NFS Undercover – Rose Largo Porsche 997 GT2
Re-creating the iconic Rose Largo Porsche 997 GT2 from Need for Speed: Undercover was a uniquely demanding challenge. Unlike the BMW from Shift or the GT-R from Shift 2, the Undercover Porsche sits in a strange space in the NFS franchise: it exists in the game, yet players never actually get to drive it. Because of that, reference material is extremely limited, highly inconsistent, and often low-resolution. From a 3D artist’s standpoint, this makes the project significantly harder, because every design decision must balance authenticity, logic, and aesthetic clarity.
This specific Porsche model is famous in the NFS community not because it’s widely featured, but because it’s barely featured — glimpsed in cutscenes, shown briefly in promotional art, and rarely captured from full 360-degree angles. Rebuilding it accurately meant stepping into detective mode.
Reference Hunting & Accuracy Challenges
Before any modeling work could start, I had to break down every available visual reference Luke could gather. He provided several shots sourced from the internet — both frontal and rear views — and these became the core foundation of the modeling process. However, even these images contradicted each other in several areas:
- The official cover art shows a slightly different front bumper shape compared to the in-game version.
- Some fan-sourced screenshots featured lighting distortions that changed the perceived width of the kit.
- The body lines in Undercover are exaggerated compared to the real GT2, yet toned down compared to modern widebody expectations.
To overcome this, I built a hybrid reference system: the rear image provided by Luke was treated as the “gold standard,” because it matches exactly how the Porsche appears in-game. The front view named “Rose Largo 911 GT2 Front V3” — also from Luke — became the primary guide for sculpting the nose and frontal width. Combining these two gave me the most accurate and consistent foundation possible.
The ultimate goal was crystal clear: capture the exaggerated presence of the Undercover body kit while preserving Porsche authenticity.
That meant refining proportions carefully, reshaping the fenders multiple times, and exaggerating stance width until the car carried the same aggressive silhouette seen in the Undercover cinematic sequences.
Rebuilding the Rose Largo Silhouette
Once the references were stabilized, the core modeling work began. The 997 GT2 is already a wide and expressive car, but the Undercover version pushes every panel outward. This required:
- Enlarging the rear quarter panels to match the game’s “muscle-loaded” visual language
- Extending the nose with the Undercover-style front fascia
- Deepening the side skirts to align with the exaggerated in-game body lines
- Adjusting the rear bumper depth to create the signature Undercover mass and weight
The biggest artistic challenge? Maintaining believability while honoring the game’s over-the-top proportions.
This line is thin — push too far and it becomes caricatured, hold back too much and you lose the Undercover identity. Finding the perfect point required multiple iterations and a constant back-and-forth between references.
Lighting, Rendering & Presentation
As with the previous thumbnails in this project, Luke needed renders that align with YouTube’s visual flow — clean framing, enough breathing room around the car, and strong directional lighting. To match the style he prefers:
- I rendered both motioned and static versions
- Enabled headlights for stronger presence and visual clarity
- Ensured the scene had enough negative space for safe Photoshop cropping
- Removed noise and shadow artifacts to maintain clarity at thumbnail resolution
YouTube thumbnails amplify every pixel flaw, so the scene lighting and shadow quality needed extra precision. Highlight reflections were tuned to mimic a subtle studio-race-track hybrid look — a visual blend that suits the Undercover aesthetic perfectly.
Final Outcome
This rebuild of the Rose Largo Porsche 997 GT2 is one of the most technically demanding NFS recreations I’ve done, simply because of its rarity and lack of complete visual documentation. But thanks to Luke’s references and clear art direction, it came together beautifully. The car now carries all the weight, width, and cinematic energy of its in-game counterpart — finally visible in full, detailed form.
A truly fun project and a standout piece in the ongoing Need for Speed thumbnail collaboration.