wheel 2
Community Forums/Graphic Chat/wheel 2
| ||
| been playing around a bit more.... I appreciate the white bits between tyre wall and tread can easily be removed now, but I'm pleased with the results. bit less of a tire/tyre - more of a wheel - thanks to Ross and... stayne. turbosquid is good - deviantart is also a good resource.  |
| ||
| Why is it barrel shaped? |
| ||
| aaaw, Puki I thought your were forward looking. The 1st reason is that I realised that myself, but my attention to detail was sadly lacking when I generated my triangulated cylinder so its a bit more - wide track ' than necessary. Was kinda a bit focussed on producing a 2nd wheel in keeping with another blitzers advice ASAP..... The less boring version is that I have discovered time travel and in the future the roads get a bit rubbish, hence the need for wider tires. erm tires. No, I was right the first time - tyres. English originated in .... England. So, just cos theres a fifth british folk compared to american folk doesn't mean our language has to go all tired. |
| ||
| It looks like a wheel with a tire on it. |
| ||
| I would just scale it down, on whatever axis will make it look like a wheel with a tyre on it. You can do that in UU too, before you export. |
| ||
| you can make wheels look better by beveling the edges a bit i know it adds polys but its worth it unless you cars going to be tiny in game. something like this only spend a bit longer on it than i did  |
| ||
| Thanks for the suggestion Pete, Had wanted to try rhe extra poly version as you've suggested - but I am concerned at what point polys becoms an issue. I was thiniking of making an articulated truck kind of an affair.... |
| ||
| Well back along I was making a 4 player split screen driving game using blitz3d and jv-ode. I got as far as having a track and 4 cars with wheels like the one above. it ran great on my laptop so i dont think polys will get to be an issue for a while, bare in mind everything in my game was rendered 4 times because its split screen. |
| ||
| Have rescaled my image in UU3D, thanks Ross, it is more like a wheel with a tyre on it. @Pete Carter, thanks for the feedback. I've also been using JV-ODE, although I'm along way from the polished racer you seem to have there. Looks very impressive with the aerial 'map' image in the bottom right. |
| ||
| I can't see me finishing it the code is a real mess as i didnt really know what i was doing when i started it, ive not got the time to make tracks and all details etc, the cars drive well and you can tweak them but ive only got two tracks the one pictured and a offroad track. Ive got the blitzmax version of jv-ode too so i may port it over when i have more time. It has 1970s cars like the ford escort mk1 and mini cooper. |
| ||
| Super cool Pete, I've got the B3D version of JV-ODE, I spent some time a while back trying to get network play working with JV-ODE - it made my head hurt and I was struggling to compensate for the different processors and numerous other complex things, I developed some client server stuff at the byte passing level on top of something Wings developed...but kind of gave in. Not totally, just needed a rest. Anyhow, my code is also a bit of a mess within B3D (ermm understatement), however if you were willing to share your code I'd be prepared to upgrade my JV-ODE to BMax as well for the privelege of seeing how to go about something of the scale you have managed. I was trogging on down a client server approach..... got a bit tough and needed a prolonged rest. I have managed some stuff within BMax, in fact the only 'finished' thing I have achieved - which took some doing. But, back on thread, my wheel is less barrel-esque now, and I now know how to apply images within UU3D now thanks to RossC 's help. With your advice Pete I will dig out the bevel ness within UU3D, I apprecaite the level of application that is required to achieve what you have - my projects might be done but all in good time however Gotta go and watch a film with the Mrs now...... Cheers. |
| ||
| If i can make my code readable i will try and clean it up a bit. it wouldnt be anything you could learn off. I started by getting the car demo that comes with jv-ode and scaling the car physics objects to fit my mesh then made 3 more copies of the code for the first car the added keydowns for all the tweaks and just played around until i had a car that drives ok. im more of an artist that a coder and was trying to program with no skill at all. Ive got alot better now but im still learning but i didnt even use types for my cars i just duplicated lots of code. madness. I dont have much time at the moment but ill try. |
| ||
oh i found a more up to date screenshot but i can find the source code for the last update i did grrrrr! i have so many backups from my last machine that i made when it was on its last legs.  bit better shot of the car. |
| ||
| I'm sure you can use a proxy mesh, for your physics engine if your worried about your wheel being too high poly. I wouldn't worry too much though about that :o) |
| ||
| yeah my cars use proxy meshes |
| ||
| I'll have to investigate proxy meshes then... I presume the engine uses a low poly mesh which the complicated eye candy mesh is a child of. |
| ||
| yep thats about it, in my game its just 2 shaped cubes stacked |
| ||
| I thought I would add my attempt at wheel making to this thread. Ford RS Escort MKI/II and Capri Alloy  This is still a bit of a WIP. The tyre texture needs to be re-done and the rim it's self needs a bit more work ( nuts and a center hub ). And onther tip to make the wheel look better is to move the center vertex of the wheel forward to add a little bit of depth. Edit heres's an update let me know what you think  and here it is in the editor  Now I have to see what it looks like in Blitz3D Just noticed that it needs more tread pattern. |
| ||
| I would exaggerate the rim depth - push the first subdivision line (where the white rim metal starts) in so it leaves this section of the rim tapering in at 45 degrees, then push the centre point in so it sits just forward of that first subdivisions depth. It should look a lot better with that extra depth. Also, try making the tread area slightly lighter to make it appear worn. |
| ||
| Looks like we should turn this into a the first art/modelling competition. Most realistic and low poly wheel? |
| ||
| Looks like we should turn this into a the first art/modelling competition. Most realistic and low poly wheel? I think I would lose as there are much better artist than I around here. And I wouldn't want to try as I to busy with this and doing the garden while I've got some holidays.  Hears and up date on the wheel  |
| ||
| @dawlane - very nice work! Regarding the point about this thread evolving into a 1st steps in 3d modeling / texturing I achieved my results by doing this: http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=83641#944470 @dawlane - what editor do you use ? |
| ||
| @Vorderman - I played with the rim and found that it distorted the image a bit too much. I could add another sub-division between the tyre and rim just to see what it looks like @Blitzploter - Glad you like it. I used 4 tools (technically 3) Genetica 3, Photoshop CS4 Extended and Cinema 4D 10.5 XL (two tools in one as C4D comes with BodyPaint 3D). Most of the work was done in C4D/Bodypaint with the tread pattern made in Genetica and using Photoshop to produce a rubber texture colour and putting various image elemnts together with touching up as necessary. I could have use Photoshop to do the tread pattern but as I had already made one a few months back in Genetica I thought why waste the time re-doing it. I used C4D to make a spline/outline of a reference image of a Ford RS Escort MK I/II/Capri alloy wheel, position the splines along the Z-axis and then converted (have to use Extrude Nurbs for this) them to points so I could use the other tools to add and manipulate geometry to make a hi-poly mesh for the rim that I could and materials to the polygon faces then render out to use with a low poly wheel mesh. BodyPaint was use to unwrap the UV's of the low poly mesh, fix the UV seams and add wear to the tread area of the tyre. I think the wearing need more work fading the edges. Here's the some pictures of the rim construction and final render  And here's texture  At some point I may modify this model so you would be able to see brake disk and caplipers |
| ||
| calipers as well? that'd be challenging - do you intend to make the calipers static behind the alloys - that'd be a challenge indeed although admittedly not to hard... The polygon count might creep up a bit - do you intend to use it in animations or static renders? I think Dawlane has (just...?) crept ahead in the realism stakes for a low polygon count..... My tools where my wheel creation (so far) are Gimp, Ultimate Unwrap 3D and Blitz 3D. |
| ||
| I think you could get away with the poly count by losing a few polys off the back of the wheel and using a couple of poly planes (one static the other rotates with the wheel) with disk and caliper (with alpha transparencies) images applied then using a texture format that supports alpha transparencies for the wheel texture. I may later when I think it's finished ( and every body else does) make the model available for down load. My tools where my wheel creation (so far) are Gimp, Ultimate Unwrap 3D and Blitz 3D. No modeling application? It may be worth your while getting something like AC3D and fragMotion for animation. If you can afford it it is worth getting something like C4D. The problem with C4D is it hasn't got good file export options, but there are work arounds. |
| ||
| http://www.inivis.com/, looks quite impressive, unfortunately outside of my budget for now. I do have a copy of blender that I need to get to grips with - thanks for the tip about C4D. |
| ||
| @Dawlane - sorry, you misunderstood me there - I meant the subdivision where the white metal of the rim meets the inner hub spokes, not where it meets the rubber tyre. To show you what I mean here's an image of the wheels in SRX - the white rim metal is inset quite a long way so that the hub centre moves in a parallax way relative to the rim and tyre, which looks much better when seen at an angle. There is a little bit of texture distortion around the crease but I don't mind that as it can always be fixed by altering the texture slightly.  |
| ||
| @Vorderman - I thought I had misunderstoud you there, I did originally have the sud-division in a bit more and as you say there was a fair bit of distortion. I would like to ask if there are any tutorials/articals on fixing this problem in Photoshop as I am new to this application. And would the warp tool be of use here? Edit - No problems with the image fixing. I have found a way to do it with BodyPaint and Photoshop. :) Thanks @Blitzplotter I forgot to mention that C4D does have a plugin to export Blitz3D files (It's around the fourm somewhere). The only caveat (as far as I know) to using this plugin and the XPort! (exports directX files with animation frames) is that you have to use the old method of rigging charcters (i.e Bones with vertex maps) and not the new joint and skin method as found in C4D 10+. |
| ||
| @Vorderman, nice looking car that..... stunt racer esque which I was a big fan off back in the day. @Dawlane, thanks for the extra tips - might get around to my first ever car shell/body in blender this week - downloaded some excellent tutorials a while back that shows you how to go about creating a car body from 2d blue prints/side elevations of a motor. |
| ||
| The best way I've found to model a car (lo-poly at least) is to start by creating all the main feature shapes in their correct positions - so layout all 4 wheelarches, place all the window shapes correctly and then add smaller features such as the headlight shapes, bumpers, radiator etc.. So long as you spend time getting the key features in the right places and shapes then it's then normally quite easy to join it all together, and you'll find that the shape of the car flows quite nicely around these key features. |
| ||
| I think that one of the hardest parts of modeling any vehicle,object etc is finding good reference images that are usable, unless you draw your own or go out into the wild and take as many photographs as you can of the thing you wish to model. |
| ||
| There are lots of good blueprint sites around so you can get the basic shapes correct, for example: http://www.suurland.com/ http://www.the-blueprints.com/ http://www.tutorials3d.com/eng/default.asp http://carblueprints.narod.ru/ http://leander.mutsaers.us/ http://3dcar.ru/blueprints/ http://www.trafic-amenage.com/vehiplan/vehicules.html http://jpracing.racerplanet.com/modules/myalbum/index.php |
| ||
| Sourced a good blueprint of a motor, started a tutorial on how to model a car in blender (I completed a tutorial a while back which generated a city of skyscrapers).... Also completed quite a few tutorials in Wings in the past so have a rough idea - too rough though. Quickly found out I was running before walking/crawling for that matter. Have just created my first snowman in blender....... my car will have its day. @Vorderman & Dawlane - thanks for the tips. |
| ||
| @Vordeman I knew of four of these sites, so thanks for the links to the others. One problem that I've found is that some of the drawing views have disproportionate scaling. That is take for example top and side views. Both drawings may be of the same lenght, but key points along that lenght, like the start/end of the windscreen/windows are misplaced. So you have to do a bit of tweeking to try and get the proportions correct. With the model of the Escort MKI RS shell (pictured above) the top and side view were fine, but the front and rear drawing were out,which makes me think that the width and hight are slightly out of proportion. This is where real photographs taken at various angles would come in handy (and hard to find for many projects unless you can get access the thing you are trying to create). I know that there are a number of ways to set up reference image in a 3D application. One is to load the images as back drops (this is what I used for the car shell) and scale a cube object to two of the images and then scale the last image accordingly. And another method that involves making 3 (or a few more) plane object that run along each modeing axis textured with the reference images. At some point I will see if I fare better using plane objects in key places. But thats for later after I've finish playin with the wheel |
| ||
| I found the 3-plane approach works much better as you can be sure the scaling of all 3 is correct when you get the key features to line up across 2 or 3 of the planes, something that's hard to judge when you have a single reference pictures as the background of seperate viewports. Also, you can spin the mesh around and still see the 3 planes at the same time to get a better feel for whether your mesh shape is right. |
| ||
Here a pic of the wheel that I got sofar as it looks in Blitz3D. As you can see scaling down the texture from 4096x4096 to something more resonable, I've lost a lot of detail on the tread pattern. May be I should have started with the texture size that I had in mind? Well I could get round this by redoing the tread pattern. This was a 512x512 image scaled to a 256x512 then tiled 16 times. I will see if scaling the pattern to 384x512 and then tiling 12 times. Or darkinig the tread pattern more before scaling. The coloured oval shapes highlight a few things. The red shows the rim distortion caused by the mesh. The cyan shows where I have began to fix it (still needs working on) And the red shows a slight angling of the rim when seen face on. |
| ||
| If you use a smaller section of tread pattern and repeat it around the circumference of the wheel, say, 12 times, you'll get much better resolution and sharpness while still using a smaller texture. |
| ||
| This is a thread devoted to a textured, beveled cylinder. Right-o then. dawlane: Your UV mapping is incredibly inefficient, and that's one place to start optimizing. The way you're going about things, I could do better in 128x256 easily. To start, you have the same plane of the wheel split into two separate blocks, and you aren't even organizing them very well. They should have been the same part of the texture to start with. Secondly, you're duplicating the same image for both sides of the wheel, which is just silly. Thirdly, you could just as easily tile the treads of wheel, allowing you to have far more detail in the treads. Also, might as well add more segments to the wheel. It's 2009, there's only going to be four of them per car, chances are you can spare it. |
| ||
| @Nilium, thanks for your extra advice - it all helps. I've aspirations towards modelling a car body in the fullness of time - however I reckon it'll be a while before I'm modelling an escort2000 along dawlane's lines. But, about your point of adding more segments - what happens if you've say, 20 cars motoring around a destruction derby - segment counts must come into play at some point? |
| ||
This is my wheel texture, which is 256x128 - I repeat the small tread section around each face of the wheel to save space. This texture has both off-road and slick type treads on it. |
| ||
| But, about your point of adding more segments - what happens if you've say, 20 cars motoring around a destruction derby - segment counts must come into play at some point? No, they really don't. Vertex count is important, but that's not likely to be an issue with a slightly detailed 32-segment wheel, or a 28-segment wheel, or 24 segments. Face count is even less important these days, although I don't know how important it is with old tech like B3D - still, shouldn't be very important. With the aforementioned 32-segment wheel, you're looking at around 480-768 tris depending on how much detail you want. |
| ||
| The amount of detail you should put into the wheel depends upon how large it will be on-screen for most of the time. Put in just enough so it doesn't look obviously segmented when seen during the majority of the gameplay. If you look at my SRX wheels you can just make out the poly edges on the rear wheels and the view you have of it is about the normal viewing angle when following one of the CPU cars - any more detail in the wheels would be wasted for 95% of the gameplay. If your car has covered wheelarches then you can get away with even lower polycounts, and you can also remove the innermost bevelled edge and rim inset as they will never be seen - my SRX wheels don't have the inner rim inset as it's just not really seen most the time - their profile from the rear is more important as you tend to follow close behind the other car and normally in line behind it. |
| ||
| @Vorderman - your wheels in the image you provided are quality - seems an obvious statement but they are 'round'. When you compare it to Colin Macrae Dirt - that can be let down at times by octagonal looking wheels - that is being very picky as I find it an immensly enjoyable racer on the XBox 360. But, my point is - if Dirt struggles to achieve totally round wheels - if B3D can pull it off then that supercedes the engine that Dirt is running. Sorry bout the typos - gotta go an watch a film with the family. Cheers. |
| ||
| The SRX wheels have only 18 sides with a bevel on both inner and outer edges, and a recessed hub on the outer side only. Including the brake disc they have 242 triangles. All in all very low poly. In the game image the 'roundness' is being helped by the lighting and the rest of the graphics sitting around them - placed on a white background they look pretty angular. |
| ||
| Nilium You have permission to hit me over the head with something heavy. What hell was I thinking. Re-modeled the object with more segments, did a bit of UV editing to tidy things up, gave as much space to the text, rim and tread. Re-did the texture to fit 128x256 pixels (the rubber of the tyre/tread pattern sides needs abit more work).    It's been quite fun and probably more with the Escort shell. Edit - Funny after a good nights sleep, you wake up with a thought of how to improve on a thing. At the moment I gave the tyre wall with out the text a smaller area. I could sacrifice some of the text area, move the UV's for the tyre wall to one side of the text, mirror every other one to avoid seams ( hopefully ) so I can add a circle round the circumference of the wheel and give some more room the the tread pattern. |
| ||
| That looks much nicer. I'd still indent the rim a bit more to make better use of those polys. If you wanted you could also save UV/texture space by just using a quarter of the rim instead of the full circle (90 degrees of it rather than 360). |
| ||
| Was just about to say that till i read your post. That way, you could get better resolution for your text. |
| ||
| @Blitzplotter Sorry for hi-jacking this thread. @Vorderman/Ross C Was thinking that about the quarter rim as it's symmetrical to squeeze more detail into the available space. One question I would like to ask is what would be the best way to implement "on the fly" effects, say like the vehicle running through mud and the texture then reflecting that action? |
| ||
| @dawlane, best hijack I've seen in a while, am enjoying the thread. Your latest image is something to behold. And I wouldn't want to try as I to busy with this and doing the garden while I've got some holidays. yeah done some gardening maself this week. |
| ||
got wheels on my truck! |
   |