Capstone Project 2025

'Dust Riders'

This capstone project was conducted with my fellow animation student Jasmine James as the quintessential project for my Bachelor of Design at AUT. My main contributions were layout design, setting, lighting and cinematography. I was also in charge of the cars rigging, texturing and animation.

My guiding research question was: ‘How can strategic layout design - such as dynamic cinematography and setting design principles - enhance the tension in the visual storytelling of a conflict in a 3D car chase animation?’

This page is dedicated to documenting the journey of creating 'Dust Riders', from planning through to completion. I am super excited to be channeling my love for cars and my interest in layout design into my final animation. Hope you enjoy :)

Final Animation

Making Of Video

Early Render Tests

Animation Playblasts

Texturing

Textures created in Adobe Substance Painter 2025

Assets - Car Models

The two car models we will be using are both free third-party assets downloaded from Sketchfab.com.

Rhi's car is a Porsche 911 Turbo RWB. Rex's is a 2013 Ford Mustang GT modelled after the one in 'Need for Speed'.

I cleaned up the meshes - removing unnecessary parts (such as the engine and the interior boot) and removing random geometry - reducing each model's poly count from 120,000 faces to 80,000. I also removed the decals and the screws from the exterior of the Porsche, as well as adding different wheels sourced from the same website on the Mustang since the original wheels were extremely high poly.