Civic Type R

[jester76]

yeah i know...another f...'n car

any advice on surface settings etc..are very welcome, also volumetric lighting for the headlights, riging the front wheels so that they turn together, lighting setups etc...anything.. I'm fairly new Lightwave all together...

[jester76]

here's a shot of the rear..yeah still have to work out the interior and a few other details but it's getting there...

[astro-sanchez]

very nice model and renders
making me want to start a car model

[Lewis]

Hi Jester !

Car looks great and very well modeled no problems there. But materials do ned soem work. I don't like rims color ? Maybe they really make them in green but they look too dull or so ?. Also scene setup is such that i can't determine is car black or green or it's just light in scene green ?. Can you show us biger renders :) ?

For rotating car wheels just be sure to center pivot of wheels (put them in new layers) and you can do it manualy or trought expressions or any other way if they are properly rigged :).

[jester76]

Lewis...ok just the guy I wanted to cut in....

I want to know or rather politely ask how you get those fantastic reflections, I've been playing with incidence andles and layer and I find that the rersults makes the car reflections rubbery looking the farther they angle away from the camera..

the rims are Spoon Sports Sw388's which are a very flat black, and although they seem somewhat lacking they are pretty close to the real deal..the green colour is from the light source, which although it looks unnatural is sort of the mood I had in mind for these tests.

I'm pretty new at all of this still so any input is appreciated...

also is there a way to rig the front wheels so that they steer together, maybe use a null or something? I have a null for each object group (rim/tire+disk+caliper) and have the null parented to the car? I think this is logical...however getting them to steer together is another dilema...

any advice on stage setup and lighting would be greatly appreciated also

attached is a pic of a similar car (not the one I used for reference) it has the flat black rims (in a smaller size) but you get the idea....

[Lewis]

Steering front wheels can be made on few ways. Best one is expresions but i can't help you there 'coz i myself don't understand them so well to produce soemthing useful :(. Other way is manualy sterring wheel by wheel in graph editor or spreadsheet so it will be easyer than normal keyframing but still pain in the *****. Next way is by nulls and you can add null for each wheel and then parent wheels to their nulls and add another null in wich one you parent previous two so you can rotate that one for steering other twos in same time. Next way what i read somewhere and i can't remember all detials but i think is in LW Applied book is to use Lws integrated plugin for calculating automatic rotation but i can't remember it's name (i'am not home now).

OR you can go to flay and search for rotate plugins and if i remember good there is several plugins which will help you with wheels rotation and automatic sticking to floor/geometry and allthat stuff.

For reflectiosn you need environment to get insidence angle work properly. You can't get anything what will look like your resourc eimage with your current setup 'coz you onely use BLACK environment and one white luminous panel. And car realy reflect that what you gave him :).

[jester76]

thanks to your mustang tutorial...this is only the second car I've modeled so I think I'm getting the hang of it...any suggestions for a good studio shot? where to place lights, camera setup, luminous panels etc?

[cholo]

What I usually do is parent the whole car to a null using the rear axle as the rotation axis. Then align the null to the path looking ahead a few frames and use the same rotation to drive the steering wheel allowing also for a few frames ahead to make it look like the car is responding to the steering input. The problem is when you drive the car on uneven surfaces... you have to manually keyframe the tires to remain on the ground. Also an effector can be used to make the tires bulge where they touch the ground. Last but not least, remember to leave the chassis independent to keyframe so that you can add body roll in curves as well as bounce to irregularities on the pavement and similar responses to braking and acceleration. It's not easy to animate cars and have it look real, but it's fun! :) It's also worth noting you don't need such a high res version of the car when it is in motion because you never really get such a good look at it.

[jester76]

thanks alot...do you have any references or examples that I could look at?

[Igu4n4]

would you mind posting a shot of your lighting rig setup, or an explaination.. interested to see it. There are so many conversations/threads on vehicles, and mechanical objects, and construction, but little on the lighting setups. We all strive for that "photography studio" look, but we never seem to talk about it much.

I think we need to! I'd love to see yours.

Steve.

[jester76]

hello!

great books to pick up on lighting,

Lightwave 3D 7.5 Lighting and a generic one called 3Dlighting, can be picked up pretty cheap on most online book stores and pretty much pay for themselves within the first chapter or so.

for this model it's just a white key light to the Left front (Area Light or spot) at about 80-100% and a fill light to the right rear (another area Light or spot) @ about 40-60%...maybe a little backlighting but not much, and a luminous panel stretched over the top of the car that gives those cool white studio reflections... I like playing around with just the luminous panels first to get them the way i want and then build up the rest of the light as I see fit...believe me I have sooooo much to learn about this stuff but I fell like I acheived with the above shots what I wanted to, as they were just test for an animation that I'm kinda in the middle of...more like a learning experience...oh and how caould I forget dan Ablan's Inside Lightwave 6 and 7 they are kinda required reading I think...

just have fun with it