Mechanical

[Eric2575]

This is my first attempt at a car. Had to take a break from modeling my T-Rex.

 

Didn't know where to start, so I started to model the view most people would see if they ever got close to one in real life. It shouldn't be hard to figure out which car this is - I hope

 

And yeah, I know the lighting sucks.

[jamagica]

are you going for a realistic look? If so, the texturing will need some work

 

I also suggest not texturing yet...

 

As for the shape I think it's pretty good...hard to tell, though, because it's really early in its stage

[juha]

high specularity of material would ad to it in this point.

I am getting interest of working with am after working

several years with other software.

[Eric2575]

are you going for a realistic look? If so, the texturing will need some work

 

Yes, I would like to get something close to realistic. I saw a car once that Ives helped with the paint reflectivity, and it looked awesome. Ives, if you read this, your help is always welcome.

 

As far as texturing, are you referring to the rear grille? That's just a quick cookie cut. Other than that, there is no texturing on the model yet.

 

The specularity looked really good when I did a quick render, but it got pretty diffused when I goofed around with multi-pass, buffers and so on. I just wanted to see what some of the different options would do to the scene.

[Kamikaze]

Looks good to me so far, not just encouraging mechanical modeling in AM

 

Michael

[ypoissant]

Ives, if you read this, your help is always welcome.

 

First, and by far the most important aspect to consider, is your car needs something to reflect. With nothing to reflect, you could tweak forever without getting anywhere. Setup a sky hemisphere onto which you will project an environment map and set its ambiance to 100%. Then we can start looking at the other adjustments.

[R Reynolds]

Alternately, I might suggest setting the surface properties to the following:

 

diffuse colour = 128, 128, 128

specular colour = 255, 255, 255

specular size = 60%

specular intensity = 60%

 

and use the changing shape of the specular highlights (which you can view in real time as you move the surface) to find unwanted creases.

[DanCBradbury]

that's a realy good start to your model, but the only 2004 Saleens that has the mesh near the exaust are the racing ones, and right now it looks like the steet model. Are you gunna model all the creases and everything? That would be awesome. Try to steer away from pinched edges though... the curved areas on your model look razor sharp. Hope to see the finished product.

 

It's a nice start to a Saleen.

[Jin-Kazama]

hi eric.........nice start man.....i realy like the modeling itself...better than mine thou

 

i couldn't get close enough to real look for my car, i've tried many methods to have reflection on the car's body...AM doesn't have a render blugin like brazil or V ray, so u have to figure out a solution to get the same result depending on how brazil works...here's my crap

 

[Eric2575]

Ok, finally got the rotoscopes to the point of where I feel I can work with them in AM. Bought a scale model of a Saleen S7, took a ruler and caliper and made some rotoscopes in Photoshop. What a pain!

 

Here is my first piece made with the new roto's.

 

More to follow quickly now.

[Eric2575]

Just to update.

 

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

[teh1ghool]

That's pretty good...I'm gonna have to learn how to model with A:M correctly cause my modelling is crap.

 

Keep up the great work, and I can't wait to see the finished product! As of now i can't make any suggestions.

[Eric2575]

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.

[genius loci]

Alternately, I might suggest setting the surface properties to the following:

 

diffuse colour = 128, 128, 128

specular colour = 255, 255, 255

specular size = 60%

specular intensity = 60%

 

and use the changing shape of the specular highlights (which you can view in real time as you move the surface) to find unwanted creases.

 

Great tip! I'm looking now at the horrors that before where unseen on my model.

[DanCBradbury]

It's strange... I dont think specularity exists in the real world. Isnt it just the reflections of bright objects off reflective objects that makes them look shiny and speculary? I tend to find that having only reflections, and no specular the realest. But, if you're goin on the fly and need quick renders, specularity is the way to go. lol

[Eric2575]

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.

[lazz]

That's lookin pretty good so far! There's a few spots on the hood and the roof of the car though that seem to be needing some smoothing out. But I like what I'm seeing! I look forward to seeing your progress.

[agep]

Yeah! Great progress. Keep it up

[John_TrueBlue]

http://www.smcars.net/

 

found this forum the other day, was looking for blueprints.

 

then i started to get deeper in the forum and man how sweet some of the models these guys are doing.

 

tho this forum is based on other software, havent found any one usin A.M yet, but you cannt help but drool at there master pieces.

 

and as for textures, one had a candy glitter that was like looking at the real thing.

 

so just thought ide drop that site if people are looking for blue prints of cars.

[Eric2575]

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.

[DanCBradbury]

What's up with the hood area? it's all wavy... Crazy. Is it the set you have it it?

[Eric2575]

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.

[gre03]

http://www.smcars.net/

havent found any one usin A.M yet,

 

although i'm not as good as the others, i'm with there forum and use A.M

[Eric2575]

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

[Eric2575]

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.

[Eric2575]

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.

[DanCBradbury]

That is looking fantastic. Now will i be able to drive it when you're done? lol.

 

Hope to see it finished soon.

[Eric2575]

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.

[Dhar]

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.

 

 

Do the Specular Size and Roghness have any value in them?

[agep]

Stian, your McLaren is the inspiration for this attempt. Hope I can come close to the awesome car you created.

I'm very honoured to have been an inspiration Nice smoothness in your latest update, its coming along great. How did you do the air scoop on the side of the car, separate pieces? Would you mind upload an wireframe?

Really looking forward to your next update!

 

Regards

Stian

[Eric2575]

Used Yves skylight (20) for these shots. The white render came out pretty good. The colored render came out like candy and flat. I didn't change any of the settings from the first shot to the second and thought I would get a very nice render, but I'm not very happy with the flat candy color.

 

Is a skylight setup not really the right for photorealistic outside shots, or do I need to change some settings?

 

Btw, the model is still in progress, just some test renders.

 

Uh, sorry, will post a wireframe later today, gotta get to work right now.

[DanCBradbury]

Is a skylight setup not really the right for photorealistic outside shots, or do I need to change some settings?

right now your models are looking awesome, and the renders reflect that. What you have to udnerstand is... that you need something for the car to reflect for it to look shiny. Right now all you have is white everywhere. I suggest using the paint material and environment maps Colin posted, which i used in my retro. Also, if you want very noticalbe spectrality you're gunna have to create a very very bright sun light, and lower the intensities for the sky lights. My retro gave me my renders... and i'm pretty satisfied at how good they came out. If you need any help as to how to apply colins materials just let me know... he realy didnt explain it and it's rather confusing.

 

Here's an old one in red i did when i first got his matterial. (i only rendered it half way... so that's why it looks all pixilated)

[MattWBradbury]

Remember not to use solid colors. Instead of using solid red for the car, try using a Mecbeth color. RGB for Red: R:84, G:7, B:11. Remember to do that for the ground as well. White 9,5 (.05) : 229, 229, 229.

[Eric2575]

The frustrating part is: I am using Colin's paint and reflectivity materials. I did a render in a stock chor without skylight rig and the paint and reflectivity showed up real well. I wanted to use a skylight rig because I saw so many cool renders with them.

 

Dan, do you mean to say that I should put a sun into the chor besides the skylight rig? If so, I'll try that. And yes, please give me any insight into applying Colin's paint. Obviously I'm missing something.

 

Matt, are all of the colors we get in the swatch pallette solid colors? If so, will it not be a solid color if I only change the color value by one?

 

Anyways, gonna do some more test renders with your suggestions. Thanks

[DanCBradbury]

Dan, do you mean to say that I should put a sun into the chor besides the skylight rig?

No, don't change your lighting system you have now, rather lower the sky light object intensity and add a new light object, different from the one you use for the skylight rig, and add it to the choreography with a very high light intensity.

 

And yes, please give me any insight into applying Colin's paint. Obviously I'm missing something.

Ok... here's what ya have to do for this to work properly. In Colin's zip, there are only three files that you need. One is reflection.mat, another is carpaint.mat, and finaly the environment map uffizi.tga. Anything else in that file you can just go ahead and delte. Now, import these materials into your project file and apply both the reflection and carpaint materials to your car paint group. If you want to have chrome or glass groups utalize the environment map material, you are going to have to duplicate the reflective.mat file and rename it to something like... reflectiv(glass).mat, and then update the needed reflectivity values, environment opacity values, etc. If that still isnt working, i'll just send you the needed materials for all the basic groups.

 

Matt, are all of the colors we get in the swatch pallette solid colors?

Yes, pretty much all the colors from the preset swatch list when you go to select a color are pure colors (not sure why he called them solid). Basically, make sure you dont have pure reds, blues, greens, yellow, etc. You should always lower the saturations of colors. Nothing in real life is ever 100% bright or 100% dark, rather they are a shade between (unless of course you are the sun in which case you have colors way above 100% brightness). For my red color i used this RGB setting: 200, 33, 33 but you can use any color settings you want. For the most part i usually go about ±25% desaturation for all my colors. Also, 100% desaturated isnt real either... so when making a shade of grey, i usually bring the saturation up a bit so it has an element of blue, or red, w/e.

[Eric2575]

Wireframe so far

[DanCBradbury]

wow... that's a lot of patches. Are you sure you needed all of those? My retro is only about 3k... which is mostly the the grills fault, but you should realy invest in some anchoring cp's... it realy helps when everything needs to get smooth.

 

Very nice though. You're tires are more detailed than your car. lol

[Eric2575]

When you say anchoring cp's, do you mean hooks?

[DanCBradbury]

oh ya! that's what they were called. lol. sorry about that.

 

yes, your model doesnt look like it's using many... or any of those very wonderful hooks.

[Zaryin]

Wow, your car is realling coming along. It's looking great.

[Eric2575]

This is very tedious work. Tweaking one part of the model affects other parts of the model and round and round we go. Gonna get it perfect, gonna, gonna, gonna!

[Odog2020]

Eric: "Got to get this perfect"...tweek, move, pull, tweek....look...render....tweek..pull......coffee

 

Scotty: "Your giving it all you've got Eric, She can't take much more!!"

 

You are doing great, I guess my impression didn't sound good on paper, it sounded good in my head.

 

Nah really, she is looking hot....

 

Hmmm...I have some training to do to keep up with you

[Eric2575]

Thanks James:

 

A little support goes a long way when your eyes are ready to fall out due to major tweakin

 

Nah, didn't sound bad at all

[DanCBradbury]

That is looking FANATASTIC!!! lol. You realy have this whole modeling thing down. lol. Is that grill that you can see through the weel well modeled? or did you just make it a map?

 

AWESOMEFULNESS!! Keep up the good work. Hope to see it painted one of these days.

[Eric2575]

The grille is a cookie cutter decal test. The weird thing is that in the modeling window it works as a cookie cutter, but when I render in the Chor, it doesn't render as a cookie cut. Strange.

 

I am very happy; what better compliment is there than "AWESOMEFULNESS!!" Thanks Dan.

 

She still has a long way to go, but I am chipping away at her every night.

[Odog2020]

Thanks James:

 

A little support goes a long way when your eyes are ready to fall out due to major tweakin

 

Nah, didn't sound bad at all

 

Yeah, I think since I've been using this forum I have been supporting your models, besides you helped me when I was still a newbie, thou I still am, I have to be supportive.

[Eric2575]

Been laying low on the S7 for a while, but am picking back up. Tires, rim, interior almost done.

[DanCBradbury]

OH MY!! THAT LOOKS AWESOME!! lol. Very very very good work. Still, i think you used way to many cp's to get where you are today. Remeber, "less is more" in animation master.

 

Cant wait to see it all colored and painted.

[Eric2575]

Well, I consider this project my learn-as-I-go and delete-cp's-as-I-go experience. The Saleen is not meant to be animated, so I kinda not too worried about excess cp's. But I do get your point, better to do it right the first time around and carry that to the next project. Funny thing is that it's hard to reduce cp's once the model is as big as it is now. Oh well.

 

Thanks for the compliment

[DanCBradbury]

Still... that's one damn fine lookin' hunk of semi shiny matte white plastic you got there. How many patches do you have in all?

 

i look forward to your updates