Car paint.

Chiaroscuro

I realise this is primarily a games art development forum, but I am in need of a tutorial that gives some decent results for texturing shiny paint on a high poly car in 3D Max 6. Anyone know where I might find one?

FatAssasin

Here you go. Scroll down a bit to get to the car paint tutorials.

Daniel Buck Tutorials

Josh_Singh

also try 3d-palace. they got some great video tuts.

Scott Ruggels

Found an excellent method for doing it in the Unreal editor.

Scott

flaagan

do tell, scott, as the past four or five models i've put through to ut have been vehicles, so i'd like to get some more input on makin 'em purty

Scott Ruggels

Okay it's about Cube maps, and blended environment Maps. the one Caveat abouut this, is because of the draw order bug in the UT Engine, you cannot use this effect with opacities, otherwise it draws the last faces first.

1.) You will need to create three cube maps. Two are based off the same source art. The third is a collection of gradients. I've made the cube maps in "Terragen" and in the engine itself. Detail of the creation and arrangement of gubemaps can be found here:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/MaterialTutorial#CubeMaps_and_TexEnvMaps.

2.) The first Cube map is the unadulterated view of the environment. Clip to size, and rotate to the proper orientation for it's "number" in the cubic Material Map slots. This cube map should have a "world Orientation"

3.) The Cube map created here should follow the rules but should not be modified by the lighting in the level.

4.) For the next map open photoshop, and pick your car's color. Then as layers, add in the above images from that Cube maps, one at a time, in a separate ""Screen" or "overlay" layer, add 1 cube map image, flatten and save with the same "slot number" as the cube image you have flattened in.

5.) The third set of cube maps are a siple set of gradients. The "ground" should be Black. the horizon should be a gradient from black to white. The height and tightness of the gradient will control the rapidity and wrap of the "falloff" of the finish, so be prepared to play with different gradients to control the falloff of your finish. The cube maps of this should be "Camera Oriented".

6.) THe fisrt CubeMap of the environment and the Third Cube Map are "combined" with a "multiply" and then final effect is applied over an engine shader that is made of the second cube map (and associated masks), as a specularity. So in essence it's nested specularities with nested masks. The editor view of this looks like this.


and the whole material tree looks like this



There is a further technique where the paint texturemap is a a metalflake effect, which has the shine applied over itl where there is no true black in the third Cubvemap, to suplicate the look of BMW'a car paint. Hope this helps.

Scott

Scott Ruggels

Also, if you wanta copy of the material so you can take it apart and play with it yourself, here it is. The sniney Bender skins for Slyrr's Bender Model.

http://www.rdwarf.com/edbado/unreal_folder/BenderShiny.utx

Scott