Eric2575

What the heck? Is that a double spline running down the center of the car??

HiYa Dan: I gotta agree with the rest of the comments here, you did a SUPER job on getting the splines to lay flat!! If my car can be half that smooth, I'll be really happy. Great job. Btw, since a paint job for your car is relatively cheap, try a deep pearlescent purple. I saw an AC Cobra with that pain, and it was awesome. Wait, let me check if I have the pic on file....Yeah, but the pic doesn't due the paint job justice. Oh, yeah, WIREFRAME:-)

The floor is buggin me. Not sure why.

Yup, straight to hell. I was expecting for a burgler to hop over the wall and get sliced in half. What a letdown ps The grass reminds me of Eon Flux

Shouldn't the attack come from his fangs? Have the two arms come down, like he/she has trapped it's prey and then give his head/Fangs a quick arcing forward thrust, like he is biting into his/her/its' victim. Great spider. Since it's a mech, have the spider implant a tiny electronic tracking device or whatever else may come to mind.

Boy, that Coke bottle shure looks good. Too bad you didn't leave any soda for me That's a great tip too. Anything that reduces render time is worth Brownie points. Now the question is: "Got Milk?"

Thanks for the download. Will try it out a little later. Very generous of you to rig the spider for free. You've earned your brownie points

A way out of this thread. If you're a beginning modeler, I should go back into a sandbox and play there. Wow, those are great. Please post some closeup wireframes.

to look for a way out?

Should I be the first one...

Things are moving along better now. Learning a lot as I go through this. Time permitting, this baby will be roadworthy soon. Here is another update Not sure why the windshield has that pitted look. 16x multipass with 8 light skylight rig.

I know it doesn't look like much of an update, but I've been concentrating on smoothing several panels by tweaking cp's. What a pain! Hope you like it.

If you want to make it look semi-realistic, don't have it standing magically upright unless it's leaning against something. The metal clasp needs to have some depth. The tangs on those clasps are usually bend just a little, which would show just a small shadow on the paper behind the tangs. The folder looks new, make the tangs more reflective. The end of the envelope that folds over to close needs to have a semi-glossy strip along it's edge to represent the glue that most people hate to lick Other than that, I think the only way to reinforce realism is to have it lay down on a scale object such as a desk, show the opening and flap at an interesting angle and populate the scene with stuff like paper clips, a pen or pencil, how bout a stamp not yet attached (lying next to it on the desk, and not totally flat either- show some shadow underneath the slightly curled stamp), an old fashioned office table lamp, etc. Oh boy, I've gone off the deep end Even a plain old envelope can be very interesting

Stian: Come on, let's have it...how many years have you really been working as lead modeler for PIXAR? Seriously, to a few people this is second nature, and you were born with it. My praise to you: WOW!

To anyone who has ever modeled a smooth car in AM, my hat's off to you. This is slow going for me, but I guess everyone has their particular learning curve. I'm roughing out the shape without worrying too much about the smoothness of the mess right now. Here is what I've got so far. It's taking me a long time to get this far, but I think it will look pretty good once I'm done with it.

I actually ended up redoing the hood a couple of times because I wanted the air intake to be integrated and as perfect as I could do it. Here is the result. The lighting is bad as usual, I tried to use a skylight setup without knowing what I was doing and barely got this shot. The first shot was way too bright, so I set the light's intensity down to 15%. Moving the skylight rig further away dimmed the shot too quickly, but alas lighting is not my concern at this time. The reflections you see in the hood are just that, reflections from a bitmap, not uneven spots in the hood. Still gotta work on reflections and lighting, but not until after I've got the car together. Just found another hitch last night, the rotoscopes are off in the side view. The rear wheelwell is about 5 inches higher than it should be. Gotta tweak the roto in Photoshop and redo the rear end of the body. I think I could have taken a hammer and a chunk of aluminum and created a car body quicker this way

Dan, I played around with Colin Freeman's paint and reflectivity materials (http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12316&hl=colin++paint) and may have messed up the settings when I used my own environment map. The hood is actually very straight. Will post another update shortly with a better looking render.

Thanks for the replies and encouragement. Stian, your McLaren is the inspiration for this attempt. Hope I can come close to the awesome car you created. I seem to recall that you modeled the McLaren in one piece and then cut it up. After trying to model the car in pieces, I totally concur with your methodology. Modeling the car in one piece with seams in the appropriate places for doors, hood, and trunk is the way to go. Separating them is a snap and the panels line up perfectly. Here is another update. p.s. Got a little too much reflectivity on this one, but the shape is getting there.

Here is the work in progress. My first inorganic model was the submarine Nautilus (Disney's) and that was pretty difficult for me, but this takes the cake. What a pain trying to get everything in the right place and smooth. Anyways, wanted you to see how bad it looks before I get to some serious tweaking.

Thanks for the encouragement, teh1ghool. I've decided to give you guys just bits at a time until I have enough to put it all together. Unlike other artist, I am modeling all the pieces separately in my spare time. Here is the trunk lid with beveled edges.

Just to update. Btw. This is just a quickie of the door. The finished product will have the panel nice and smooth.

My first impression of your second file is that the actual fire is just out of sight, below the bottom of the frame.

That's really cool. The smoke trail is as good as it gets. The actual fire is something that can be used from a distance since it lacks definition. Looks like a fire in the distance at night. Thanks for sharing the prj file. Will download and check it out. The fire thread is a great idea. Many users coming together to come up with unique solutions.

Agep: My respect for your work grows more and more every time you post. Just looking at the wireframes makes me want to sit down and start a new project. Really nice work as usual. Eric

I'm sure you've applied some changes, could we see another post?