Action Concept: Shelby GT500 Pursuit

Got deeply inspired to create a pursuit scene after replaying Need for Speed: The Run, especially it's avalanche section. Additionally had the intention to sprinkle a little bit of a James Bond taste as well (via baddies armed to the teeth with borderline sci-fi tech).

During the initial search for possible references, an idea of a protagonist's classic muscle/pony car being in perfect juxtaposition with futuristic gliders shooting thunderbolts stuck with me. After looking at a long list of American legends, I decided to pick one of the most iconic versions of the original Ford Mustang in cinema - the Shelby GT500 in the "Eleanor" look from a 2000 remake of a film "Gone in 60 Seconds". Had thoughts about making a model of the yellow Mach 1 Mustang from the 1974 movie, but the curves of the modified fastback Shelby won my heart over.

However, I had always been adamant about the asphalt grey tint of the car's body being extremely overused in various related projects. So I wrote a custom car paint shader with metallic flakes and pearlescence effect and played around with it, until I got the aquamarine-to-purple finish I was highly satisfied with.

My other idea was to create a "restomod" for the interior of the car. It was an appealing personal challenge for me to redesign a modern Mustang's interior to fit the much smaller original car. It was also a logical detail for the scene's lore, since classic interiors are notoriously unergonomic/unsafe for racing and most definitely wouldn't stay in a custom built vehicle for high-speed chases.

For the enemy gliders I've used and modified the wonderful "Sci-Fi Aircraft" Unreal Engine asset, which I've bought from:
https://www.artstation.com/dspazio
It was a perfect fit for the scene and I'm extremely glad I could save my time on this.

For the background I've used the "Automotive Winter Scene" by Epic Games' Quixel team as a foundation. I've reworked all of the lighting and weather effects, as well as some of the scene's materials to achieve a balanced mood.

The project also served me as a great practice with localized motion blur and fog effects. For the former I've used a remarkably well-written asset "Custom Motion Blur" by Thomas Kole (http://thomaskole.nl). Was thoroughly impressed with the tools' capabilities, and got to learn much more about custom depth stencil in Unreal Engine. For the latter I've both written volumetric materials and used a fascinatingly efficient "EasyFog" asset by William Faucher (https://www.youtube.com/c/williamfaucher). Never before have I experienced such an elegant and rapid pipeline for setting up fog cards, so a huge thanks!

Finalizing this project has been one of the most satisfying personal experiences I've ever had with Unreal Engine. Enjoy ;)