My first car wheel (tire&rim) attempt. Using Blender + Vray(exporter vb30).
Are the details modeled in or bump mapped? I can’t quite tell from the images. Either way, great start!
first, i am sorry for late response, busy at work and with personal life too. i also changed render engine, Corona instead of V-ray and i needed some time to learned it. I tried Luxrender too and the result you can see bellow in next thread.
But back to your question, yes the sidewall of the tire is bump mapped, i tried displacement but it didn’t look good to me and since i try to model the wheel in real size(66cm for tire and 55cm for rim and 8cm for the “BMW” logo in the middle) and because it is not close up shot the bump mapped is enough i think.
here are the results so far:
Luxrender - render time over 2H, no post-production neither in Luxrender nor 2D application, for bmw logo i used the microdisplacement feature of Luxrender
Vray - render time 20mins, no post-production, bmw logo is image mapped only
Corona - render time 32mins, i changed few things inside Corona VirtualFramebuffer, bmw logo is polygon model, corona standalone doesn’t have better bump/displacement feature yet(i am not sure if it’s corona standalone or exporter feature)
note - i used IBL only, different image in each engine but since it is about modeling not comparing the render engines i didn’t try to render it with the same image for all render engines.
what i think i need to do yet:
- since Corona has only normalmap as bump i don’t know how to get better bump for the sidewall of tire(i don’t want to use Blender displacement method)
- rim - still to add some geometry to get better mesh flow
- bmw logo - better letter inset into the polygon mesh
Anyway i am glad for any response/suggestion 
It looks like the attachments are broken.
My fault, i used “quick replay” what leads to “broken attachments”. It should be ok now. my apology 
I think the corona render has the most “style”.