'Creating A Pontiac Trans Am' Part 2
'Creating A Pontiac Trans Am' |
by Amirhossein Erfani |
| The method for modeling the rest of the object is the same. Start with a Line, continue your way to Edit Spline, add, move and shape new vertices and segments according to the image and make a spline cage ready for Surface Modifier to serve you with the third dimension. Set the Steps level to zero and convert the mesh to editable poly. Add, move, and shape new vertices and edges in editable poly mode and use NURBS to smooth the mesh. Finding and using a Front View Blueprint or image is very useful to guide us to how much we should move the vertices along the Z Axis. You can add this image later just to fix up the model and make it more accurate. So we have this after a few steps (Fig.05 – 06). |
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Fig.05 |
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Fig.06 |
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Section 2 - Modeling the car : |
In this section we are going to talk about Car Paint Material, lighting, rendering and the Photoshop settings to use to get a good result. These steps lead us to get a good render without using a lot of time. I’m going to use the mental ray engine for the rendering passes, but the method could be used with any other engines too. I’ve chosen mental ray as it is a part of 3ds Max and so we can easily apply ready to use shaders and settings. So, let’s start with the car body material. One of the greatest materials included in mental ray is Car Paint Material, which could be found in the Materials list if you set the rendering engine to mental ray. So press F10 and in the Assign Renderer tab change the Production renderer to mental ray. Open up the material editor and choose an empty slot. Set the material to Car Paint Material. (Mental ray materials are shown with a yellow sphere). There are a few tabs in Car Paint Material. Let’s have a brief review:
We start with setting the Diffuse Coloring for the material. Change the Base Color to our desired one but to get better results let’s use a Falloff map instead of a solid color. Also to make some tiny metallic flakes on the surface, set the flake color to a bright one (better use a Falloff map) and control the weight, size and density with the parameters available. This is how the material should look like so far (Fig.07). |
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Fig.07 |
When applying the Falloff map, change the Falloff type to Fresnel to get better results. Ok now let’s set the reflections for the material. It’s easy; first of all set the Reflection Color. We use a Falloff map for this part again. Remember, the brighter the color, the more reflective a surface we will get. But after setting the color you can change the reflection weight (both on facing and edges) to control how the surface behaves as a reflective object. There’s also a very useful parameter named Glossy Reflections Spread, which I’ll explain a little later, but just for your information this parameter helps us to make a blurry reflection on the surface, with the sample numbers under our control. Another useful tab is the Specular Reflections. Here you can set the specular point’s size, colors and weight. Keep the first color (Specular Color #1) near to your Diffuse Base Color, but to get different results you may also want to set a different color or weight. In Fig.08 you can check out the settings I’ve used for the reflections. |
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Fig.08 Page 2 |
'Creating A Pontiac Trans Am' Part 1
'Creating A Pontiac Trans Am' |
by Amirhossein Erfani |
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Software Used : |
| 3ds Max & Photoshop |
Introduction : |
Hello everyone. In this tutorial I’m going to explain the process of creating a Trans Am. Before I start let me give you a brief review of this tutorial:
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Section 1 - Modeling the car : |
| First of all, let’s talk a little about the blueprint or pattern we are about to use. When it comes to car modeling, some people always recommend using all three or four blueprints of main views. Well, in this case we are modeling a car whose blueprints are difficult to find. So we’re going to try to get the idea from pictures instead of blueprints. I used some images as reference; generally the side view is always needed. You can try to figure out how the model will look in other views according to other images you’re using as references. For my own way of modeling, I use only side images. Now this might seem difficult but when it comes to a model with no blueprints or a concept car with undone sketches it’s great to have the skill to “imagine and design” the missing dimensions. You have only got to set the images in the Max viewport. Just create a plane with the size of your image, and start modeling as described next. The modeling method we’re going to use is a simple and effective one. First focus on the part you want to model, and then start drawing on the side view with a simple Line tool. Fuse the end vertices, and easily try to make a wire patch. Take a look at the image below to get an idea what your spline should look like. Remember to create polygons in edit spline (by polygon I mean an area made with four segments and fused vertices) so that the Surface Modifier can turn the spline polygon into a 3D surface. After creating the wire model apply the Surface modifier to the spline and set the Steps level to 0. Don’t worry about the mesh; it’s not supposed to appear nice and smooth. When everything is okay with your Surface applied mesh, right click on it and choose Convert to Editable Poly. At this point you’re facing edit poly vertices. The key to success is the Cut and also the Quick Slice tool. These tools are active in any sub-object level. Use cuttings to make the model more and more similar to the main one (Fig.01 – 02). |
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Fig.01 |
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Fig.02 |
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There’s something important about using the Cut and Quick Slice tools. Try to keep the mesh clean. What I mean is, don’t use the Cut tool more than it is required. The more a surface is divided into polygons, the sharper result you’ll get after smoothing, which is an advantage if you need some lines to appear sharper. But you are the one who controls this balance, so when you need a Hard Edge or a sharp line on your surface, use the Cut or Slice tools around that edge to make the smoother behave harder on that edge. Take a look at this image and notice the number of edges used to make the model appear non-smooth one around that part (Fig.03). |
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Fig.03 |
Alright, let’s talk about the smoother a little bit. When you’re editing the mesh in Editable Poly mode, there’s a tab named Subdivision Surfac”. Find it and check the Use NURBS option to smooth the model, with level one at least and level three at most. You can uncheck this option to continue editing, but do it every few changes you make to check out how your final result will look. Remember that the NURBS method performs a perfect smoothing on the model, but if you want the surface (especially a car body surface) to look nice, control the edges and polygons with the tools mentioned above. I kept modeling a little more with the same method to get the result seen in Fig.04. |
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Fig.04 |
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'Creating A Perfect Eye with 3DS Max' part 5
'Creating A Perfect Eye with 3DS Max' |
by Korosh Ghanbarzadeh |
In the case of shaders, for the sclera you can simply choose a standard material or SSS if you like. The settings for a standard material can be seen in Fig.21. |
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Fig.21 |
The cornea shader is the most important and there are several shaders we can choose from. But I found that a Raytrace material with the settings shown in Fig.22 worked well enough. |
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Fig.22 |
Apply all the maps and then you can move onto the rendering stage. I’d recommend using a powerful renderer like mental ray, with whatever settings you like. But before rendering, you’ll need to create two or three area lights to mimic light shapes and reflections in the eye. Don’t just use the default lights! Once the lighting is sorted, hit “render” and enjoy the result! My final render can be seen in Fig.23. |
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Thanks for your time and if you have any question, you can contact me: hkm7art@gmail.com |
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