Material help

[White_Orpheus]

Well, that 350Z got ruined far beyond repair when i started putting in doors, so I'm working on an A3 right now. I'm trying to get a color like This , but i'm having a really hard time. Any suggestions on a material for the paint coat?

Additionally, I have no idea how to get a reflective material like that grille outline. Every time i get a silver reflective material, it just reflects the render background like crazy and ends up looking like nothing. Any help would be appreciated!

[Baden3DMAX13]

Ok, first off, shame on you for not saving multiple copies of your 350z before continuing on hard stuff like doors, windows, grills, ect. That was coming along nicely(another helpful trick that you can do in the future to prevent you alot of heartache is to use the new Edit Poly Modifier in 3d studio to give you some flexability. The reason for this is, the new modifier lets you stack them and make changes on each one, if you go back down the list to the previous edit poly you were working on, it will show you the changes that you made on that edit poly and the ones before it. That's just incase you didn't know that helpful trick.) Ok, anyway, to the material, first off go here and follow this tutorial exactly. It will give you an amazing base material. After you're done with this, you can edit it to your own wants/needs. You can change the color/what not. Also, you can change the specular from none to noise or cellular(when you do this change the size value from 25 or whatever the default is, to something small, like .25, this will give you the illusion of flakes in the paint.) Anyway, from there, you just go on and do what you want to do with it, if you want to see what it looks like, check out my Fiat 500. Ok, and now for the grill material. The grill material I'll have to get back to you on that one, I know that the metal material on my bumper and rims looks pretty sweet, but I don't have it in front of me to tell you how I did it, I know that I used HDR in it's creation. But for now, that's what I've got for you. I hope that this all helped at least a little.

[White_Orpheus]

I was thinking about the Z, spent a couple hours, and managed to remove all the damage i did to it. I started putting in doors and windows, but something looks a little weird with the windshield. Nothing some tweaking won't fix though. Anyway, thanks a lot for the material help.

[Baden3DMAX13]

Hey man, anytime you need help, just ask. I'm more than happy to help out a fellow 3d artist. Btw, what did you think of the Fiat??? I haven't really got any crits on it.

[Baden3DMAX13]

Oh, hey, I just remembered about the metal grill thingy... ok, I used a shellac material with a color mix of 23. The base material is an architectural material, here's a pic~> Architectural. The HDR file that I used was a custom HDR that I made, you can substitute any HDR that looks good in it, and mess with the light/dark areas on it, next the shellac material. I used another shellac for it with a color mix of 12, and it get complex from here.... here's the setup for the base of the next shellac material ~> base2. The material map that I used for the reflect was just the HDR. Now for the final shellac.. here's the setup ~> last but not least. And there you have it... It may take some doing to make (not really, there are harder) but in the end, the product looks pretty cool. Anyways, I hope that this helps you, if you have any questions, just ask.

[White_Orpheus]

I think increasing the final gather count might fix up some of those oddities on your Fiat render. Also, it looks like you have a little dimple in the roof of the car on the last render. I'm not sure if that's just how the car is, or if it's an error. My final nitpick is that older tires like the ones on the fiat should have white sidewalls. Other than that, it's looking great!

[Capt.ArD]

For the car paint, that tut is pretty good, but I had an idea for you.

When you make the paint, make it have a falloff map as the initial diffuse, then your bluish color and a slightly lighter color ( in this case, a little lighter blue with a VERY small amount of green) as the two sub-colors. This gives the paint a sort of highlight. The light part shows up on the edges, and shifts with the light. It really brings out the detail and adds more dynamicy to the animated model.

I'm sure you already knew about falloff, but i wanted to reccommend it. I always use it for the shinies and the pretties in my models.

[Baden3DMAX13]

Hey man, thanx for the input, I'll do the whole white tire thing, and I'll try bumping up the final gather amount. Hopefully that fixes some of my problems. Thanx.
Another thing, the falloff that he's talking about does give it a pretty cool look. You can even use that to do kind of a pearlescent paint job.

[Baden3DMAX13]

Hey! Here's those tires you wanted also, I bumped up the samples on the Final Gather, but still got some spots, i went from 1000-7500. I didn't just jump, I tried other stuff out, but I still have no idea why it keeps on doing that... weird... Oh well, here's the tires

[White_Orpheus]

What material are you using for the headlight lenses? Maybe something weird is happening with refraction or something like that. I would try rendering it with the lenses hidden and then seeing if it cleans up.

[Baden3DMAX13]

It's just a raytrace material, I'll try that.. I've messed with it alot, and I'm just baffled. But hey.. whatever. Thanx for the input.