Some artwork (3d car: Pagani Zonda)

[stevek]

Yeah, you want to reduce the specularity. If you make the windows clear it will force you to work on some of the interior, but it will blend in a bit more. Try to use the elements of the phot in you revlection maps. If you can add shadows and reflections from things like a tree that may be unseen in the foreground. These things will add more reality. Look at the cars in the background for clues to that to do.

[djcapelis]

A strong tinting on the windows would allow you to get rid of the glare while only having a few primitives inside to give the interior a general shape.

[Ashley Weed]

Sorry to throw this a bit off topic.... however, I was just curious as to where this car originates... and what comes under the hood?



... otherwise, amazing drawing!

[KenWittlief]

if you want to make people think its real, save it as a low res jpeg file, and see if that smooths out the imperfections enough to make it match the background.

It looks like the background you used for the reflections is createing a rippled effect in the surface of the car.

[Gadget470]

Originally posted by Ashley Weed
I was just curious as to where this car originates...

http://www.paganiautomobili.it/
*.it is Italy

and what comes under the hood?

[Tyler Olds]

Hey man nice job,

What programs and plug-ins did you all use for this??

Once again nice job, I'll look forward to seeing your animation this upcoming year, especially if it is of that caliber.

- The person who has not been respondign to posts for a while (sorry).
- Tyler

[Salik Syed]

no plugins .
only hdri importer.... from Splutterfish.. it doesn't make a difference tho because i do not use it for global illumination only as a bright reflective map..

I just liked the HDRI files i found... tho u could convert to tif etc.. and do the same.

softwares: 3dsmax 3.1 thats it.... the background everything it's all procedural

although i did use paint shop pro to make Pagani Logo bump maps but that barely counts u can't even see the logo (ithink)

[Salik Syed]

ALSO I AM SORRY BUT MY WEBSITE IS DOWN! Im looking for a new host w/o all the tripod started giving... i really hate tripod... maybe some one can host it 4me ? thanx!

[Matt Hallock]

Originally posted by ...............
why is it poly?
it should be nurbs (more efficient for this type of modelling)
nice model btw - it would be nice to see an interior though.

NURBS is not an effective tool in modelling automobiles. It can be used but it's an inferior method, using splines and adding mesh to them is probably the best way. The quickest way is box modelling with booleans and cuts.

The car looks good, try and HDRi render or set up a new scene. If you'd like a good material for your car here is one if you're in 3DSMAX.

Open the material editor
Change from STANDARD to RAYTRACE
Change the IOR (Index of Refraction) to 2.5
In the reflective map box, add a falloff map
In the falloff map, change it from perpendicular to fresnel
Uncheck override material IOR
Uncheck the two boxes by the maps at the top (On the right)
Change the diffuse to the color you want for your car


This material completely depends on what is in your scene. The reflective material is only half the magic. You have to have something to reflect to actually have your car reflect. I'd recommend you change the enviroment to white, add a floor, and then a C-Box. Put the car in the C-Box and render.

[Lev]

why is it poly?
it should be nurbs (more efficient for this type of modelling)

In theory - yes, NURBS are almost ideal for car modeling with organic shapes, but in practice - 3ds max's implementation of NURBS is really limited, so poly-modeling is probably the best choice. (I.e - try stitching together two NURBS surfaces in max - the chances that you will get what you expected vary from 5% to none. And im not talking about complex cases - two surfaces that are almost perfectly aligned. Tweaking the Join parameters,and rebuilding the curves only makes it worse.)

This is not to say that Poly modeling is perfect either - idea of creating extra geometry just to adjust the curvature of the surface is repulsive to me.

[Matt Hallock]

Originally posted by Lev
In theory - yes, NURBS are almost ideal for car modeling with organic shapes, but in practice - 3ds max's implementation of NURBS is really limited, so poly-modeling is probably the best choice. (I.e - try stitching together two NURBS surfaces in max - the chances that you will get what you expected vary from 5% to none. And im not talking about complex cases - two surfaces that are almost perfectly aligned. Tweaking the Join parameters,and rebuilding the curves only makes it worse.)

This is not to say that Poly modeling is perfect either - idea of creating extra geometry just to adjust the curvature of the surface is repulsive to me.

A Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline is still geometry, it's the mathmatical equation for curvature but is represented by a solid, which is still geometry. It's just calculated differently. If you know how to control meshsmooth, then you'll get the same outcome.

[Salik Syed]

I don't use nurbs cuz it sux in 3dsmax 3 it even sux all the way up to 5... at least compared 2 what i've heard about rhino and others... spline modelling is easy... you don't have to create extra geometry to tweak and stuffs... and althogh box modelling w/ booleans works it kind of sux for higher detail models because it screws ur geometry up and when you mesh smooth it is very twisted..!

oh yeah thanx for the suggestion on the materials...i've already tried the basic raytrace w/ fresnel reflection... didn't really tweak the IOR so i think i'll seee what that results in. as for nothing 2 reflect: I have a spherically unwrapped environment map so it is kind of like a sphere around the car..

one more thing i am unsure what u mean by C-Box can u clarify?


oh btw... i am still working on animations skills i am not so good at it i want to know how to really get it done EFFICIENTLY not my kinda half baked ways of doing it

[Matt Hallock]

It's actually called a C-Extrusion

Create - Geometry - Extended Primatives - C-Ext

You can find it there.

[JamesWu]

Why does the windshield look so wierd. other than that the only bad thing is the shaders. they don't look realistic

[Lev]

A Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline is still geometry, it's the mathmatical equation for curvature but is represented by a solid, which is still geometry. It's just calculated differently. If you know how to control meshsmooth, then you'll get the same outcome.

Well - the beautiful part of NURBS is that the actual hull is hidden from the user most of the time - you can just work with the curves, and can build a whole detailed surface without even touching the actual surface CVs.

What i meant by creating extra geometry just to define curvature is following:

Suppose you want to create a fillet along an edge in your surface. In Polys, you would have to chamfer it, and then tweak the chamfer amount ,and maybe even the generated verticies to adjust the curvature of the fillet. In NURBS (in theory - it almost never works the way its supposed to in max) you'd just create a fillet surface with a specified radius - and wont have to worry about tweaking the CVs, because the software would do it for you and hide the CVs themselves

And about controlling the meshsmooth - if you are referring to adjusting the edge/vertex weights for NURMS, it is the most awkward way of controlling curvature of your model, because the weights are affecting the whole surface, and all of your model will get distorted by setting weight value too high (for example, if you'd like to make a sharp edge) The results from chamfering the edge are much more predictable.