This box car is based on a train model hand painted by Ron Thornton. This project took about a week and a half. I used reference pictures of the model box car and measurements to create it to scale. The making of the box car is broken down into modeling, texturing, lighting, and compositing.

Modelling

Modeling from the trucks all the way down to each rivet, details were crucial to make this look photorealistic. I teamed up with Alex Lee for the modeling on the box car. We used some blueprint references from the train set and many high resolution reference images of the box car on the track. The great thing about the box car is that we could measure a model of a train a lot easier than a real train. The modeling took about 4 days. More measurements the better, just make sure you keep organized or it can get confusing.

Texturing

The texturing was fun. For reference I used images of real trains and lot of rust pictures. I used mostly image maps for my textures. I did add some procedurals over the images to break up repeating patterns of the rust. I found another great technique to get the rust images I was looking for. I used the blend if option in the blending options of each layer of Photoshop. With this I was able to control the blending of two images very effectively. You can blend the background into the foreground and vise versa; also you can extend the control by using the blending modes supplied by Photoshop like multiply, hard light, etc. If you would like to know more about this method please feel free to e-mail me.

Lighting

When using a picture to composite into like these images you need to match the lighting almost exactly to hide the cg element in the scene. The main things I look for in the photo are the direction of the shadows, softness of the shadows, the light intensity, and the color of light. In the compositions I used two or three area lights to get the same effect as using radiosity, which helped with render times. I set up a warm light for the main light, and then I used cool lights for fill in.

I wanted to push myself on how far I could go, so I decided to build a piece capable to make an art statement; I didn’t want to feel that it was just another 3D model.

Being an automobile nut, I, like some of you, have had the idea of building a car from the first to the last bolt. I find out that for this task a good set of blueprints is never enough. I spent around a week collecting photographs before the beginning of the modeling process, and I was still collecting references at the end of the texturing and rendering steps.

My first advice to you will be, if you are trying to make a model above average, start with planes, boats or cars that had been restored. You will easily find part catalogues, illustrations, schemes and diagrams of objects with historic meaning. I made a quick selection of some of the GT-40 pictures I found during my research (Fig. 01).

I usually try as much as possible to start from spline cages. It comes very handy to have a tridimensional blueprint of your model; it will guide you making decisions about size, position, and where your components should be organized, even before you model the shell.

Later on, you can use the spline curves to loft panels that will be the base mesh of your car body.
Once I had my cage done, I started modeling the chassis using photo references (Fig. 02).

The next step was modeling all the components that have direct relationship with the chassis.

I always started creating primitives to establish rotation and proportions, and then I went in detail using pictures. Here once more I used techniques like nurbs revolves, lofts and extrusions than later on turned into polygons.

Finally, I used lattice and nonlinear deformers to achieve the desired shapes (Fig. 03, Fig. 04, Fig. 05).

Hi everybody! I decided to write how I make the scene for car rendering. Pay attention only to the light and the scene, car stands only for example

Finally the scence looks like that:

Scene preparing,objects, light and camera positioning.

First we need to draw the scene itself.Let’s open 3D Studio MAX and draw the line as on the screenshot:

Scientifically it is called a cycloram. It came from photography. This thing gives a smooth transition of colour on the background…a very useful
thing!!!

After the line is drawn we do the following:

Then we position our car.I placed it in such a way:

Direct the camera and light.Attention! The direction of light strongly influences the result, that is its good look. Try to keep these proportions, but innovations are welcome!

Touch up the foreshortening…

Now it’s time to set the light,I won’t speak much,everything is clear:

And now a small trick…I don’t know why VRay does not create “impressive” shadows if the surface which takes them is only one polygon thick. For this purpose we put a simple box right under the car and apply black material to it.

Press Render(F10), go to VRay settings. It’s all clear on this screenshot. The most important thing in these settings is antialiasing settings, the number of subdivs in the direct and in the irradiance, and also the colour of “the artificial sky” and it’s “brightness”.

The result is in the top of the article.

For more persuasive effect I RECOMMEND insistently to increase the sharpness of this picture,to slightly correct the scale and to add a little noisein Photoshop.

I think, the way it is done won’t rise questions… the main thing is SHARPNESS!!! Don’t forget about it…VRay sampler makes a rather vague picture, you can’t do without after-editing!