car paint flames

[leigh]

Create the flame images as 32-bit Targa files with an alpha channel. I can't remember how texture layering in Max works, but if you add an image with an active alpha channel to the car paint texture, it should add the flames but keep the car paint colour totally independent.

[koinu]

Just listen to Leigh, she'll help you . Not sure how the texturing works in max so I can't really help you..... If you need any references goto Motorcity on-line, and follow some of the links at the bottom right corner. There are some good ideas for you.. Love the model, what car is it...?

[botman]

yeah, i know leagh is like a pro texturer, and thanx for the comment on the model, ha, its a custom truck i made and this is an old pic, ill start to post in the wip in about a couple of days.

[botman]

i understand what u are saying leigh, and that will work, but i would also like to make my flames act like chrome-illusion or ghost, and i dont see how i can do that if i make them in photoshop. thanx for the help alot.:airguitar

[joconnell]

Okay, the way things work as regards materials in max (Aside from material settings that are colour based - diffuse colour, specular colour, ambient colour etc) is that all of the settings controlling how strong an aspect of a material is (shininess, glossiness, reflectivity) are driven by brightness information.

To explain this further, if you take the reflectivity setting in a max material, it mainly comes with a small colour picker beside it which is set to black by default. If we take it that the strength of our reflectivity is controlled by how bright this colour setting is, this means that as the colour gets brighter in the reflectivity setting, the more reflective your material will appear. If you leave the colour set to black, your object will have no reflections. If you have the colour set to white, you will get full strength reflections and have a chrome material. If you have a 50% grey colour, you will get half strength reflections on your object.

Now if you think about it, chrome itself has no colour. All it does is reflect everything that is around it. This means that you can't paint chrome in photoshop unless you are doing a single image where you can fake it. If your object is moving, you'll want to get those warpy looking reflections running over the surface of your car - that'll make it look like chrome. As regards making your map in photshop, you'll need two different maps at least - one map for the colour of the object and another map to control the reflectivity of the car. Okay we know that the chrome bits are going to be totally reflective and the other painted parts are going to be maybe 30 - 40% reflective becuase of the laquer that gets sprayed onto the car. You'll need one map for your reflective areas with pure white in the chrome areas and a 30% grey for the rest. In your colour map, you'll paint all of the flames the colours you want them, and paint white in the chrome areas. Back in max, put your colour map in the diffuse channel, and your other map in the reflection channel. You should be good then. All you have to do is then give your car something to reflect. The environment is what makes a shiny object look good. It can be as simple as a sky picture or you can build a complex environment instead - depends on the look you want.

[joconnell]

To give you a bit of a start, you should start playing around with some of the material setting in max - the only difference with using a solid colour to control a setting in a max material instead of a texure painted in photoshop is that the solid colour will apply the same setting across the entire object, whereas a painted texture allows you to make certain areas use more or less of the setting. Take a look at this article for an overview of shiny materials in max:

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/glass_chrome_pottery/glass_chrome_pottery.htm

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