Surfacing a car cont`

[LecturerAlan]

FAO ponder it




So here`s this car, still being modelled and preliminary surfacing only. all comments greatly received and excepted, thanks for any time spent in posting a message


Lec-Alan

[ponder_it]

Sorry There Mr.Alan.

I'm over aT my girlfriends tonight. Before I get into any surfacing stuff for ya, I have a few questions. Is the interoir of the car finished? And how will you render the final pic, Radiosity, raytrace, or HDRI? The model looks great by the way. The surfacing really needs help, and so does the lighting.

Another thought is that you may want to think about the tire treads. Iv'e found that it takes less time to model the treads and symbols on the sides. Very taxing on terms of geometly, but better overall results in my opinion, because they are all extruded things.

Now it looks like in the pic that you had radiosity thurned on with at least one bounce. I'm not even sure what the windows are reflecting. The shadows on the ground I don't even understand. It looks like there is a bright hole where your front grille wire mesh should have showed up on the ground.

I know you were doing some trippy lighting for your model, but I'm having a tough time seeing what color the car really is? Try rendering it with white lights. Radiosity is not necessary at this point but let me know if it's your intentions later on, just ray trace for now. Another neat trick at this point is to only have one light as a spectular source for now until we have thigs properly surfaced that will help a bit. And don't make it the overhead area light, which at this point should be white.

Tomorrow I will post some surfacing tips for you. I surfaced an Austin Mini for a buddy last week, i'll use that to show you some new tricks.

Cheerz

Ponder_it

[LecturerAlan]

Thank you very much for your reply ponder it,

Its odd really because I am a trained artist, in a traditional sense, I like surfacing and all of that side of the process, but for some reason I get really bored with waiting for the renders(I don’t rate viper) to update and all that jazz, its not the machine being slow (2x2.2 xeons 1gb pc800 ram) she really flies, its me...I'm just crap at waiting, the thing is I know that I can do it, its just kind of trying to find the zone if you know what I mean, with regards to the modelling. Yes there is still work to do, quite a bit in fact and some adjustments to the existing mesh needed the odd point here and the odd funny poly there. I will be modelling the complete BMW...eventually being a full time lecturer does not give me much time for other things, unfortunately.

I concur with you on the mesh vs. map thing, in a previous life I used to model for a new media company, some TV work and promo dvds that kind of thing so I guess that where the problem lies the td loved to texture and he loved my modelling mainly because I did model thing like badges and the like (I must have made his life really easy), I did loads of modelling and not to much of the other and yes it shows now. Still, with guys like you about I reckon you might just straighten me out.
Like the saying goes, even the moon can be moved if the levers big enough.

Thanks for the time that you have taken in answering my requests and blubbing.

What do you do?

Lec-Alan

[ponder_it]

Let's start with that pesky Window. I think that bugs me the most. For a car window to look right, depending on the angle of the sun, this is how I usually surface it.

First render a pass with viper open. Only raytrace, no radiosity. Then set the viper window to only display the transparency of the window surface. Open the texture pannel of the windows. Add a gradient set to Incidence angle. This is where you need to get fickle with your own model, I'm telling you this based on a Cooper S that I recently surfaced. Anyways. add a key at parameter 0, 25, 90. Pareneter 0=0, parameter 25=50, parameter 90=100. Npw look at the results in the viper window. The reason that I have done this is so that the edges become less transparent to the viewing angle. Now the setting can easly be modified, but it worked well on the mini, you may need a setting of 10 at zero, but that's object specific.

Switch to the reflection setting. Change the display mode to only show reflections. Open the texture editor of reflections and add a gradient with Incidence angle. You need a key at 0, 72, 90. 0=45, 72=10 and 90=10. It's a nice falloff for reflections. Now copy that and past that same gradient in the Spec channel. Except increase the 0 key to equil 90 and the other 2 keys to equil 15 and change their alpha values to 50%. This is so that you get some nice hilights on the window. Now add a second Gradient to the mix of the same Incidence angle and create 3 keys, 0=50, 36=30, 90=25. Now why did I add the second gradient you may ask. Easy controll, it's easier to manupulate it this way. I find that with many keys on a gradient things can get messy, and they have a tendency to frustrate me when I need to tweak them.

Now Change your basic glossy setting to what ever you want your glossy setting to be. 90 was a good number for me.

The next step is the diffuse settings of the window. Set the initial setting to zero on the basic pannel. I do this only because it's a reminder to me that I have done this step and adjusted the diffuse, which wwe are about to do. Copy the two layers of the spec channel and paste them in the diffuse texute. Invert the layers so that they are the opposite of the spec channel.

Turn on raytrace shadows, reflections, and transparecy. See the results. Now these setting will 100% have to be tweaked to your liking, but at least it give you a template to work from. Pick you outcome early though, weather it be radiosity, raytrace, or HDRI.

The next step for me personally, is this gives me a nice base to work with and once the final lighting is banged out then I use G2 to adjust the settings accordingly to everything in the final render.

Let me knoe if you have any problems with the paint. It 100% more complex than this to get it to look right. Now this is also based of the fact that the model is supposed to look like it would at the auto show and not on the street or on the dealer parking lot.

Cheerz

[LecturerAlan]

Just recieved the message, your a diamond

Wave long and prosper
ponder it

Lec-Alan