'57 Chevy -- Comments/Suggestions

[xhurleyx]

First off, I didnt make this model. I got it from a friend of mine. I used it to see what i could do with the rendering capabilities of Rinoceros using Flamingo raytrace. Purely experimental. I used a lot of chrome mapping, car paint, tile, and stone on the walls.
I would love to hear any comments/suggestions/criticizm. Its what i need so i can get better at this. Thanks. (i hope the image loads)

[xhurleyx]

There is no headlight maps, i couldnt find any. If anyone could point me to where to find some, that would be great.

[Marduk]

Well, when rendering with flamingo, it is better to keep refections fairly simple, and smooth. To keep reflections smooth make sure you have contrast between materials. Make sure material you use for car body has a clearcoat over it, that helps keep reflections sharp and smooth. If you are using many light in the scene make sure your material hight is turned down, so the highlight is small and focused, that will prevent nasty dull highlight spots. http://www.3dm-mc.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=2916
This is a thread I started to get some help rendering in 3D Max and Mental Ray, how ever the rad and white render is made with flamingo. Notice that I don't have an environment, so you can see how a sinple horizon line reflects.

[Jetboy]

Wow !!!! Another "Oldtimer" fan !!!!!! Don`t you have a blueprint of a Chevy 53 pickup ????

[xhurleyx]

-Marduk- Thanks for the tips, but i dont understand what you mean fully. I checked out your car and i really liked it. Some of this stuff with rendering is way over my head. But i'll play around with the car and stuff some more.

-Jetboy- No i dont have any blueprints for a '53. And i didnt design this car, i got it from a friend. All i was doing here is trying to play around with rendering features. Sorry.

[Marduk]

Yes, it thought on many flamingo beginers because there really isn't a tutorial about flamingo in general or about redering with it, and it's hard to describe anything in a froum. Well keep playing around with flamingo, try understanding what ALL the settings do, and you'll have great results in no time!

[xhurleyx]

You're right, flamingo doesnt have many tutorials. What i've been doing is using the preset car paint materials as a basis for my own colors, highlight points, and reflectivity. What i hope to achieve (and what i suppose everyone here wants) is making this car and many others look realistic like what you might see in a car advertisment in a magazine. Thats kind of a cliche and i know its not easy to achieve. Could you give me any tips for lighting? In that picture, i used four rectangular lights above the car to simulate flourescent lights. I heard a friend talking about radiosity. I have no idea what it is supposed to do, but i know it takes forever to render.
One more thing, where can i find some headlight maps for this car? Thanks.

[xhurleyx]

Oh marduk,i read by your name. Are you from seattle? Cause i live in olympia. hmm....small world

[Marduk]

Well, a few thing, if you are tying to acheve realism I am afraid it not possible with Flamingo, atleast for cars, I've been tring to understad secret to realism in Flamingo since I got it, so for about half a year, and it's simply not for this kind of thing. You can get some pretty real looking objects with flamingo, but it's impossible to achive what you can with some other renderers that are available for 3D Max. I think that at this point Rhino is just a great modeling tool, but fairly useless for scene composition, texturing and rendering.
About your questions. As far as I'am concerned there really aren't many secrets to lighting in flamingo. I always keep it simple, if it's an out door (or just no environment) I use "Sun" , and if it's indoor, like in your case, I usually try to imagine where in that room light would actualy be, I analize each sourse and than I pick what each light should be. But I don't think you should worry about lighting that much.
About Radiosity- It does take a shit load of time, so I have never actualy had enough pattience to render with Radiosity. But in order to use it you have to go to render menu and choose Photometric renderer rather than Flamingo raytrace, and then you have to turn on radiosity in the second render menu, it should be above environment settings. Try it if you want, but I don't think it makes that much difference.
About headlight maps- do you mean like a decal for the headlights? I can get a shit load of headlight decals for racing cars, but I never seen any for an old chevy, I think you are better off just modeling those light, they seem quite easy.

[xhurleyx]

Yea i just tried the radiosity a while ago and it took an hour and a half to render and it looked like shit. And yea by "headlight maps" i mean headlight decals. All i would need is a simple old style circular headlight. I could try making my own, but since the car was modeled in 3ds, rhino wont let me start curves off the surfaces by using osnap. It just wont work. But i could try making one and get it close, but there will be gaps no matter what i do. I think the decals is the way to go for this one. Pretty soon i will post my pictures of a nissan skyline r34 (work in progress) that i started making myself. Since it was my first car, there are a lot of problems like lumpy surfaces and whatnot. I'll show it next week probably. Thanks for your help.