After roughly defining the side profile, I proceeded to draw out the front shape of the car. At the same time, I was already beginning to flesh out the car by creating a 3D mesh from the side profiles I had drawn. The process of modeling began with a plane and I added a turbosmooth modifier on top of that. The advantage this gave me was that I could easily redefine my curves in case I felt that some parts didn't match up or that some shapes looked out of proportion.

The windscreens were extracted from the base mesh that was created (Fig.06 – 08).




The modeling was done using a mix of editable polygons and splines. For the wires and underside geometry, I chose to use renderable splines, varying the thicknesses or converting them to editable polygons for further modifications.

I used 3ds Max for the entire modeling process as it is very comfortable for me to work with and I have been using it for almost six years now.

The rods and frames in the backdrop were modeled using mostly spines that were set to be renderable (Fig.09).

Texturing

The textures for this were mainly procedural V-Ray materials since I used V-Ray for the rendering. I received some requests asking me to post my windscreen material. It is displayed in Fig.10.


The wall at the side was a UVW unwrap with a texture created in Photoshop (Fig.11).


For the wheels and 'rims', if you may, I used an unwrap to lay the decals out and applied it to the wheel.

The chrome was a standard V-Ray chrome solution, with the reflection being almost 100 percent.

The ground texture was the one that proved to be my nemesis in the final renders! I wanted reflections that were blurry and soft, and hence decided to go with a Fresnel value for the materials but for that, I had to hike my rendering subdivisions quite a bit to achieve that result.