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Sports Car Model

Name:	Proto
Date Posted:	Mar 21, 2007
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I plan to extend my research on the DTS format by applying what I've learnt from my forest models to a sports car.

- I plan to use Lightwave as my modeler and will test adaptive subdivision (creating multiple levels of detail from the the one mesh) on a more complex form.
- I plan to do a lot of work of the textures to get the best "car finish" quality I can muster in TGE.
- I'm not making a copy of any particular car model or manufacturer and expect that the end product will be able to be used in a wide variety of situations without any design or trademark infringements.
- I plan to include three levels of detail and animated textures.

I expect to have a working prototype within a few weeks.

Work in progress:

The mesh is mostly built and happy with the overall car design. It's been a challenge to align the polygons on the source model so that the car surface doesn't look "dented" on the dts and I'm not happy with the results yet. This undesirable effect is especially noticeable with reflections on my low poly surfaces in ShowTool Pro and may require some model reconstruction to work around.

I've not gotten a convincing glass reflection into ShowTool Pro yet, as I'm still getting some default grey showing up in my semi-transparent and reflective glass textures.

Recent Blog Posts

List:	08/02/07 - Furniture modelling 07/11/07 - Goth Models - Cat (spirit familiar) 05/01/07 - Player model - witchypoos 03/21/07 - Sports Car Model 02/27/07 - Seasonal Forest Models

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Maxim Lyulyukin (Mar 21, 2007 at 06:56 GMT)

good start... you have wrong tri striping on some places
also need to outline details by cutting edges around them and adding additional loop

Jameson Bennett (Mar 21, 2007 at 13:26 GMT)

Looks like subd1 and 0 are the same, 0 is quads and 1 looks to simply be converted to tris. The poly count looks the same.

To get rid of 'dents' you should be viewing your model and exporting with smoothing enabled. I am not familiar with lightwave and do not know how to do this in that app... Im sure some digging in the forums or docs will get you there.

Not sure what maxim means by tri-stripping: you arent showing any tri-stripping. He may mean edge flow.

I would avoid the subdivision levels for export, you are not gaining any detail by using it (unless you are eventually going to export normal maps of your high res details). Just make sure you have a good silhouette not showing poly edges and corners.

Nice work so far.

Bobby Leighton (Mar 21, 2007 at 13:31 GMT)

Isn't there some sort of smoothing groups? That should help

Allyn "Mr_Bloodworth" Mcelrath (Mar 21, 2007 at 13:59 GMT)

For making Multiple LOD's use qemLOSS3.

Very usefully, and keeps all vertex mapings intact... So, model once, and create endless LOD's easy. (some tweaking necessary)

http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/qemloss3.html
Edited on Mar 21, 2007 14:00 GMT

Steve Flowers (Mar 22, 2007 at 01:48 GMT)

If you like Lightwave you'd probably LOVE Silo. Similar in a lot of ways, but the poly modeling tools in Silo are the cats ass. Worth every penny of the $100 it costs. Smoothing the dents is something that's pretty easy in Silo;)

Proto (Mar 22, 2007 at 23:06 GMT)

Thanks for the quick feedback folks. Yes it is the poly flow that seems to be causing the dented appearance once imported into Show Tool. I've now tripled the model and postponed my subpatch solution in favour of tris. I've used the SpinPolyPair plugin to repair the flow.
Edited on Mar 22, 2007 23:30 GMT

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