Hey guys, 1st post, I've been using 3ds max for a few weeks now, working on this model. It is from a tutorial but its deffinately gotten my modeling skills to the point where i can work on new projects more efficiently.
A lot of parts are detached as elements, hence the numerous hard edges
Feel free to critique/ criticize, should have more done by the end of the weekend
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Someone feel free to correct me if this is the wrong approach, thats just how I would handle it.
The closer edges are together the harder the line will appear in your render. Thats why keeping the low poly as low poly as possible means you can achieve an even smoothing across the whole body. In areas where the density of your mesh rockets you get the errors we can see in your renders. Also, adding more edge loops will often create flatspots in reflections because depending if you have used tools such as flow connect, new edge loops wont conform to the surrounding topology.
If i was you i would move as many of the unneccesary edge loops as possible and see how that affects your smoothing.
Good start though Not a bad first model at all.
There is a Bugatti tutorial up at 3dtotal, but you have to buy it:
http://shop.3dtotal.com/product_info.php?cPath=28_60&products_id=263&osCsid=s85n94nc6tu4rog8kl1avac1v3
Looking good so far, especially good for you first model.
I also tried some of the other freeform tools, that push/pull tool seemed pretty handy at first but seemed to easily get out of control
@Frubes - Yeah I only discovered flow connect 3/4 of the way through the model lol, definately more accurate (most of the time) than using regular connect to span larger distances; would be nice if they had one that did the same with vertex to vertex connections though. I discovered the How Do You Model Dem Shapes sticky yesterday, and read through it. Pretty much reiterates what you said about correcting the mesh.
I'll probably just fix the worst problems with the smoothing for now, and I'll focus more on correct topology in my next projects
@ Rhinokey - Toren3d's link is the tutorial im using, but for the price its a pretty good deal, the tut is 110 pages long, and it deffinately doesnt hold your hand every step of the way.
Keep it up!
more ref it should be wetter
http://www.geekologie.com/2009/11/youre_doing_it_wrong_superrich.php
looks pretty sweet manmaybe a bit over shiney
This looks very good for a beginner.
Alloy rims should be a shellac material with glossy reflections on the first layer and a faint chrome layer ontop. Chrome rims should just be a very dark diffuse and a nearly 100% reflect value with no fresnel. It looks like your material is not so bad for a chrome rim but you need to light them better. Try placing a light off at an angle where it will be in the reflection so that the rim will highlighted. Also, if you look at automotive photography in 3/4 views like this the wheels are always turned in a way to show the rim. Turning the wheels also makes the car look more active.
Instead of calling this project done I would post it on cg-cars and get help with your poly flow and then your lighting and rendering. This is so good for a first model but you have the opportunity to learn a lot more from it.
Seems like you have a nice, simple environment/shader for the car's body. I personally usually do it realtime with a cubemap but! I was wondering what you used here. It looks simple and very efficient.
Congrats on a nice piece!
Here's a pic of the render setup, the background is just a plane with a zero specular highlight grey material, the 3 mr. omni lights were used to add some extra highlights to things like the chrome, rims and tires and they dont cast shadows or effect the diffuse (except for the highest one). the two planes up top have a self-illuminating material on them for the long highlights. That skylight wasn't even on in the 2 pics lol i forgot about it, doesnt change the render too much, just makes it a tiny bit brighter.
The only problem I had was that I couldn't seem to get the shadows a lot darker (I didnt tinker around to long though).
I render stuff so rarely, MR always seems like a huge complicated thing to me. Wonder where I could learn the basics quick and dirty!
Thanks for the advice!
http://www.mariomalagrino.com/tutorial0.html
He's all about simplicity which is nice.
His final gather samples are pretty high though, I played around with the render settings just now and got a 2min render that looked negligibly different from the 15min one lol, had some stupid stuff ticked.
Good luck on your next project!
BTW I didnt see your post til today /faceplam... sorry
@Omar: Thanks man glad you like it
Great job!
but i think you should use a skylight in mentalray option. the rendering will be better with a realism touch. (sorry by my english - i'm from el salvador)
here's one of my renderings:
[IMG]file:///C:/Program%20Files/Autodesk/3dsMax8/RenderOutput/bugatti/1.bmp[/IMG]