NullG’s WipEout XL fleet now has a complete set of Blender-authored recreations: Feisar, Qirex, Auricom, AG Systems, and Piranha. Their familiar silhouettes and team colors carry through into inset cockpit glass, working control surfaces, worn vinyl graphics, and detailed engine housings.
The same process has also reached the smaller objects that give a race its character: missiles, rockets, mines, the recovery drone, starting lights, and track cameras. Together, they show how careful reference work, practical modeling constraints, and repeatable visual reviews can bring a consistent finish to a whole collection.
Start with the shape everyone recognizes
Feisar was the pilot for the workflow. Original XL geometry and texture placement provided the measurements: overall proportions, wing profiles, cockpit position, engine openings, and the blue-and-yellow livery. Front, rear, side, top, and underside comparisons gave each modeling decision a clear reference.
The finished surfaces were rebuilt in Blender, with the source available as a measurement reference. Controlled bevels add definition to edges. Recessed engine throats, seated fairings, and panel thickness give the hull a physical structure. Close-up views establish how those pieces meet; the overall views keep the ship recognizable at racing distance.
Each review focused on a manageable stage. Shape came first, followed by cockpit and engine details, then paint and wear, articulation, and native rendering. Feedback became concrete adjustments: a windshield corner radius, a shared window boundary, a cleaner emblem outline, or a thinner moving surface.
Blender, connected to the review loop
Blender’s community MCP integration gives the assistant a direct connection to the authoring scene. MCP—the Model Context Protocol—exposes tools for inspecting scene contents, running scoped Blender operations, and reviewing the viewport. In NullG’s setup, those operations happen in a dedicated Blender session with a saved revision to work from.
Interactive inspection sits alongside scripted Blender recipes. The scripts make geometry construction, material setup, export, and evidence capture repeatable. An editable .blend retains the authoring work, while a self-contained GLB carries meshes, materials, textures, and named parts into the engine.
The exported GLB gets its own review. It’s imported into a clean Blender scene so the cameras see the actual delivery file, including the hierarchy, glass, and embedded textures. Numbered revisions and recorded asset hashes keep the screenshots connected to the exact model under discussion.
That combination makes iteration particularly useful: a small, specific visual request can become an editable rule, then be checked again from the same angles.
Cockpits built from shared constraints
The cockpit work established one of the most reusable patterns in the project. Each window, seal, and recess derives from the same opening in the canopy shell. Frame margins and inset depths are explicit. Neighboring panes share alignment landmarks, so a change to the canopy has a clear relationship to the surrounding glass.
This gives each team its own window shapes while keeping the construction consistent. Feisar’s separate panes follow its angular canopy. Auricom’s forward glazing and roof window sit within the red cockpit section. Piranha’s side windows use a deliberately refined profile, with an even orange surround and a flat lower edge.
The same idea applies elsewhere: vents follow the panel they sit inside, decals use clean outlines, and lens rims meet their housings at a defined depth. Small relationships like these make close-up views feel assembled and intentional.
Five ships, five distinct finishes
The fleet shares a material language: lightly glossy painted panels, exposed alloy in contact scratches, darker machinery, and tinted glass. Each ship keeps its own livery and construction details.
Feisar established the finish. Its yellow nose carries heavier contact wear, the blue wings retain clear color blocks, and the emblem reads as a worn vinyl sticker over paint. Underneath, a broad abrasion area sits toward the nose, following the idea of a hull that has brushed the track.
Feisar’s cockpit margins, recessed engine, and forward underside abrasion in the Blender review captures.
Qirex carries that approach across a very different hull. Its long purple forms frame a central cockpit, with mechanical texture continuing across the rear and into the engine. The emblem’s repeated slots use consistent dimensions, while surface wear sits mainly on exposed outer areas.
Qirex’s twin-sided hull, aligned glazing, and rear mechanical surfaces.
Auricom brings a sharper canopy arrangement and a strong red, blue, and dark-panel palette. The front vents follow the windshield contour with a consistent margin. Clean star-shaped artwork and deliberate engine texture coverage keep the livery readable from both ends of the ship.
Auricom’s forward glazing, roof window, wing graphics, and engine treatment.
AG Systems uses crisp red-and-white divisions and carefully placed lettering. Its cockpit-adjacent vents follow their supporting panels, and the rear control surfaces have a thin profile that suits the wing geometry. Wear adds contact history along exposed areas while leaving the main graphics easy to read.
AG Systems: panel-aligned vents, red-and-white paint, and a detailed rear assembly.
Piranha pairs warm red wings with a continuous orange canopy section. The crown-like rear motif and elongated diamond cutouts were reconstructed with clean lines. The paint wraps around the glazing and across adjoining faces, with the engine and rear wing finish following the physical components.
Piranha’s orange canopy surround, reconstructed top motif, and rear wing and engine detail.
Wear that follows how a machine gets used
The texture work became a process of assigning causes to wear. Leading edges receive directional scuffs. Selected seam sections have softly blended abrasion. Engine housings and service areas carry denser mechanical aging. Broad areas of intact paint give those details room to read.
Left and right sides get independent wear placement. Separate masks control paint abrasion, sticker damage, engine grime, and exposed metal, making each layer easy to adjust. Vinyl chips reveal the paint beneath; deeper hull scratches reveal alloy. The recovery drone adds subtle oxidation appropriate to a well-used piece of track equipment.
Base color establishes the paint and markings. Roughness controls the width and softness of reflections, metallic values distinguish exposed alloy, and normal maps give shallow seams, rivets, and fasteners their surface relief. Together, those maps preserve a gentle paint sheen and brighter metallic scratches, with a rougher finish under the hull and around machinery.
Ship texture masters stay at 4K, with runtime texture tiers prepared separately. Lettering uses the appropriate game font where available, including the XL/2097 font for the drone. Logos and cutouts receive their own deliberate tracing and spacing checks.
Giving the smaller models the same attention
Weapons use a compact geometry budget, with detail concentrated where it changes the outline or material response. The accepted missile has 352 triangles, the rocket 294, and the mine 48. XL supplies their shape and colors; Pulse provides a secondary reference for mechanical detailing.
The missile, rocket, and mine in Blender review renders. Paint, exposed metal, and local wear provide detail within small meshes.
Animated PNG from the native model harness, reviewing the mine in motion.
The recovery drone brings more surfaces into play: worn grey panels, rivets, continuous hazard stripes, a centered rear warning label, and modeled front and rear lamps. Its accepted mesh has 638 triangles. Clearer glass response and striped lamp surfaces give the lights depth, while the housing carries the age and use expected of trackside equipment.
Recovery drone details: hazard striping, mechanical panels, lamp geometry, and the rear warning text.
The drone’s rear lights in the native harness. This animated PNG preserves the reviewed lamp sequence.
The starting-light assembly follows the same approach at 308 triangles. Edge wear and grime give the frame an older industrial finish, and recessed glass sections carry a fine line pattern. The harness can show the sequence directly, making the relationship between glass, light, and housing easy to review.
The starting lights moving through their sequence in the native model harness.
Track cameras round out the collection with yellow-and-black stripes, worn grey panels, and clear recessed optics. Their flared lens surrounds and stronger inner bevels give the front a precise mechanical shape. The final seating pass brings the lenses into contact with their recesses. Gameplay validation then checks the replacement across all six XL tracks that contain these cameras, preserving the source placement and animation.
The completed camera’s optics, stripe alignment, and worn top and rear panels.
Reviewing movement in the engine
NullG’s model viewers and MCP inspection harnesses turn the exported assets into repeatable review subjects. Camera presets, material views, and controlled poses make it possible to compare the same component under the same conditions. Steering and individual airbrake inputs exercise the ship parts, with close-up views around hinges and pockets to check clearance.
The harness also checks exhaust plumes and trails against the model’s attachment locations. Those details matter together: the engine opening, the plume origin, and a moving control surface all need to occupy the right space.
Fresh native harness captures of all five ships with visible engine flares and exhaust trails. Straight exhaust histories are on the left; curved histories with steering and left-airbrake poses are on the right.
Animated effects add another useful test. The shield review places swirling plasma around Feisar, showing its scale, transparency, motion, and relationship to the ship in one view. The Blender-authored envelope and the runtime shader each have a clear role in the finished effect.
Animated PNG from the shield context review: flowing blue plasma around Feisar, with the ship visible through the effect.
From model review to the starting grid
The final pass brings the assets into menus and races. The NullG architecture overview explains the engine systems that support the rendering and simulation behind those scenes. Bright track sections, tunnels, and shadows provide different conditions for checking paint sheen, exposed metal, glass, and texture relief. Scale and attachment checks connect the authored model to the existing racing behavior.
All five modern ships in the current pre-game presentation, freshly captured with the production menu lighting.
Feisar in bright, enclosed, and shadowed track conditions during gameplay validation.
The result is a coherent set of reference-derived WipEout XL recreations with editable Blender sources, compact runtime exports, and a documented review trail. Each ship retains its team identity, and the smaller objects carry the same care through to the track. The process now has a shared vocabulary—window margins, seated parts, readable vinyl, asymmetric contact wear, and repeatable poses—that makes the next modeling conversation much more precise.
Explore the NullG project homepage for the broader engine story, project documentation, and further development updates.