Ooo, thanks for the pictures guys I'm definitely going to use parts of them Also got some great pictures from VeyronEB, even one perfect image to create the front lights-on texture with, and I already had a decent one for the back(though a bit low res, but should be fine with the blurry lenses anyway) Here's a WIP... Really wip. I still need to somehow get rid of the slight reflection. Also the shape of the headlights still looks off... >.<
Check the lights from the front face on, from that angle it just looks like the bottom edge of the light might be a hair too low on yours. That's all I can see compared to the black front on image from previous page. Only other thing I can think of is the illusion from where the lamp is textured not modelled
I could, but it would likely look much worse in a lot of reasons. One is due to inability of creating proper textures to seperate the glass and the inside due to no reference of the inside of the headlight. Another is that Torque3d doens't allow me to make the glass look good both when switched on and off, it's either it looks good off, or looks good on(which is also why the official vehicles seem to have no detail in the glass unless you look closely). That's because you need pretty transparant glass to make it light up properly. For me though, the biggest drawback is that the headlights won't get much shading at all when the glass is transparant. It means that when you drive in the dark with the lights off, the texture will still be lit up(like, way too bright) without the light being on. Really ugly. Helljeep had no meshed headlights either, looked much better that way Just trust me. If I find that it looks crap in the end, I'll still model them
Mythbuster, you may be interested to look at this turorial http://www.gtapex.com/08/tutorial_glass.html result of it looks very natural
Assuming you have Photoshop, you'll need to draw around the reflection with the Pen tool and feather it slightly so you get a smooth transition between the edited section and everything else. Play around with Brightness (Ctrl+U), Levels (Ctrl+L) and Curves (Ctrl+M) until the reflection is no longer visible. To remove all colour (i.e. convert to greyscale in RGBA), press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+B. You can also remove random artefacts with the Clone Stamp. Should be easy since those refraction lines are quite uniform!
@Zappy: Yep, that's what I was gonna try, but I've never had to do it before because I could always find photographs with no reflection. Desaturation by using ctrl+shift+u or ctrl+shift+i works better for me btw I know what you mean on the lower edge, that's indeed what makes it look weird. The problem is, the actual edge of the glass is like that in real life from front-on angles(but doesn't show from other angles). The double dark edge (which makes it look like there's now a double chrome strip) is just light being reflected inside the glass, but not on the lower edge where it corners. The chrome strip is below it. Heard about that technique, definitely a good idea, but it's really not what I think the lights should look like. Having owned a car with non-clear lenses before, from most angles it just doesn't look right. In the straight-on real life picture: It's decent enough. In the other angles, I'm not so sure. I haven't tried the technique of overlaying it with a transparant bit, but I imagine it'll give me a bit more freedom. If I can combine what I did on the Cadillac/Ibiza/Audi 80, and this technique, I think I might be able to create something that looks good from all angles. That said, my main issue with doing transparant lenses is that in-game, the glass will be "lit up" when it's dark, like the windows. As I was posting a picture of that though, I noticed that my Cadilalcs headlights and part of the windows on the Grand Marshal don't have the problem anymore?! I remember the devs said they fixed it for when there's full and no-transparancy, but not when there's half-transparancy. I wonder if that's what fixed the headlights on the Cadillac. It could also be that there is no reflection on the headlight lenses, and barely any on the windows on the Grand Marshal. I wonder if I can get away with it when I use the technique described on that website. Ie having multiple panes of transaprancy behind eachother, it might cancel out the effect, and I could still have reflections... I'll have a couple of little experiments with this with some simple mesh/texture to see how different levels of transparancy will break the lit-up thing in-game. I also noticed that the left headlight on the Cadillac doesn't have any glass over it, somehow the mesh isn't loaded. The right one is though.
Rear now mostly finished, really happy(textures need slight retouching at the corners where there's some reflection/discoloration but barely noticable). Not completely satisfied with the front, as the proportions look to be off. I can most likely correct it easily since I have some great front straight-on shots in high resolution thanks to VeyronEB. From what I can tell just by eye, the lights seem to be too thick. I think I am gonna have to make 3d headlights. I reckoned I could get away with it, but you guys were right, it looks too flat. Dat muffler doe.
this thing is really starting to look exciting, I hope you can finish the bugger off! anyway, the 3d headlights might be for the best... and the reference images should help you model them very accurately also!
Compare, old vs new: Small freakin adjustments, moving stuff around by mere centimeters... You would never notice the old isn't right, if you didn't have the new model right beside it, yet it just looks way more like the real car now
The style you're referring to is called "bosozoku". The "shakakan" (is that spelled right?) is the gta term for it. Looking good mythbuster, sorry to hear about that person spreading to other sites.
Actually, both Bosozoku and Shakotan are correct terms. Bosozoku are Japanese motorcycle gangs, while Shakotan is a Japanese prase meaning "lowered car". The cars you see with large exhausts and bodykits are tecnically not "Bosozoku", but rather reffered to as Zokusha or Kaido Racer. Shakotan is a tuning style, consisting of wide wheels, low ride height and sometimes some nice camber.
