Modeling and Rendering of a Mercedes S600
This is not exactly a step by step tutorial about polygon car modeling, its more of an overview of the process I use and some tips that might help anyone having trouble modeling a car.
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Although I work on 3dsmax but the process and techniques can be applied to all 3d apps, will it may not apply for one part about spline modeling which is used only to make the basic polygon mesh but you can just create the polygons, extrude them or do it any way you like.
Well for a start, I can't say this enough but if anyone is just starting out or wants to learn how to model a car PLEASE use good blueprints!! It’s so important to use them, if you are still starting out and can't find blueprints for the car you like the most just, check sites such as www.smcars.net or just Google it to find the blueprints for the car you want or order and download brochures from the official sites of the car company.
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Usually the blueprint come in a single image, it doesn't matter how you extract each view image weather it was in Photoshop or inside your 3d app it doesn't matter, it only matters that you have them in correct scale to each other in your 3d app. There are many tutorials which give good guidelines about using blueprints.
Also it’s very important to setup the blueprints properly and as accurate as possible, use reference objects to assist you, light corners for example, wheels badge etc…
I might have exaggerated the box reference objects a little and gave them funky colors but its only for the purpose of this tutorial feel free to do any reference objects in your 3d app as you like, this is only to make sure the blueprints are placed correctly.
I know someone must be a bit angry at me for not getting into the point yet but really obtaining blueprints and putting them accurately is such an important step that sometimes gets neglected.
Now after you have the blueprints ready you need to start modeling lol :) at last this is the only part where its max related but as I said before you can simply create polygons or extrude edges or what ever you like to get a similar basic mesh as you see in the later image, its only used to get a mesh like that.
Now hold on its really no big deal to get a mesh like that in any 3d app, just follow the blueprints and think of a decent wire frame before you create the ploys and you will get it, really its that simple, if you are having any trouble just look at any finished car wire frames and observe how edge loops are usually done, its easy to learn the tools and procedures but it might need time to practice that’s all.
Spline Modeling
Now max users don't be intimidated by spline modeling, it really takes nothing to learn, but could be just a little faster than standard techniques, all you need to do is to draw the splines following the blueprints exactly, IMO I think its better to draw the curves in corner mode, just draw the curves as you see in the image it really takes no effort especially if your blueprints are properly placed.
I know the previous image looks cool but we really still didn't start, one more thing to notice about these curves is that the points or vertices are aligned in an organized fashion, just check the image (you can also copy splines with connect option on which will make the cross section automatically, just check max manual you will find it all, I don't want to make this tutorial complicated).
Now spline modeling/ surface tools is really simple just see this image, get the point only a 4 or 3 sided will get a surface (vertices or points doesn't need to be welded, just at the same position)
Now you have the main curves which resemble the car and they are accurate, just do the curves which will complete it and make it accept surface modifier to give you the mesh (you should make everything 4 or 3 sided otherwise it will make a hole. After you've made them just add surface modifier and you will have a nice clean mesh with correct general edge loops.
Now the following is how to continue the basic mesh you've done and general tips and things I notice that people who are just starting out usually make. The first noticeable thing might be using too many edges which aren't needed, please don't add any edge loops unless you really need it and its time for it, try to do the basic shape without all the extra edges it will be easier to edit, if you make a small mistake and you want to change the look of a certain area in your model and you have too many edges It will be next to impossible to fix mesh, redoing the mesh entirely in many cases could be faster than editing a missed up mesh with too many edges.
Also always check how your mesh looks like after you add meshsmooth , it helps you realize what you are doing and if there was any mistakes.
Lets say you managed to get a nice clean mesh but it hasn't got much details, only the basic form just as we did previously , it could be made easily by any 3d software even by creating each poly and its very easy to do. Now some might leave their mesh like that and add meshsmooth to it, it will scream I am box modeled, it will have no sharp edges etc, the image below shows why you need to add edge loops to get the look you want in most cases.
I know the previous image might look funny and so basic, but I always get asked by people who want to model a high res realistic car and they still didn't test with the basics and they keep asking why their mesh looks like clay with no sharp edges at the right places so please forgive me about that.
After you start adding edge loops and details things sometimes start to turn the other way around, your mesh becomes missy with no decent flow and doesn't feel smooth, I take for example this part of a model I made at an early stage, I will try to demonstrate what I mean.
Now you could in some cases avoid adding the edge loops all over, try to do it smart to get the sharpness you want with as less edge as you can. Try to make an even distribution of edges to fix the areas which gets missed up as a result of adding edges, even if it meant adding even more edges, but please try to understand how mesh smooth works when you add edges and anticipate what effect they will have.
BTW if anyone found any difficulties doing this mesh he can check wire frames of finished cars and try to learn from them, or you can use your tablet to draw a basic wireframe on any image similar to the image below , if you don't have a tablet just print the image out and draw on it using your pencil, this image will help you realize how to start modeling it..
As you can see from my jerky drawing anything will do, I don't draw the wireframe now but when I was starting out to learn about edge loops it helped me, you can do as I do now just look at the model and visualize how you are going to do the edge loops and it will make your modeling faster.
One more thing also, its better to check your mesh for any non quad faces, you could see it directly on your smoothed mesh (it will simply look funny at any area with non quads) but to check it more easily and quickly just use the check non quad script (if you aren't using max look for a similar option in your app or if you can download a script from the internet)
Just type "Select Non Quad" at the maxscript reference in 3dsmax and you will find a tutorial called how to select non quad polygons, or select that tutorial from the how to tutorial menu, in a minute you will have it ready (no need to learn scripts just copy and paste the script and see the instructions of using it in the tutorial)
That’s all for modeling now :)
Car Rendering
This section will be about rendering a car in 2 different styles, I used VRay to render it but you can do the same in all renderers, it’s the same principle.
At first I would like to thank Dominick Cliff, He made a very short tutorial waaaay back about rendering a car, but it made me understand the importance of the surrounding environment for reflections. The cool thing about HDRI is that it makes life a lot easier, it stores both light information and the environment to reflect as well which makes sense, the most crucial thing to care about when using an HDRI is that it should fit with the background image or scene you are using if it wasn't taken from the HDRI itself.
For example you obviously can't just put a car on a white background with an HDRI reflecting a beach, it will look occurred even if the reflections on the car and all the render settings and materials are perfect. In some cases when the HDRI is similar to your scene but not enough you can try to put the HDRI in a mix map to try to add a different color tone to it and play with the light value of the HDRI to make it as close as possible to your scene but in studio style or other types of renders or scenes with no similar HDRI maps or closed sets etc… it becomes hard to use an HDRI which will give you what you want.
There are ready HDRIs in white and black color and prepared to simulate lights in a studio but they can't always give you the results you want. That’s why for studio renders I always depend mainly on lights or reflection objects that I make.
I will start off with the material so you can test with the lights on a good material. Now the material or shader key to any successful car paint should be multilayer, in order to make car paint more realistic its not enough to put in just one layer with Fresnel reflections, when you observe car paint in real life and especially when there is intense sun on it you see it reflecting the sun but you can see the sun also being reflected in a glossy blurred reflection, that’s why we need to make the 3d car paint more than one layer. For people using brazil renderer or mental ray in maya you have a ready car paint material/ shader to use, they will include multilayer reflection and more details by default, it will be easier to use the car paint materials there.
Anyway as you see in the image reflection will come in different layers
Just put a base material with it making most of the material and a subtle but needed another material or 2 to simulate blurry reflections layer. For this I used a shellac material, the first main slot is a simple fresnel reflecting material, the second slot is actually a blend material containing a blurry reflections material and a very blurry material (so its actually 3 materials together but you get the idea).
By blurry I mean less glossy material, a value of 1 glossiness will make a shiny surface, a value of 0 will generate an extremely blurry surface. You could generate glossy surfaces by using a bump map (actually tiny bumps on the surface make things glossy in the first place, the shape of the bumps will determine how the surface is blurred) but its faster and easier to just play with glossiness parameter. Here are the material settings…
One thing to mention is that my material is not colored since its black obviously but just changing the diffuse color at the main material and you will have any color you want, you can try putting different colors in the less glossy materials as well for different effects.
The other thing is that I didn't simulate the sparkling effect of metallic car paint flakes, the reason is that after observing and checking reference images I noticed that unless you are doing a very high res extreme close up image for a the car reflecting an HDRI or scene you can do without it, you can add another layer for it if you felt like it of course :)
I did a small trick of not increasing the subdivs of the reflection glossiness to give the surface just bit of grainy look. Here are car paint flakes in action reference images, don't forget that car paint different layers, flakes etc.. come in different variations, some have flip paint (cool paint which changes color depending on your viewing angle) and many more, but if you can understand how it works you can simply apply it all using blend, shellac materials and different falloff maps.
The above image is of a car Mirror flicker you can imagine how much close-up its
Rendering a Studio Style Render
The concept is really simple. Every rendering software has the ability to make objects generating GI, just make as much objects as you want and think of them as your light sources in your own studio.You can put standard lights instead of objects as well, but objects are usually easier to change shape, look and you can give them the same GI material or change each object properties separately, you can also make the same results using lights but I find it easier to do with objects since we are going to copy/duplicate them a lot.
One thing to mention that bigger objects will generate more GI than smaller ones by default in VRay, also objects lightning effect will decrease when its far and will increase when its close (Decay)
Now after you made giant boxes, boxes, spheres, cylinders and what ever you think would be suitable for lights in a studio give them a GI material as in the image (sometimes a properly placed single box can be enough for a great render). You need to play with the GI material settings as you like, for my final results I used a VRayLightMtl with a multiplier of 3 with gradient ramps for the texture for the giant boxes and different material settings for the sphere and other objects.
These images show the results obtained from different GI and reflections objects.
The first one is with the standard giant box on top of the car, the second, is with 3 thinner boxes placed around the car, try playing around with different layouts.
The final one is with multiple giant thin boxes and a lot of small spheres scattered around randomly and some spheres organized as if they where lights on top of the car and few cylinder with less GI multiplier, I made the scattered spheres have different colors as well.
Now if you hit render and still didn't like the results you could try adding few lights it doesn't matter much if it was vray lights or std max lights. It might be partially caused by the decay property of the objects and the fact the shadows will be softer than what you want if you had too many GI objects.
Now to make the image more interesting you could add a an HDRI with a subtle effect to give the feeling of a busy background which adds to the realism, but you have to make it very subtle that you can barely notice it so it doesn't take over the reflections you worked hard to get.
Final scene screenshot
Now for Rendering a Car in Scene
It’s all the same basics (good environment with lightning system that’s consistent with it). You can basically just put an HDRI to be used for the reflection environment and sky light but shadows are too soft if you depend on the HDRI alone.So you can just put light sources similar to the HDRI has to supplement it. Basically an omni or vray light placed in the scene to supplement the sun in the HDRI image.
For positioning light you can just put the HDRI image as visible in the viewport (just click alt+b and place it there as instance) and to get the exact position of the light as the sun in the HDRI to give you more powerful lightning and sharper shoadows, use a test sphere.
Just place a reflecting sphere and the HDRI as background, render an image as you will see the light isn't exactly positioned to be instead of the sun in the HDRI, move the light until you have the exact position of the light as the sun.
Now after you have the light position of the sun and HDRI, start changing with the parameters until you have something you like Add few lights if you needed to complete the lightning in some of the dark areas which increasing the GI would be costly to reach (for example underneath the car, or if you wanted to increase the lightning in front of the car, just place a light in front of it)
Try to add object for your scene for reflections if you had the time and thought the HDRI wasn't enough at one area (or if you are sick like me :) )
I added few lowpoly cars I have from an old project as if they were traveling at the bridge scene to add tiny reflections.
When placing the HDRI I liked the lightning effect given by a particular one for my bridge scene , but the reflections wasn't as much as I wanted, so I made a plane object and given it a new Vray GI material (vraylightmtl), and the texture map for it was another HDRI I liked its reflection, just as the image, I was very careful where to place it so I can get it to reflect on the car body, (you can give it red material for example just to see how its reflecting then give it the texture back)
Unfortunately in max or vray its still not featured to get strong lights to reflect and show rays which would help increase the realism, but for now you can try to add it later in post work.
Although the principle for rendering a car in a scene or as studio render are simple but what makes the difference is each little parameter you need to just keep comparing the renders you have with a real photo with similar conditions to compare and fix what ever you think makes the image look unrealistic.
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