Vehicle: Lotus Elise

[stephen2002]

looks pretty good. The modeling is great but the paint shader could use some work to make it more reaslitic.

I took a look at the intro.avi on your site. The tire looks fairly convincing but the animation goes much to fast to read the logo.

[ThirdEye]

I think the problem is more related to a poor lighting than to a crappy material here. Anyway fantastic modeling!! :thumbsup:

[Kelmk]

I do agree that lighting is my weak point. Most of the lighting is a GI fake from www.pixho.com with an added directional light.

The intro.avi is the first scene in a 30 second commercial for a racing game. It needs to be fast to fit in but I have lengthed the logo part for the final shot.

[cdinic]

Excellent work! I think the paint shader looks amazing up close.. but from a distance it's a little to washed out.

The material for the disk breaks is the one thing that really threw me off.. it just shouts noise>radial blur. Brakes are usualy really dirty and rusted.

the tire is amazing!!!! how the hall did u do that??!!?!?

is it all mesh? bumps maps? I wana know!!!!

great work

keep it commin

-Chris

[Kelmk]

I think the main problem I have with the paint shader is the reflection map. I'm using a low res HDR image fom Paul Debevec's site in order to get the sky highlights. I don't have access to any higher res HDR reflection maps at the moment. Because the reflection is blurry, it makes the paint look too soft.

[Kelmk]

The tires tread is modeled but the rest is a layered shader with bump mapping on several different specular layers.

[chesky Wang]

very nice modeling and I like the image of the tire, looks so cool.
How did you work at that, use bump map? tell me some tricks, Thank you.:)

[Avitron]

Nice LS on the tires. :)

[Soljarag]

that tire tread is awsome:beer: you should write a quick tutorial on it:thumbsup:

[DevonH]

Good work. I love this car. I agree with some of the posts here, that you do have to work on it a little bit more. But like I said, it looks great.

[Signal2Noise]

I agree with the others. What caught my eye is the tire- nice job!

[Kelmk]

Here's another view
http://www3.telus.net/kelmk/lotus10.jpg

[87Supra]

Very very nice job! I'm with everyone else on the tire thing, it looks great! A little something about brake discs....the outter rim of the disc should have a bump map of cast iron and the insides of the cross drilled holes should have a spiral or rifling (like a shot bullet shell) look. Also rotors that have grooves that big are usually replaced. The animation is good but, I'm not totally positive, I think that the elise is RWD (just ignore me if I'm not up on Lotus cars).

GREAT JOB! :buttrock: :beer:

[Idi]

Nice model,
good choice!

idi

[Kelmk]

Yes, the Elise is rear wheel drive. I was told to ignore that fact for this animation. :)

[Markus]

The model simply looks perfect. I couldn't find anything wrong. Is it original CAD data from Lotus?

Markus

[Kelmk]

The original model was CAD from Lotus but was unusable because of it's density so it was remodeled in polys with the exception of the grill elements which are the original nurbs patches.

[Kelmk]

Well, since everybody seems to like the tire, here is a better pic.
http://www3.telus.net/kelmk/wheel2.jpg

[Sanguis Mortuum]

One little thing, the lights on the back look too opaque, Im not sure if thats how they really look though....

[phoenix2k]

Wow... really impressive Tires... I agree with the others though... The texture/lighting, does need a bit more work... great modeling tho!

[pinnner]

Great Job! Modelling looks nice and solid. And the wheels are gorgeous!

:eek:

[_Kameron_]

that tire looks awsome. Are the wors on the tire a texture or did you model them?

[odainton]

That really is a fantastic model.

I'm curious how you managed to get original CAD from Lotus? I've been trying to get hold of decent projections of the original Elise for ages with no luck. Any pointers for me?

OJD

[edmundw]

Very very nice model I should say... Do you mind posting a wireframe of your car and the tire?? Thanks


Edmund Wong

[dmcgrath]

If you want a wireframe, you can see one on his web page.

As for the brake discs that some people are talking about. I would agree it looks a little too grooved and the shader is very chromed looking, but I don't think you need to worry about adding rust to anything. This is a race car, at least on the intro that's what it says. Racers don't let stuff rust if they can prevent it. Rust will slow you down, but chrome makes you go faster j/k.

Nice modeling, that mesh is extremely dense though.

you :buttrock:

[Raul3d]

WOW!! Nice job:thumbsup:

[nose]

Wow, that looks very nice :thumbsup:

[Starv]

Nice tire man. Real nice.
Oh, and the car too. But those tires. whoooa.:buttrock:

[Kelmk]

odainton, The only reason I got CAD data from Lotus is because we have their cars licensed for the game. I couldn't use much of it but it did help as a template. I can give you some orthographic shots of the iges wire if you wish.

The disc brakes were never intended to be viewed that close up, that intro shot was added later. I might tweak up the discs be more realistic.
The wireframe is very dense in that shot because of the closeness of the tire shot. It just has a level 2 polysmooth on it. I'll post the original wireframe on Tuesday.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm relighting the car with Mental Ray and Final Gather so hopefully I can get some more realism in it. I want to integrate it seemlessly into some footage so I've got some work to do.

[odainton]

Kelmk,

I sent you a mail about this too, so you can ignore that now :)
If you have basic orthographic wireframes that would help me, so if you could email me at o_dainton@hotmail.com that would be fantastic thanks.

Oli

[Akuma]

So where can i buy this sucker :D

[MeshedP]

great modeling

[Kelmk]

Here is a non smothed wireframe fro those that were interested. Also you can grab the scanned ortho drawings if you want from http://www3.telus.net/kelmk

http://www3.telus.net/kelmk/lotus_wire.jpg

[Akuma]

i love this car.

[Soljarag]

Kelmk,

do you mind if i submit the ortho views to

http://smcars.nd4spdworld.com/

[Kelmk]

sure

[Dr_Pepper]

ouaaahhh! nice!:scream:

[Kelmk]

You can buy it right here.
http://www.lotuscars.com/

[EighthDecay]

thats one hell of an insane lookin model,, :eek:
the mesh looks mighty fine and the rest of them tasty details.

[psyop63b]

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this, but your taillights look like plastic to me. You have a nice transparency going on with the headlights, but it hasn't been applied to the rear of the vehicle. Unless the Lotus is different, I'm used to seeing taillights that look like crystal, with all kinds of reflections and refractions going on inside. It seems very popular with all the automakers. I know that enough people have mentioned particulars about the paint, but that's not what stood out to me the most. Make those suckers shine!!:lightbulb

[nanosky3d]

really good .......will we see a new ilumination for your car??.....:thumbsup:

[Kelmk]

I'm working on it but I'm switching to Mental Ray and alot of my shaders won't render in MR. I have to rebuild some of them and figure out why my NURBS won't render. It seems stupid that MR doesn't read .bot textures.

[shoey]

really excellent modelling and great attention to detail:thumbsup: Do you have a wireframe version before subd's

[Kelmk]

That is the model before smoothing. Every poly split by hand.

[Daniel]

Ahh I hate U :rolleyes:
hehe.

First some points:

The Taillights looks a litle boring, is there anything inside?

AFAIK the Drivers seat is more to the midle. The seats are not centered inside like in any other car. U know what i'm talk about?

I miss the litle "ELISE" sticker on the rear window and on the side mirrors!

The blinker are not that black on the car U can buy, they are white.

There have to be 6 screwas on the hood, 3 on each side.

There is also no antenna (or even the litle round thing) on the engine cover :D

The Hardtop is the one from the concept :rolleyes:

The Lotus Logo on the front have to be right behind the line, you moved it to far away.

Overall the car is very good...but Hey, U got a CAD file from lotus...tsts, so U could check the parts easy :)

:rolleyes:

But yeah...I have to write a litle WOW, but just a litle ;)

okay I better stop now...hehe...Cya.

BTW. The car is much to accurate for a Lotus :p

[Kelmk]

I'm not sure what pics you are looking at but here is my reference. I know there are several variations on the design but I'm sticking to the brochure.
I agree with the taillights being too opaque, I need to model something inside. The signal light do need to be white but I'm having trouble finding out what's actually in them so I went with black for now.
Here is one of the pics froms lotus

http://www3.telus.net/kelmk/Elise_front3-4.jpg

[Daniel]

Hi!

Yes that's one of the first press photos.

Some very good images U can find here: Click ME! (http://www.niazi.net/cars/index.cgi)

Where can I see a preview of the game??? Wanna see it :)
It's not Kujus Lotus Challenge?

Cya.

[Kelmk]

Daniel, Thanks for the link

Here is an update for ya'll. It's been g'd up from the feet up.
What a difference Mental Ray makes. I've redone the shaders and the used final gather and a direct light for lighting. The reflection is an HDR image to get those nice white highlights. Please only critique the lighting and paint shader, I'm still working on the rest. I have to reimport my tires from a previous file with the treads, hopefully I can render the shader in MR without too many problems. The bump is a .bot so we'll see how well MR deals with an 8k map :)
I decided yellow looks much more impressive and is the color of the US version in the press releases so here it is.
http://www3.telus.net/kelmk/lotus%2011.jpg
I'm still working on the back end

[ThirdEye]

Change the point of view, from this one it's impossible to understand anything, too many distortions. The front lights are more transparent in the photo tho. Can you post the hdr image (in jpg format) you used?

[Kelmk]

How about this one?
http://www3.telus.net/kelmk/lotus 12.jpg
HDR map
http://www3.telus.net/kelmk/campus probe.jpg

[Daniel]

I have that hdri too ;)

Hmmm, how about scene with a skydome and one or two walls (left and front, or back) to break the skyreflection.

I don't know but if U need more elise pics tell me. I've a big database ;)

One point. The parts inside the headlights are still to bright. Make that plastic more dark...And that black border, arround the headlight, should reflect a litle more, like U see on the Real Picture U attached.

You're on the right way!!!

Oki...and now back2work.
Cya.

[ThirdEye]

I can't see any fresnel reflection fx at all in your paint shader, you should increase that parameter. Look at the roof of this F40 rendered with Arnold for example, it becomes bright and whiter with the angle variation of the point of view.

http://www.3dluvr.com/marcosss/more3/f40.jpg

[DrSchille]

Very nice model!! :thumbsup:

You shouldn't have so much DoF in you renders IMO.

To make the paint look better you could let the diffiuse map be a falloff where you have a white/bright color on the sides which ar turning more and more away from the camera.

Suurland did explain it on his site, how he did the materials for his Beetle: http://www.suurland.com/gallery_stills_newbeetle_materials_light.htm
The main body of the car got a falloff map in the diffuse slot, going from black to white and a falloff map in the self-illumination slot going from grey to white, and it's using metallic reflections

Maybe you allready have this, but then you should try make it stronger if you understand what i mean :shrug:, cause I can hardly see it.

Maybe you also should make the windows a bit darker and turn the opacity up just a bit.

Aside from that, I think your model and render looks really good!

[aenema]

nice model, nice choice of car :) keep it up

[jchoi]

WOW...:love:

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