Hello, I'm Dhairya, a student of Electronics Engineering and a major auto enthusiast. I have always been captivated by the shots you see in racing game openings or slick commercials. The lighting, angles, and speed make the car look larger than life.

I decided to challenge myself by creating a short Blender animation featuring the Pagani Imola , one of my dream cars.

The main goal of this project was to achieve that dramatic "racing game" effect by trying out different camera angles, accessories, and lighting setups. In this Tutorial, I will show you how I created it, from finding the car model to the final edit.

Supplies

Here are some of the resources I used during this project — they’ll be helpful if you want to try making your own car animation in Blender:

Car Model: Pagani Imola by Ddiaz Design on Sketchfab
Blender Add-ons:
BlenderKit – free models, textures, HDRIs
Rigacar – car rigging add-on
HDRI: Sunset HDRI by EB Adventure Photoscans (via BlenderKit)
Tutorial: Dolly Zoom tutorial by PixelicaCG (YouTube)
Editing Software: CapCut
Music: Emotion Engine from Night-Runners Prototype

Step 1: References and Brainstorming

Every animation project starts with looking for references and brainstorming possible scenes. I watched some car animations made by other people, searching for cool shots or effects, and then I started looking for a car model.

Eventually, I found a Pagani Imola model by Ddiaz Design on Sketchfab and downloaded it as an .fbx file. That became the base of my project.

Step 2: Importing Blender Addons

Blender has a ton of great add-ons that save time and make life easier. For this project, I used:

BlenderKit: drag-and-drop textures, models, HDRIs, etc.
Rigacar: automatically rigs cars for animation.

To install an add-on, just go to:

Edit > Preferences > Add-ons > Install → pick the .zip file → enable it.

Step 3: Setting Up the Car Model

I wasn’t a fan of the default textures, so I gave the car a makeover:

Metallic blue body + carbon fiber accents (via BlenderKit).
Black tinted glass for the windows.

Then I rigged the car:

Joined smaller sections into 4 wheels, 4 brakes, and 1 body.
Renamed them properly.
Added the Rigacar rig → hit Generate Car Rig.

For headlights and brake lights, I modeled small meshes, gave them an emission texture to glow, and mirrored them to the other side. Finally, I joined everything with the car body.

Step 4: Modeling the Environment (Forest Road Attempt )

My first idea was to make a road cutting through a forest. I started with a plane for the ground, added a subdivision surface modifier to increase the face count, and then applied a distortion modifier to make it uneven.

For the road, I used another plane, extruded the parallel sides upwards to give it thickness, beveled the edges with Ctrl+B, and extended it further.

To add life to the scene, I dragged trees, bushes, and plants from BlenderKit. I even tried using a particle system to spread them out evenly. Unfortunately, my PC couldn’t handle that many objects, and fewer trees made the scene look empty. In the end, I scrapped the forest idea.

Step 5: Redoing the Environment(Bridge Scene )

Instead, I decided on a bridge scene — simpler, lighter on rendering, and still cinematic. I imported a bridge and street lamp model using BlenderKit, then applied an Array Modifier to place them in a repeating line.

For the background, I used a beautiful sunset HDRI by EB Adventure Photoscans. I lowered its brightness slightly, boosted the lamp glow, and rendered a quick test. The lighting finally felt right.

Step 6: Animating Scenes 1 & 2

To start off, I wanted the animation to feel like a racing game intro — stylish shots circling the car.

I positioned cameras at different angles, set their start and end keyframes, rotated the HDRI for the best lighting, and rendered the test shots.

Step 7: Animating Scenes 3 & 4

Since the first two shots were simple, I went for something more dramatic

In Scene 3: a dolly zoom. I placed the camera behind the brake lights with a slight tilt, set a keyframe for the focal length, moved the camera back, adjusted the lens, and added another keyframe. With a bit of car body tilt and forward motion, the effect looked intense.

For Scene 4, I wanted to show speed. I placed the camera beside the car and parented it to the body. By animating the car forward and tweaking the focal length, the car looked stretched, simulating speed. I also shifted the camera sideways so the car gradually entered the frame. Finally, I enabled motion blur in the render settings to smoothen the movement.

Step 8: Animating Scenes 5 & 6

Scene 5: Was another dolly zoom, but this time from the front of the hood to make the car look like it was bursting forward.

Scene 6: Was a close-up of the suspension. I animated a slow zoom on the wheel and added motion blur to finish it off.

Step 9: Final Scene (Scene 7)

The last shot shows the car from multiple angles before ending on the starry night sky.

To pull this off:

Enabled Fly Navigation in Blender (View > Navigation > Fly Navigation).
Turned on Auto Keying so every camera movement was recorded.
Smoothed out shaky motion in the Graph Editor.

Now the camera glides naturally around the car for the big finish.

Step 10: Editing Everything Together

With all the renders done, it was time to give life to the animation. I used CapCut for editing because it’s free and packed with effects.

Imported all clips → arranged them.
Added transitions + filters.
Found sound effects online.
For music, I used Emotion Engine from the game Night-Runners Prototype (slightly tweaked pitch/duration).

Exported the final animation, and it was done! 🚀

Step 11: Final Thoughts

This project was a huge learning experience. I got to experiment with camera work, environment design, and editing while also finding creative solutions when my PC couldn’t handle the original plan.

If you’ve been wanting to make your first car animation in Blender, I’d say go for it. Start small, use references, and don’t be afraid to pivot when something doesn’t work out. The results are worth it.

Step 12: End Results

Here is the final render and the final animation output from my project :

Introduction: Pagani Imola | Blender Car Cinematic