Caligari Eye March 2009 - I've Got A Bike

I've Got A Bike

Unlike the Pink Floyd song, this is one bike that you can't ride if you like, at least not yet! For now, it only exists as a design from the mind of Flavio Adriani. Taking his inspiration from two great names in invention, engineering and design, Nikola Tesla and Ferrucio Lamborghini, Flavio has created some stunning renders from his concept.

Flavio's love of the ideas of designer Marcello Gandini led him to choose the Lamborghini Countach as his particular inspiration from the fabled car manufacturer. To finish the striking look of the concept bike, Flavio has also incorporated the Osmos hubless wheel into the design.

Feeling that car designs are no longer what they once were, Flavio chose to work on a motorcycle design instead, where he feels there is more scope for innovation and imagination. "Car designers are more focused on different problems in the world," he commented.

This project is one Flavio has done simply for the joy of designing a concept bike. It took him about 5 months to complete - "I had to make all the parts at night," he said, "During the day, I have to make my architectural illustrations as usual."

Flavio now intends to show the illustrations on websites that feature automotive designs, and hopes to share it with various companies too. While there are no plans to build the bike yet, Flavio still says "Who knows, maybe some day someone will want to make something different!"

The design is one that Flavio created on his own. He did a lot of sketching and thinking before doing any actual 3D modeling, finding that at first the design changed often.

Committing his ideas to paper let him find a design he was satisfied with before moving on to modeling. This sort of planning is something that Flavio says is very important.

At the modeling stage, Flavio worked in CAD packages, porting the model across to trueSpace for rendering using HDRI under the Lightworks render engine. A 3000 x 2000 render would typically take about 2 hours to produce.

His advice on making this sort of photorealistic render is "If you make a nice clean model, then the only hard part is that you need to spend many hours to find the right HDRI and light set up to get exactly the look you want. Just keep experimenting until you have it right!"

All images on this page by Flavio Adriani. Click the image for full size versions, but take note that some are 3 or 4 Mb in size!