Making Of 'The Getaway Vehicle'

Introduction

I started modeling this car for another scene a while ago and it was supposed to be just a low-poly half-finished model. However we had an assignment from university to make a realistic car so I decided just to finish this one and make it really good. The whole process took about 18-20 days from start to finish. There weren't any blueprints available for this model at that time (I'm not sure if there are now) so I mostly used references and blueprints from a similar model.

Concept

I didn't have a clear concept at all in the beginning. When I started I thought: I will model just another car and will forget about it. When I saw that it was coming along fairly well, though, I decided to make something out of it worth putting in my portfolio. And like most of my works the concept developed during the making. I didn't need to search for any inspiration or references - I've watched lots of gangster movies and that seemed quite enough to act as fuel for developing an idea.

Modeling

The whole modeling process was quite fun and in some cases troublesome. As I mentioned I made the car mainly from references and every time I saw something new that was modeled incorrectly I had to alter the whole geometry of the vehicle.

I started by modeling the car body from a box. I followed blueprints from another model of a Bugatti and a lot of references and once I'd got the right shape, I detached the doors, windows etc (Fig.01).

Fig. 01_car_mesh_chasis

Fig. 01_car_mesh_chasis

From here on almost all of the different parts were made with the poly by poly technique. I modeled the fenders next and started again to look at the overall shape of the vehicle (Fig.02).

Fig. 02_car_chasis

Fig. 02_car_chasis

After modeling the back of the car it started to look like something (Fig.03).

Fig. 03_car_low_poly

Fig. 03_car_low_poly

The hard work was done by this point - now all that was left (not that it wasn't going to take some time) were the details. The details are really the things that make the difference between a model and a great model (Fig.04).

Fig. 04_car_parts

Fig. 04_car_parts

After some tweaks here and there and having added some more details this is what the finished exterior looks like (Fig.05).

Fig. 05_car_mesh

Fig. 05_car_mesh

As far as interior goes, I didn't use very many details but it was more than enough for the camera angle I was going to use for the scene (Fig.06).

Fig. 06_car_interior

Fig. 06_car_interior

Lighting

Before starting to texture I had to establish the lightning of the scene. I applied some basic shaders to the model - car paint, chrome, glass and tire materials. I used a plugin called Smart IBL which you can find here: http://www.hdrlabs.com/  to set up the basic lightning. The scene is lit only by a direct light with soft shadows and an HDRI (the HDRI also acts as a background)(Fig.07).

Fig. 07_lighting_effects

Fig. 07_lighting_effects

From then on I experimented with the intensity and the distribution of the light, as well as the color of the car (Fig.08).

Fig. 08_car_textures

Fig. 08_car_textures

Texturing

I didn't want to bother to unwrap the whole car so I applied simple UV mapping all over the model and then used blend materials and different polygroups to texture the vehicle.  Everything is basically layers of textures and shaders so I won't go in depth and show you every material but I will go through one of the fender materials (Fig.09).

Fig. 09_textures_materials

Fig. 09_textures_materials

This method is not very effective, though can be good if you want to have more control over the rendered out result (when rendering out passes), at least not if you use simple Blend materials (VrayBlendMtl renders fine when rendering in passes). Also many of you might find unwrapping the model a faster way but I like having control over the individual materials.

Finishing Touches

All those small things that tell the actual story are the most important thing. I added the money and the high heel on the ground just to push the imagination of the viewer a bit more. I also tried to match the hole in the front window with the blood on the seat. The broken glass itself was made quite easily - I used a plugin called Advanced Painter (it's now implemented and comes as part of 3ds Max 2011) to paint some splines on top of the glass, made them renderable and assigned a glass material.

In the end everything was rendered with V-Ray. I also rendered an AO pass with mental ray. I don't rely much on post-production so I tried to get as close as possible to what I want straight from Max.

Finally, I made a simple composition in Fusion just to give it some life (Fig.10).

Fig. 10



And here's the final image (Fig.11).

Fig. 11

Conclusion

To conclude I want to give you some personal advice: always aim to implement a scenario in your projects. No matter what are you doing, whether it is a car or a character - it doesn't matter. There are so many cars on the internet that are rendered in studio setups and I can guarantee that most people are already sick of looking at them and it's not by any means because they are looking bad. It's not how good your model or texturing is - it's how well you present it. And in the end the ones that have something different about them, something that made them a bit unique, remain. I'm sure while reading this Making Of you remembered quite a few examples of interesting scenes already. So, good luck guys, hope you enjoyed this and I hope I've managed to help someone! Thanks for reading! Now get creative!

If you liked this Making Of and have any questions or just want to check my other stuff then feel free to visit my site: http://spatarozliev.co.uk and/or drop me a line.

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