Alfa Zagato Day 14-15

At last, my new babe Alfa Romeo Zagato 2600 SZ finished. From now on new test renders are on the way.

I made two version of Alfa Zagato: one is low polygon count for games and the other is high poly version. The high poly version has nearly 1000K polygons interior and smoothing included.

Now the test render of high poly version is under construction and I'm giving you the very first images of my study.

Thnx for watching.

Alfa Zagato Day 13

Today was a very horrible day for me. I was too tired but as I promised started the engine of my Zagato and I put some pics about the engine.
I don't know why but, I just wanted to model the engine parts high resolution. Until now the poly count that I've reached is 212.532.
Here are the engine shots.

Alfa Zagato Day 12

Today, I finished the front and back seats. I finished rear mirror in the middle too. But I used MoI for modeling the mirror. It was just a trial to see how much is MoI powerful about modeling. I can say that you must use at least trial version once. And here some updates...

Alfa Zagato MakeUp Day 9, 10, 11

It's been so long not blogging here. But always to be continued... :D

Anyway, here are some updates about my Alfa Zagato 2600 SZ. I studied on interior of the car. You'll see that in some parts I tried to make poly modeling and on some parts I used NURBS. Everybody says that the NURBS modeling technique in 3dsmax is so weak. In my opinion, 3dsmax is very good in poly modeling but if you can solve the trick of NURBS then, you can make any model in NURBS. This is a fact that it's not so powerful like Rhinoceros but I can model some tricky parts in NURBS sooo quickly.

Alfa Zagato 2600 Day 7 and 8

It's been a long time for new progress on model but I could find some time to work on lately. So the progress is at the backend of the car.

I've managed to finish the tailboard of the car. And also the plate to carry the ID plate and backlights finished. There were some mistakes at the back. It was far from original but not anymore :D Here is the updates.

I want to talk about a technique for rounded corners. Especially, while using NURMS for smoothing, you know there will be so much mistakes. Polygons with other than 4 edges are not work with NURMS. So we try to make the the polygons with 4 edges. but sometimes we have to make 3 edge-polygon. There was one of them on my model at the back. As you see in the image above, I solve this problem with an extra edge-flow. An edge-flow starting from one of the edge of triangle polygon. You can multiply the edges as much as you want to smooth the edge. Anyway, I want to speak on this technique widely later.

Mechatronics... Maglev... Control Systems... BLAH BLAH BLAH!

I'm working on my thesis project in mechatronics. magnetic levitation and magnetic motion control system. It takes much of my spare time. I need more spare time. So I won't sleep more than 4 hours in a day :D It might help to go on for my Zagato.

It's been over a month from start day. Exterior is about to finish but I did nothing for interior of this oldie babe.
Coming soon... please wait for updates :D

OR Be my FOLLOWER :D

Alfa Zagato Day 6

Blog, blog, blog...

Now blogging some updates for my Zagato... Finished the side signals and rear-mirror on the right-hand of babe. Here are the updates...

I didn't put the bulb in the signal. I'll make the details by displacement map and just before rendering phase.

Alfa Zagato Day 5

It's been long time for updates. I couldn't have enough time for my baby. Sorry for being "temporarily out of order"

Now I have some updates about front: signal lamp which will be placed on each side of the car and the Alfa Romeo Logo carriage. I will use a Alfa Romeo Logo map for the carriage. And also I didn't give enough detail to the lamp. Because I'll give the details with a displacement map later. It will be a reflector map, I'll place it just behind the front glass to hide the details of bulb and reflecting area of lamp. I hope it will be more realistic.

Here are the last updates:

Alfa Zagato Day 4

Today, I managed to finish the bumper located in front of the car and inside parts of headlight hole. Here are the pics of the work...

There are also many ways to make a classic headlight. The most concerning issue is the refractive surface of the inner headlight glass. I prefer two technique for modeling this issue:

1. Build the headlight glass and make a plane inside the glass. Then flip normals of this plane and texture it with displacement map.

2. Build the every detail :D

For this car, I used the second choice of mine. As you can see in the picture there are 3 layers for the headlight.

Number 1 is the headlight glass (as main)
Number 2 is the backplate for light refraction
Number 3 is the high reflective area.

I'll add a light bulb later.

Quick Rectangular Grille Tutorial (3ds max)

There are lots of technique to build an air intake grille for a car. I'll show you one of those techniques which I usually use.

I won't explain the basic rules for interface of 3ds max here. So  you need to be familiar with 3ds max interface.

Let's start creating a plane.

1. "Ctrl+ Right click" at the front viewport, then select "Plane" from the quad menu (This shortcut is the one I mostly use)

2.Click and drag on the viewport and create a plane. (The proportions are not important but for the tutorial, I created 180 mm. high and 320 mm. wide plane)

3. On the modify panel adjust length segs to 30 and Width Segs ot 40 as seen in the illustration below.

4.Right click on the plane and from the quad menu: Select Convert to>Editable Poly

5.Go to modify panel and select Face sub-object mode. (Or simply hit number "4")

6. Press Ctrl+A and select all faces on our plane.

7. Return to modify panel and find the Edit Polygons rollout, hit Inset dialog button (which is the small tiny button at the right hand of Inset button) (Click on the pic for bigger version)

8. Click OK and then simply hit DELETE on the keyboard.

9. We're about to finish modeling... Go to modify panel and Go to BORDER subobject level.

10. Again Ctrl+A to select all the borders on the model.

11. Then go to modify panel and in the Edit Borders rollout, Hit the Extrude button and extrude the selected borders just once.

Yeah... we have finished the basic shape. Below picture is the result of our grille.

Have a nice day.