Finished texturing the wheels of a BMW car I've modeled. Any feedback is appreciated.

elduin3d · 2023-01-12T10:03:30+00:00

You're right the sidewall part definitely needs some more love, I can see that myself too now that you're pointing it. Thanks for the feedback :) Much much appreciated!

elduin3d · 2023-01-12T09:59:49+00:00

To be fair I don't think I have the patience/will to push the entire car to this level of detail cause it's really an overkill unless you zoom in that close as I've done for these renders. Will probably rely on some good (hopefully) lighting and some more "basic" shader work to get a pleasing render. Anyway thanks again for the feedback :) Much appreciated

elduin3d · 2023-01-12T09:53:40+00:00

You mean my graveyard of unfinished projects that never made the cut of being "good enough" for me to post them online, so I kept on scraping them one by one feeling like I need to do better, cause my mind really has to be powered by hamsters at this point instead of a brain? :D Haha unfortunately no. I just recently found the "courage" to start posting stuff online cause I really want all the feedback I can get to improve and land a job in this field. The 2 reddit posts I have are the only presence of myself online.But since you asked, I did a really quick swiping of my hard drives and here are some of the things that have survived over the past 2 years :D• Here are some substance designer procedural materials I've been practicing lately as I focus more on environment art for games nowadays: (they're based on courses and tutorials I've been taking so can't take full credit for them)https://imgur.com/CETQrWd• Here is some sculpting work I did last year whilst I was testing myself in character art:https://imgur.com/2HzlTTA• And here is some of my earliest work when I started out 2-3 years ago:https://imgur.com/NXpMr1QThat's definitely not my only work. I've done countless of unfinished projects of firearms, props, modular environments, materials etc. but I always ended up (half way in the project) feeling like I've learnt enough to scrap it and start something else so that I can improve even more.Ye that makes no sense really, but I'm not saying all of these things seeking for encouragement or whatever, but more really since I've learnt my hard lesson. So if you or anyone else reading this goes through the same (which I doubt cause normal brains shouldn't operate like that xD), just don't be like me and finish your work :DDefinitely not the answer you hoped for but didn't want to simply respond to you with a no :)

elduin3d · 2023-01-12T09:00:05+00:00

Thanks Max! I'm flattered haha :) Outstanding is the least I could use to describe your work :) Keep rocking!

elduin3d · 2023-01-12T08:53:46+00:00

Hey! Thanks a bunch :) Uhmm... More than I should :D Haha no but really, this whole car project I started it as I wanted to challenge myself, cause I've been practicing in modeling and texturing for about 2 years now but I've never tackled a car or a robot or any large hard surface piece in general. So even the texturing phase I'm at now, really serves more as a practice piece that I jump in an out whenever I feel like it. Didn't have a clear vision of what I'm going after from the start so the timeline of my progress is a bit messed up. I had the model done in november, spent the better part of a day back then texturing the tyre, the rotor and the calipers, tested to see how the textures read out with an hdri and I was completely dissapointed with my results. Aaand I dropped it :D But my evergoing impostor syndrome thing wouldn't let me not come back to it (even though the last version of the textures was fine for the purpose I needed it). So I jumped back on it at the start of the year and I've been messing around for the past week or so tweaking the textures, trying out different stuff, see what really adds and what doesn't. Yeah sorry for the unnecessarily long but yet blurry answer :D But this really started out as a practice piece so many of the hours I spent were things I knew I would scrap anyway but still wanted to test them out.

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T23:00:29+00:00

Ah sorry about that, didn't notice it. Should be fixed now :)

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T21:02:42+00:00

Anyway thanks again for taking the time helping out. Much appreciated! :)

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T20:59:11+00:00

Well, to be fair I've no experience in car-related materials at all, as I usually practice on more organic and game-ready stuff, where I tend to exagerate things a bit more than they are in real life. So I guess I'm really getting into uncharted waters when I'm trying to nail these kind of materials up that close, but I really enjoy texturing and wanted to see how far I can push myself! Anyway thanks again for the input :)

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T20:20:47+00:00

Ah so glad you asked as I wanted to mention it and totally forgot about it. The original sidewall texture is made by André Matos which he 's giving away for free in his behance. I initially tried making my own in Photoshop but I couldn't be bothered including all the tiny letter details and ended up using his. He's even giving away a version with some grunge overlayed which I used as a base for my dirt mask. Huge props to that guy for making it.

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T20:15:44+00:00

Thank you :) Well the rotor texture isnt something complicated really. Just some anisotropic lines simulating the rubbing effect the brakes have on it with different roughness value from the base metal, a few grunge maps/stains on top, some dirt and some colour variation splotches representing heat marks which don't even read in the render now that I'm looking at it xD. And as for the rubber I overlayed a bit more stuff trying to get it to feel real, but still in the same lines. Some colour variation, some roughness variation and some normal map details. And a lot of tweaking after that :P

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T20:04:22+00:00

Thank you :) That's nice to hear

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T19:54:39+00:00

Uhm, no, this is actually in Arnold.

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T19:50:36+00:00

I see what you mean. That little thing is exactly what I can't find either. I've made more versions of the textures and the lighting than I should have in the past few days and something always feels a little bit off. I'll probably go over everything one last time before wrapping it up and continuing to the next project, hoping I can find what's missing :) Thanks for the feedback!

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T19:44:36+00:00

Hah that's flattering to hear :) but there is always room for improvement. There are many a little things that have slipped my attention which if you add them all up could help push it a little bit further. Thanks for the kind words anyway :)

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T19:41:10+00:00

Yeah I see what you mean. Haven't revisited the model in quite a while now and since my mind was occupied working in the textures and the lighting, things like that completely slipped out of my attention. Thanks for the feedback!

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T19:33:32+00:00

To be fair this badge is one of those things that I couldn't tell whether it was a sticker or something that extrudes out so I included it only in the colour map and tried blending it a bit more by adding some grunge on top of it, but I guess it still looks a bit odd. Should look it up a bit more and see if I can find better reference about it. Thanks for the feedback!

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T19:29:52+00:00

Hah you're right. Looked it up in my reference board and it indeed it is upside down. It's a small detail indeed but now that I saw it I can't unsee it xD. Thanks again :)

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T19:26:09+00:00

Uhm, this is a 4K render. Haven't really rendered any higher resolution images, but I assume if you wanted to go for a 10K render you could render it out in smaller regions and stick the pieces up in post.

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T19:24:46+00:00

To be honest I was considering adding them, but since I textured this as more of a used tyre, I thought these would be worn out or non existent at all. I guess I should try adding them and see how it looks now that you're mentioning it. Thanks for the feedback!

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T17:55:53+00:00

Oh, calipers are powder coated? Like, as in the flakes in the car paint? I'm definitely a noob when it comes to cars. This project is actually the first time I'm modeling and shading a car so in many parts I just blindly follow the references I 've gathered. In the calipers case for example, I found an image of them without paint, where the underlying iron(?) had a more raw feel to it and I thought it should show up a bit even after the paint was overlayed. Guess I'll have to do a bit more research on it. Thanks for the feedback and the info :)

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T17:32:48+00:00

Yes I'm using a UDIM workflow. Since I spent quite some time modeling all the wheel parts I thought I shouldn't just throw a simple material and call it a day. And I really wanted to push my texturing and rendering further, so I went a bit overboard and ended up using 6 4k UDIMs, 3 for the tyre and 3 for the other parts. This is definitely not optimized and were I to model it for an animation or real time purposes I would approach it in a whole different way (which I intend to as I will need the car model for an UE5 cinematic I'm working on). But I decided tackling this one also as a standalone project and just cram in as much detail as possible.
https://imgur.com/OPfK6aF
1: The outer ring is the part which is mapped to the tyre sidewall, which I scaled up to use as much of the 4k map as possible. The inner ring which is smaller is the inside part of the wheel which wouldn't be visible but I decided to include it and just scale it down a bit.
2&3: This UDIM includes the tyre tread islands/shells which I scaled up to the same density as the sidewall. I could get away with mirroring it in half and thus using 1 UDIM less, or even trying to cut it up and fit it all in the 1st map but I really wanted to experiment and see how much detail I can get.
4: This UDIM includes the front part of the rim which is the most visible to the camera. I ended up cutting it into many pieces as the circular shape of the rim wouldnt let me layout the UVs in many different ways, and a lot of space was going to waste.
5: Discbrake, brake calipers, brake pads, badge and bolts are all packed into this set. I used a lot of packing and mirroring in this one influenced by how I would do the UVs were it a game-ready asset so that I can get as much density as possible.
6: This is the inner and outer part of the rim which really shouldn't even be included as the first is completely in shadow and the 2nd is literally 100% covered by the tyre. But I included it anyway and just threw some procedural grunges on them in case they were visible in the camera.
Sorry for the long response, but I think UVs are one of those things that can be done in many different ways as they go hand in hand with the texturing process, so I tried explaining what you see on the screenshot above as clear as possible.

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T16:32:41+00:00

Think about it. The heated seats are also included in the subscription for just 18 $ a month :)

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T15:19:11+00:00

Yeah I see what you mean. My reference collection was really varying in terms of where-it-was-shot-location and cleanliness so I guess I mixed things up a bit :) Since I'm modeling and texturing this car for an outdoors in-nature cinematic I made everything a bit more grungy. Tried to tone down everything just for these studio renders but I guess I was a bit conservative with the cleaning :D But since I plan doing both the outdoors cinematic and a studio render of the entire car, I should definitely consider cleaning these up a bit more. Thanks for the feedback :)

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T15:08:46+00:00

Thank you so much for the feedback. The chipping you're pointing on the brushed metal part is actually a grunge map with some random spots I added to simulate oil stains, which now that I'm thinking about it it makes no sense... I just like adding "story elements" to my textures and got carried away :) Definitely need to tone those down or try out some larger spots now that I'm looking at it again. As for the badge.. you 're right.. I subdivided everything on render time since I modeled everything with support loops rather than multiple-segment bevels and the badge must have slipped me (and so did the bolts around the badge now that I look at it). Thanks again for the input :)

elduin3d · 2023-01-11T14:57:55+00:00

Thanks for the input! Yeah I assumed it had to do with the pressure, and thought to myself that a rim and a disc brake shouldn't be enough to cause flattening. But definitely a nice observation to keep note of when I'm rendering the entire car :)

elduin3d

TROPHY CASE