Making of 'Fiat 500'

Hello everyone! My name is Alexander Pronskiy. I was born in Kharkov, Ukrane in 1988. And I have been into 3d since 2003.Here is my first tutorial, which covers the main stages of creating my 'Fiat 500' scene. I hope it will be useful for you.

Introduction

The modelling of this car isn't special really, I used the pretty usual technique of poly-modelling so I'll tell you more about the texturing, lightning and rendering of my scene.

Modelling

First of all, I found some blueprints and reference images of a Fiat 500.Next I set up the blueprints in 3D Max and started to model. I recommend that you read the great tutorial "Modelling a Fiat 500 using Poly-modelling" by Karabo Legwaila which you can find here on 3DTotal web site by clicking this link (http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/fiat500/fiat500.asp). I used the similar technique for building my car models. I use extruding edges, connect, chamfer edges, quick slice and detach. To speed up the process, I assign shortcuts to these commands. So here is a low poly version of the complete model:

Fig. 001

Fig. 01

And with MeshSmooth modifier:

Fig. 003

Fig. 03

Texturing

I begin texturing from the side part of the car. I select the polygons and add a UVW Mapping modifier with planar mapping.

Fig. 005

Fig. 05

I apply a symmetry modifier and collapse the stack (Picture below).

Fig. 007

Fig. 07

Then I select the front part of the car and repeat the same procedure.

Fig. 009

Fig. 09

Unwrapping of the other parts were done in the same way. Next I apply a Unwrap UVW modifier. Workflow is the same for all objects. By pressing the Edit button, I open the Edit UVWs window, in which we can see the mapping coordinates of the object, here I tweak some vertices to prevent stretching and overlapping of my texture. Then in the Tools menu, I select Render UVW template. In the Render UVs window, I choose the resolution that I need (3000x3000) and press the Render UV template button. Now I have an image that I can use as a guide for creating my textures, so I load it up in Photoshop and in a new layer, paste a guide that was rendered earlier, also I change blending mode to Linear Dodge (this make it possible to see the guide lines upon my texture).Now I'm ready to begin the actual creation of my dirt maps. I start with a diffuse maps. For this I am using textures from 3DTotal's Total Textures v8, which contains a big collection of high quality textures. So I choose some of them and loaded them into Photoshop. Next I combine them together using layers and the Clone Stamp tool. And here are some of diffuse textures:

Fig. 011

Fig. 011

Side of the car

Fig. 013

Fig. 013

Tire

Fig. 015

Fig. 015

Front window

Other maps were painted in the same way. After creating my diffuse maps, I do my opacity maps. For that I turn the diffuse maps, grayscale and give them more contrast. After creating my dirt maps I start doing materials for the scene. For creating the paint for the car, I use Blend material which consists of 2 materials: actually black paint and dirt material (In diffuse and opacity maps slots I use maps that were created earlier). The black car paint was made from using the Shellac material which is composed of two VRay materials:

Fig. 017

Fig. 017

Next I create a Dirty Chrome texture which is also a Blend material, which consists of chrome-VRay material with blurry reflection for more realism and the dirt material. Here is actual chrome material:

Fig. 019

Fig. 019

The tire material is also a Blend material. First material is tire material and the second is a dirt shader. To give more depth to the tire material I've use a Falloff map in the diffuse slot:

Fig. 020

Fig. 020

Below you can see the turn signal light material:

Fig. 022

Fig. 022

The back light material is similar to the material I've used for the front signal light, but instead of an orange in the Fog Color slot, I've changed it to red. Now all the materials are ready.

Lightning and Rendering

For this scene, I've used a HDRI based lightning and 1 VRay light (mainly for getting the shadows).Next I create a plane and assign a Matte/Shadow Material to it, to catch the shadows. Below you can see the scenes setup and VRay Light parameters:

Fig. 024

Fig. 024

Next I activate the GI. For primary bounces, I use IRmap (see picture below) and for the secondary Quasi-Monte Carlo (with default settings

Fig. 026

Fig. 026

Now the scene is ready for a final render. Last thing we need to do is tweak the Image Sampler settings. I use an Adaptive subdivision method with Catmull-Rom Antialiasing filter to get a sharp result.

Fig. 028

Fig. 028

Then, I load the final render into Photoshop and add some contrast to the background: using alpha map (which I render separately in 3D Max) I select background and apply a Sharpen filter.

So here is a final result:

Fig. 030

Fig. 030

And here is a 'Porsche 356' scene which was created by using the same technique

Fig. 032

Fig. 032

Thanks for reading my tutorial! I hope you learn something new. If you have any questions or remarks, please mail me:

This image was created using a few of the hundreds of textures from the Total Texture CDs - very comprehensive texture collections priced with the hobbyist in mind. To see more examples, download free
samples and read full details follow this link

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