Tire Texture

Definitely a rough, but here's a texture test for the tire. Ignore the extremely reflective rim, the visible texture seams, and the 'Muddy Tire Co.' logo (which will be replaced with whatever we want).

Looks like it'll be beneficial to do the UV mapping before smoothing. Currently, I'm using a cylindrical unwrap for the modeled treads, and a planar map for the sidewalls. A single map should fix the texture seam issue.

Buggy Muddy Studio Render

All I could afford was to render this 720x405 sized still. Mental Ray seems to be having a little memory issue when trying to render this at 1920x1080.

Suspension tests are coming along as well. Trying to develop a physics based suspension rig, but for the test we might just have to go with a hand animated version.

Buggy: Muddier Body

Added the mud on to the bull bars, and slapped more mud on to the Buggy's front end. Also carved out the windshield wiper blade paths as well.

Working out a mental ray shader network that will allow a decal to be placed on the side panel, utilizing a difference UV set. Also to come, thickness and depth in mud via render-time displacements.

Buggy Muddy Body

The Buggy body with mud applied to the lower surfaces. Still needs integration with the rest of the model.

Workflow:
- Export from Maya as OBJ with UV map.
- Paint dirt weight maps in ZBrush.
- Plug in dirt weight map into mental ray car shader, or use a layer shader for non-mental ray shader surfaces.

Buggy Muddy Fender

Z-Brush's funky texture painting workflow was kicking my ass all week, but I finally gave it a roundhouse kick to the face. Used Z-Brush to place rough dirt maps, exported a black and white mask, and tweaked a small bit in Photoshop.

Rendered in Mental Ray, with the 'mi_car_paint_phen' shader and the mask as a dirt map. Dirt also has a light noise applied to the bump channel, and color of dirt is controlled in Maya.

Buggy Tires Update

The Buggy has been updated again with the windshield wipers in their folded-up position, and the tires have been smoothed out. Dirt map tests to come.

Updated Buggy with Wipers

Here's the lastest update on the Buggy. Front panel faceting fixed, wipers installed, and the color of the lights have been desaturated. Below it is a comparison with the previously more saturated version in low resolution.

Buggy Paint/Light Comparisons

Here are a few tests of the Buggy with 3 different paint jobs, and 2 different light colors.

Original:


Forest Green:


...and finally, the requested green-silver with blue lights.

Buggy Studio Render

Here's a studio lit version of the Buggy. The body uses a tweaked version of mental ray's built in metallic car paint shader. The tires are also low resolution stand-ins. The top left forward panel is showing some faceting near where the twist handle thing-a-ma-bob sits. Going to increase the resolution on that panel before the animation tests. Also, the shadow needs to be softened up a bit.

Buggy Preview

Here is a preview of the Buggy. New additions include smoothed front bull bar setup and cheater suspension arms, springs, etc. They're not physically correct, but add a little detail to the underside of the vehicle.

The logo on the side was just slapped on. Eventually it'll become a chrome emblem of sorts.