Shelby Cobra
 

My first real car model. Ive made a few other vehicles but this is the first actual car. I understand it is not perfect but Ive learned a lot doing it. Either way... comments and crits are more than welcome. Im hesitant to show any wip renders because I really dont seem to have a grasp on how to make car paint look realistic... any help in that department would be awesome. Thanks all...

another view

wire

this is a render I did a little earlier in the modeling before I refined the hood and added some of the details. The paint looks pretty cool but doesnt look at all photorealistic. This is as close as I could seem to get using the settings in surface editor. not sure what Im doing wrong. I do like the headlights though. They have spec and bump maps on the glass that refract the reflections on the shiny surface inside the light. Also... the chrome isnt doing it for me either. What do you guys think... thanks for any responses good or bad. later.

a little better for the paint... still need help

same scene rendered with correct environment reflections this time... Above render everything was reflecting the headlight glass specular map. Oops. :D I guess I need to figure out how to get my hands on an hdr image for reflecting... I dont know how to get one or make one. Any tips so far are welcome. Thanks

Look in your Lightwave 'images' folder. There should be four HDR images supplied in there.

You can also take a look at Paul Debevec's site. There's a whole bunch of HDR stuff buried in there:
http://www.debevec.org/

thanks... any ideas on how to use the hdr images to make a more realistic rendering?? Im foggy on this idea... I am going to try to find a tut... any tips would be useful. Thanks. Merry Christmas everyone.

Nice work
 

Thats a nice piece of work , how did you find modeling those curves on the body and do you have a reference model or just
images.

Cheers Alan.

Thanks Ribbons... I chose this car not only because its badass but because I knew that it would be a challenge. All I could find for reference was a few garbage blueprints on the internet that had words all over them and they were extremely low rez. They served only to give me the basic size and location of the components. Most of the modeling was done by looking at reference pictures I got on the internet. Im still working on it a little at a time when I have a chance... been busy during Christmas. Heres a wheel Im working on now.

Sidewinders
 

jstarr976,
Are those the original pipes that the cobra had or it could be
I,m confusing them with the english AC model. Could be I,m
seeing car parts flash before my eyes to much modeling.
Are you going for a plain still shot of the car or a composite .

Cheers Alan.

Not sure about the pipes... Im just doing this from a few photos I saw on the internet... I liked those pipes so I thought Id make them. They make it look tough. No real plans for the car, just doing it to play around and keep in practice. This is the 1st real car model Ive ever done, so Im just trying to get better. Heres a few clay renders. Let me know what you think. Still got a way to go on the modeling. Thanks.

another...

uugh... here it is

Whats the deal..?? I used a hdr image and wrapped it around a dome and turned up the luminosity to 100 %. used radiosity at 8x16. Everything is set up according to a tut I found and it doesnt look good at all... This is the third time Ive tried to render using hdr images for lighting... nothing seems to work. I dont have ray trace reflections on however... is it nessesary? Please PLEASE help me. I want this to work so bad. Thanks.

Well, you'll still need your raytrace reflections on I suspect, but the scene looks about correct. You'll notice that most of the backdrop image you're using is a sky blue colour (at least as much of it as I can see is), so this is what the overall ambient colour of the dome is going to come out at. I'd be tempted to overcrank the luminosity on the skydome image to (say) 300-400% - I often find it helps with HDRI -- try thinking of brightness as a relative term - if a 100 Watt bulb is 100% bright, then the car headlights will want to be around 150%-200% bright for a good set of Xenons, and the sun, well that's aiming for a good 10,000% brighter than that...

Image
 

starr976,
That looks sweet, real sweet. Could you post the settings for
that diffuse render please jstarr976 would appreciate that.

Great work Alan.

Im going to try that scene again with luminosity boosted up and also reflections on... aargh, going to take a loong time. I tried to render with reflects on and it was going so incredibly slow. Im going to let it render while Im at work and sleeping if nessesary. Thanks guys.

Settings for the diffuse render are simple. I used a skydome and made it 100& luminous, all polys facing inward. Make any scene lights not affect specular or diffuse, so theyre only visible in OpenGL. Also turn ambient intensity to 0%. The surfaces of the car and ground are the same. Its just the default surface that lw assigns but I turned on smoothing. For what I wanted this works fine. Turn on Radiosity/ monte carlo at 6x18. thats it. very easy.
Post a render if this works for you. Bye.

Cheers
 

Thanks jstarr976,
It seems to be an easy way to show of your work no surface.

Thanks Alan.

Workflow
 

Hi jstarr976,
How's the work going on the car, hope you got your scene sorted OK.
I,m toying with an oldie car myself either a Marcos or a
Magnette K3 1933, so looks like you may have started a trend.
For anyone who reads this happy new year spare a thought
for people less fortunate than yourself.

Cheers Alan