I just began a new project, modeling one of my favourite cars: the 2015 Mazda MX-5, or Miata for you Americans out there ;). I love the design and it will be quite a job to model a detailed interiour which will obviously be required to have renders with the car open.
– That’s the headlights, with the idicator and high beams turned on. It’s not crazily detailed, but it gets the job done nicely I’d say and on the wide renders they look quite decent. You can already see my car paint wich I made myself for this car. I tried to reproduce the metal flakes as realistically as possible. This colour represents the “Soul Red” that is used for most of the Mazda cars.–
This is what the mesh looks like. I modelled a low poly version, applyed the subsurf and then modelled the details, that’s why there are so many poligons.
So what do you think? Any criticism/questions/commentaries? It would be great to hear some feedack.
Hi there,
quick update: I’ve done the doorhandles and those… can you call dem front lips? Also I started the taillights but they are nort really finished so I’ll show them later on. And I did some 17’’ rims (and some tyre dummies that will be replaced). I just made a basic lighting setup for them because on HDRIs they start to firefly a lot. I may switch to studio lighting with my whole car renders too, because they do also start to become noisier and noisier…:eyebrowlift2:
Thanks for the feedback, it’s great to have someone who appreciates the work I spend in this project.
I like it shiny :). I actually have a PBR-node for that reflection layer, but I admit I cheated a little bit with the amount of reflection. I will reduce it a slight bit.
I’ve already shrunken down the size of the flakes, I looked at the paint in real life and those flakes are even tinier than you would think, you wouldn’t really realize them until you get about 30 cm from the surface.
And yeah, with the detail I’m going a bit crazy, but I like giving myself the task to get it as realistic as possible, and it’s grat seeing how much more detailed it gets with every new car model I begin (and mostly never finish, but this time I believe I will keep up the work). Further content coming soon, I’m just struggling a bit with the taillights…
Alright guys, another small update:
I modelled the side mirrors, did some tweaks to the front lights, made the side skirts and did some tires! I think I invested way too much time with these, as nobody really cares, but at least they`re somewhat realistic now. I modelled the sidewall in 3D, then rendered out the Z value and used that as a bump map. Those Bridgestone Potenzas were much harder to do than the Pirelli P Zeros I used in my Huracán. If anyone is up to do them, ask me first, so you would save at least 8 hours of work…
So here the renders, the first one even in 4K and with some compositing:
Still struggling with the taillights, but they begin to take shape. They will hopefully be the next thing I’ll finish… After some breaks for the car.
Hey there,
update! Finally the taillights are finished, and it was a pain, because you just couldn’t see what shape the elements of the lights actually have on ANY of the reference pictures on the internet. The reflections in these areas make it pretty much impossible to see what is what. But I think with what I got I am pretty near to what it should look like. Here they are:
Next I will finish the details on the bodywork and then I’ll start with the interiour. I don’t think I’ll go much more into detail with the wheelarches or the underside of the car, or do you think I should? I just don’t really think it makes up for the work.
looking really good, very clean, and I think you did a good job with the rear lights.
I know what you mean with pain, I am currently modeling an Audi sq5 and started with the rear lights.
I “finished” the headlights, or should I say, I gave up.
But I’ll maybe re-model them this weekend.
Bump worked out much easier for me, so I used that. The resolution is exactly 14,000 x 450 px, the sidewall is layed out instead of rolled up. That makes the texture smaller and tweaking a bit easier at the end, but I do have problems to unwrap it 100% properly. You may see some issues on the sidewall where some parts are more streched out then others. I used the “UV Spheres” addon but that didn’t work out perfectly. That means I’ll eventually have to tweak everything manually, which will take a while with about a hundred verts in the direction of the sidewall.
I’ve got quite a lot to do at the moment, so the Miata has to wait a bit. But eventually I will continue modelling, maybe in a few days there will be an update, with steering wheel and amatures.
today I got the steering wheel and the armatures for you. These parts still need some textures and some modelling too, but you can pretty much already see how they’re turning out:
I planned to go from the inside out, and finally joining the interiour and the bodywork in the door area. But until then there’s still quite a lot of work to do. More renders coming soon.
oh this is just amazing! a really good job!! maybe you would want to improve the car paint, i agree with the idea of making it a little bit less shiny but it’s a matter of taste. speckled car paint is the most difficult thing i came across, especially those paint with bigger white reflecting speckles…practically impossible! anyway, epic modeling!
I must admit I’m pretty happy with what the car paint looks like right now, but I’ll have to finalize it with another background. The problem with the speckles is that on this paint they actually aren’t as big as I made them in first place, instead they are tiny (as I found out by looking at the paint in real live). That’s why I scaled them down a lot, and now it looks like any other car paint with two glossy shaders mixed together. But still, great that you appreciate my work and thanks for the feedback everyone!
I’ve worked a little bit on the interiour again and this is the current state:
As you see, still a lot to do, but it begins to take shape. I’m pretty happy with it.
It might seem as though I am planning to build the car right hand drive, but that’s because of the blueprint I use. At the end I will convert the interiour to left hand drive again, as I’m coming from Germany and this car couldn’t be Japanese, because (for what I know) they don’t sell the G160 engine there. But because these models have the 17’ instead of 16’ wheels and thus look better , I chose to model the car like that.
I don’t mind the paint flecks with the car mid-shot, but it did look a bit splotchy in the very first up-close image??
