by ZachC

Last week I mentioned that one of the things people look for in a buggy is a good quality windshield. Quality refers to a clear, shaded windshield with appropriate lettering and/or graphics. By appropriate I mean something other than covering the entire surface with a picture or the buggy’s name. At least leave enough room to actually see through it. To accomplish this you need to understand how the transparencies work.

 

There are two parts to the windshield template; the color texture and the opacity texture. The color texture is where you can put your lettering and graphics as you want to see them. The opacity layer sets it so you can see through those graphics. The opacity layer MUST be in black and white. White is for opaque areas, and black is for transparent. Gray makes the windshield semi transparent so you can create many affects using it. Here is an example of each. These are jpg files and as far as I can tell that’s the correct format to use for the windshield. Feel free to use them if you want, or modify them. Notice that only half the template is actually used by the model. Don’t ask me why they did it that way; I’m pretty sure even the current staff at There couldn’t answer that one.

I found a few buggies to bring you this week, but first I want to give a special plug to CCR. The Cross Country Racers have been around for a very long time. I always try to do something for them for their annual fund raiser and this year it’s the 2009 CCR 4 Seat Buggy by ZMW. All proceeds from the sale of this buggy goes to fund the group and their weekly events held throughout the year.

Next is a great buggy from a new designer. The RAKA: CSXR by Rob3000 is incredible considering this is only his first buggy. He did the CSX’s in four colors: red, this one; orange, the CSXO; green, the CSXG; and blue, the CSXB. All are priced at 14,000t. As usual I chose the red one. I just have this thing for red buggies. The shine is excellent, the intakes and louver well done, and all the details are handled beautifully. I’d say more but I’d sound like I was gushing.

The Adventurer V2 by RKCC is an excellent TUV created by RK_Falagar. It has good shine and the details are thought out and well done. The TUV template isn’t the easiest to paint, but he make it LOOK easy with this version. It’s priced at a very reasonable 15,000t. If you’re on the market for a TUV you owe it to yourself to take a look at this one.

Finally I took a look at the high end of the auctions to see what collectables were being offered. There are quite a few including a ZMW 2007 Night Rider. This buggy was submitted on 10/23/06. It was limited to 15 copies. It was first listed on 10/25/06 but five copies were sold before ever made it into the auctions. It was listed at 50,000t and sold out 10/30/09.

For those of you working on buggies and having trouble with the windshield I hope you found this week’s column helpful.