps? Opening doors or ones that can stay static... oodles of thoughts are still made despite the reference material!
Give it a go. Get a Forza 4 HD model and make your own model from it. In the end all you do is work off a pre-made 3d surface, rather than lining up images, forming splines, creating a 3d surface, and then topologising off that anyway.
It cuts out some time basically, but the final creative work is STILL yours in determining the poly density, the flow density you need, total poly count, yadda yadda
Not to say I do that all the time, I've just started an A110-50 and it's all from photos. Creating each panel as a surface to start with, blocking it out in surfaces, then poly-modelling over.
End results and the modelling from the resources/references you have is what counts. In the case of my Z4 I have 3 lots of prints, two sets of photos, spline cages, and two meshes from other games as reference (the Shift 2 one I had for example was so wrong in BIG ways it was binned, so there is still no replacement for checking your resources and double checking!)
Sorry I babbled so much, can't really write a cohesive single post quickly haha.
I generally agree with you, in the end it's about an artist realising their vision of a given thing, in this case cars.
But if your vision requires perfection and accuracy as much as the spirit of the car, then utilising all the reference materials you can muster is worthwhile!
It's still the same in the end I promise you. You still struggle with curves and shapes and how to make it look the best, loading it in-engine and checking reflections and flow, thinking about texturing etc...
You just complete different steps a bit differently, but underneath you are still critically casting your eye over every vert you drop
Dave
