Car Trim
Trim - Crest - Page 2
Part of the fun of this next step is going to be creating and using a material that compliments the detail we are modeling. I like when you get the opportunity to use textures that provide a good alternative to adding geometry, but don't necessarily look like just textures as such...
Oh, we'll get to practice some more spline projection, and detailed extrusions, and selection sets too... and we all know how fun that has been so far!
The first thing I need to do is set up a selection set to differentiate between the crest border, and the inlay that will receive our texture. I will want to restrict this texture to the inlay selection.
Select all polygons on the front face of the crest plate, and this includes very narrow polygons around the edges where the minute extrusions occurred. The reason for this is due to the way that HyperNURBS affects the decal.
By this, I mean that if you were to simply use the front face of the plate, you would see the texture restricted to that area pulled away from the edges of the polygons it was supposed to be applied to. The HyperNURBS is actually rounding the texture from the edges as if it were geometry (at least, that's what I believe it to be!)
However, if you include the tight edge polygons in this selection set, it provides the texture with additional information on the surface with which to anchor itself to - in much the same way as we use those tight polygons to sharpen edges, they can be used to pin down texture edges on a hyperNURBS object...
...well, enough with the doctoral thesis, just try to include the edge polygons!
After selecting the polygons, set the selection, and name it 'crestface'.
Here you can see I'm only using the color, specularity, bump and alpha channels. I will only bother to show you the settings for bump and alpha, since they are the major ones that are integral to the result I am after. The color I used is red, with a little dull specular.
The bump as you can see uses the texture map, fairly heavily too... I used -60%, but you are free to adjust to taste. I also used MIP interpolation, but only because I was too lazy to change it!!! ;-)
The same map is used in the alpha channel, with the 'soft' checkbox off.
The default settings worked just fine for my purposes, as did leaving the alpha at MIP interpolation too. (Yet another glaring example of my laziness... but I'm sure you've seen a few in this tutorial!!!)
Anyway, the end result is that the shiny red texture will be applied only to the part of the crest indicated by the black part of the map. (Those little white circles on the clack quadrants of the texture are just cheap ways of faking extra detail...)
From the front view, you can apply the material as a decal to the crest plate using flat projection. Don't check the 'mix with other materials' box, we want this material to basically lay on top of the plate material.
I won't bother with the numeric specifics of the texture application... you can get plenty close enough with the texture size tools and watching the real time texture mapping in the editor. (Well, that's all I did anyhow!)
Oh...
I forgot to mention that you should restrict that material to the 'crestface' selection set we made earlier.
That way you can see that the texture is applied like a decal to the front of the crest, but doesn't affect the geometry that makes up the surrounding rim.
A quick rendering shows the effect we achieved. Part of the crest is a raised red inlay sitting overtop the base chrome plating. In actuality, the other quadrants are typically an off-white inlay on real Bel Airs, but I happen to like extra chrome, and I'm not planning any real closeups of this detail.
However, I do want to add the Chevy 'bowtie' symbol to the crest...
To start, I created four splines with evenly distributed points that is reminiscent of the Chevy bowtie without the slant...
Notice how the points are all spaced in a grid like fashion... it is easiest to do this with grid snaps enabled.
Note: Make sure these splines are all of the 'linear' variety... and use the Connect command to join them into one object.
Next I used a Shear modifier object on the spline object to add the appropriate slant.
Use the Current State to Object function to 'freeze' this modification into the form of a new object.
You still get the even distribution of points, but they are all of an identical angle to one another. Then move the object such that it appears centered on the crest from the front view.
Of course the reason we used linear splines and created a healthy sampling of spline points is of course - spline projection!!!
Sorry, that's probably bloody difficult to see... :-(
Rest assured, it is merely the result of the spline object being projected to the front of the crest plate using the Project command with the XY plane setting.
The amount of points allows the splines to conform closely to the surface.
Select all points in the spline object, and using the structure manager, copy and paste them into a new polygon object.
Bridge the points together to form a network of polygons that depicts the Chevy bowtie.
Don't bother making this a HyperNURBS object, but DO take the time to add a smoothing tag...
Select all the polygons of the bowtie and extrude them outwards away from the crest plate. Switch to the bevel tool and use that to extrude once. You'll notice the central polygons will no longer have parallel edges. This shouldn't cause any problems.
Also, because we aren't using HyperNURBS on this object, we don't have to worry about making extra edge polygons to tighten corners...
With the same polygons still selected, perform an 'extrude inner' function to create the front face of the rim around the bowtie logo. Extrude the polygons back toward the crest plate so that the face of the bowtie is an inlay from the rim.
Set the original selection as 'chevinlay'. Then invert the selection, deselect the selection set tag in the object manager, and set the rim selection as 'chevrim'.
Now I've gone and made a generic shiny blue material and applied it to the logo, of course restricted to the 'chevinlay' selection set.
And I have taken my standard chrome material and applied it restricted to the 'chevrim' selection set.
Because this is not a hyperNURBS object, we aren't worried about texture distortion.
A quick render shows us that this crest is at least a reasonable facsimile for use on the front of a CGI car...
I hope it does the trick for you!
And, since I've spent all this time drilling the Chevy bowtie logo into your head, I'll be waiting for some sort of commission from GM... hmm... waiting.... waiting.... ...waiting........
No? Aw geez... guess I'd better see if some more branding will help my case...