One of my first major projects. I created this as a mod for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City back in the early 2000’s. I used 3DS Max and put something like 40-60K polygons. Which for 2002-2003, that was a lot. I remember downloading many other vehicle models in that game detail range and had my copy of Vice City modded out with tons of high poly custom cars. This was also when TV shows like West Coast Choppers and Orange County Choppers were popular and I always thought that stuff was really fun looking. I wouldn’t want to own one, but they looked cool on TV and I wanted one in Grand Theft Auto. So this was my take on the custom chopper scene of the early 2000’s. I called my bike the HellFire. A search for ‘Hellfire nuchaz’ will return many results where the bike is still sprinkled around the internets and can still be downloaded.
I learned so much about 3D modeling and game assets doing this project. This was the first time I really did something big that I put into a game and got some traction and popularity. So much popularity in face, other people had made the effort to port it to San Andres and then when GTA4 came out, I noticed they had a similar looking bike built into the game called the HellFury. It was clearly inspired by my bike and Rockstar had done an homage to my bike in GTA4. That made me so happy when I found that out. I am sure very few people know where the inspiration for the HellFury came from. Most of the vehicles in GTA are inspired by fancy cars like Ferraris and Lamborghinis and here they are being inspired by my little one off project. That made me so happy.