I saw the tutorial on blender3d.org and thought i might try it out. It was a great tutorial but I didn’t fell like reading through the whole thing so i just looked at all the pictures. Here’s what I have so far http://gallery.mudpuddle.co.nz/hoagies/toyota_celica
Looks realy good, but the low polycont ( if its true ) is the main problem for my pov. need some more details ( like I could do it but that just me again
Another update 8)
I’ve started messing around with reflections to give it a nice smooth look. Does anyone know how to make the backround image disapear but still make reflections? Still havn’t started on the interiror
See my ‘3rd gen RX-7’ post in ‘Finished Work’ - even though its supposed to be here in WIP - for an example of one of Madcow’s angmaps applied as a spherically wrapped image texture. (search elysiun forums for ‘angmap’ and you should find them)
I used object mapping with a null object so i could rotate the texture around the z axis to get the ‘interesting’ parts of the environment ‘reflecting’ in my panels.
If you just set the texture to a very low ‘Mix’ value e.g. 0.1 - you’ll get some pretty nice ‘faked’ environment reflections.
This is also combined in my renders with a ‘flat white environment/mid-grey floor’ to get the raytraced highlights. Also, i use very, very little specularity, and a fresnel shader on the car body.
Lighting is about 5 point lights scattered around the car, 2 higher-intensity and placed above the car as main illumination, and 3 lower intensity and placed quite close to the ground-plane around the car to avoid areas of hard shadow on the car itself and to add backlight.
Looking at your model I dont think you’ll be able to pull of convincing reflections right now, as in order to make them look ‘right’ your mesh must be really, really smooth - also, you must maintain panel curvature between panels as perfectly as possible or you get a ‘stairstep’ reflection band between panels which distracts the eye and makes a car look very rough - get that perfect straight reflection band and you can get away with a lot of other stuff though
You can also use a “spherical” image for the world texture, mapped with angmap and turn on raytrace reflections on the paint and glass textures.
Some ID programs use the OpenGL display to apply a “zebra stripe” pattern to the surface of objects to allow the artst to preview the curvature of his creation. This would be a great feature request for Blender. Would really save a lot of time.
For Hoagies, I would recommend creating the whole car’s body out of a single mesh, then cutting (or separating) the panels into it afterwards. This helps get them looking smooth.
Thanks for all your comments guys. ikukrull i looked at you car and i was wondering how you got the space around your door panels so sharp
mzungu I did model the whole car and sperate all the pieces :-? but subsurf is only on level 2 or 3 so that might have to do with the jagedness? I’ll try that ang map thanks everyone I’ll update it soon
Could someone give a brief description on null object or lead somewhere? I tried a google search but didn’t find anything of use. Also I ste the mix value low but it also got rid of some of the reflections. How can you have full reflectios without having the backround show
going to start on the interior next weekend
I should have said ‘Empty’ - ‘Null object’ is not the blender interface term for it.
Add an empty by: SPACE-> Add -> Empty
Scale this empty object up to something that’ is a good deal larger than your object, and center it roughly in the middle of the object you will be mapping,
Name the Empty something you can remember - or note it’s existing name
Now, assign your angmap to an image texture. and .under ‘Map Input’, set the mapping type to spherical, and under mapping mode set to ‘Object’ and type the name of your empty in the box.
Dial in the ‘Mix’ value to the appropriate amount, and render with your normal environment.
Rotate the empty around it’s Z-axis to hide any ‘seams’ or to find a good looking reflection.
This might not be all that physically correct or a good general solution but it seems to give believable results for my renders…
The panel seams look that way simply because the car body is pretty smooth and the edges of each panel are very close together - theres no secret technique, just be accurate with your modelling.
I should fold the edges in but i’m not unhappy with how they look now.
) is the main problem for my pov. need some more details ( like I could do it 
