[SurfingAlien]

Hi!
here's a rim i modeled in Silo, first step of a complete wheel WIP (and maybe a car?)... it's actually my second model in Silo (and the fifth or so on in general using subD) so i know it's far from perfect but I'm quite happy with it... it's been a good and funny learning exercise.

Thanks to all those who helped me, any comment or help is welcome

Regards,
Alessandro

[xbo]

Hi SurfingAlien,
looks great, but you need to think about some Edges loop, cause so far i can see you have only really hard edges.

Or do you want to do this in a render? Do you want to make a little bit smoother during the Render?

Cheers
XBO

[SurfingAlien]

Hi XBO!
and thanks for your comment... I guess I can see what you mean and you're quite right. I really want to have hard edges between light/dark grey (kinda diamond-edged rim, if i'm correct), while some others should be beveled a little for a more real look.
I'm gonna try some render to see how it come out as soon as i can

Anyway I think I'll try the tyre before...

Best Regards,
Alessandro

[SurfingAlien]

some little updates... bought a set of Yokohama for my rims

Cheers,
Alessandro

[Sarford]

Nice smooth threads SurfingAlien. What is the poly count on that?

[SurfingAlien]

Originally Posted by Sarford

Nice smooth threads SurfingAlien. What is the poly count on that?

Hi Sarford and thanks for your words... the base model of the tyre is 13.7k and become 222k or 890k at level 2 and 3 of subD
i guess it's a bit too high but i'm not an expert and so i often tend to create some redundant geometry... don't know if the (wedges?) really need to be so accurate but t's not more than an exercise and i plan to do some close renders...
here's a shot of the wedge, then replicated 30 times along the tyre surface (this part is done in Cheetah3D with a RingModifier)

now it's time to put it all together!

Cheers,
Alessandro

[Sarford]

Wow, that is a lot of polygons. Very good for a close-up shot of the tire and rim only.
But if you would to a full car shot I guess the best way to make threads is by using a displacement map. Saves a lot of work and polygons.

Your tire looks very good, now let's see a render of that

[SurfingAlien]

Hi!
some renders of the complete project: very first stage so i still have to work on scene setup, materials and lights (there's only a low res HDRI + radiosity)... enough for me to see that XBO was right about hard edges (some of them desperately call for bevel!) and that the logo UV is mirrored

complete scene 453k polys @ subD level 2 - Rendered in Cheetah3D

Cheers,
Alessandro

[SurfingAlien]

Hi!
some minor updates... fixed the logo, tried different backgrounds. not so much time to go for the bevel work

Cheers,
Alessandro

[randomblink]

Originally Posted by SurfingAlien

here's a shot of the wedge, then replicated 30 times along the tyre surface (this part is done in Cheetah3D with a RingModifier)

Question for the group...
Is there a silo operation that would have done the same thing? Or is it absolutely necessary that he took this into another app to create this effect?

[SurfingAlien]

dear randomblink,
I tried with the Array tool but can't achieve the same result: it lets you array an object along a circle but the object orientation remains the same (the one in the screenshot has been manually rotated... ad you obviously don't want to do it if you can).
another thing that comes to mind is copy/paste/move manipulator to 0.0.0/rotate 12° and repeat this till you fill all the tyre (not 30 times 'cause you can select multiple threads after the first cycle...). this is how i made the rim, BTW
this AFAIK... and i still know very little about Silo maybe someone has a decent solution or a workaround for that, I'm interested in it too...

cheers,
Alessandro

P.S.: since i saw you're on a mac... i think Cheetah has some great features for the price, so don't know what's your 3D pipeline at the moment but you may want to take a look ;-) it works very well with Silo models, you can even put your .sia in a Cheetah SmartFolder and keep it automatically up-to-date every time you change it in Silo... (and... no, I don't get any money for this, its only positive feedback :-) ) have fun

[randomblink]

Well, my 3d pipeline was simply that Silo was the best looking, most 3ds max 2010 looking app for the Mac that I could find. I'm a die-hard PC user who got accepted into a Mobile Development Program at school. They've furnished me with a MacBook, iPod Touch, and free tuition. I have recently fallen in love with a 3d printing site and would love to create some physical models from ideas in my brain so I started learning 3d modeling on my own.

After about 3 months of 3ds max Lynda.com tutorials, I started building models and then I got my Laptop and so I am shifting to Mac-based which means a whole new learning curve and I didn't want it to be that hard. (gonna turn my desktop into a Linux webserver over the next couple of months which means losing my PC software mainly) SO, I found Silo, watched a few videos. I love Z-Brush and 3Ds Max and Silo seems like a decent blend of the two.

Just went and looked over Cheetah 3D and I might give that a shot too, but to be brutal, simple models is all I need. Low Polygon count, etc. I am also trying to learn electronics and I want to be able to design (and then have printed) the cases for my electronics creations as well.

SOOOOOO... that's where I am. Silo is awesome so far. But the power of 3ds max will be missed until I can create similar things in Silo... It's all about the training. I love the free videos, but I would kill for some with Mac hints in them.

Thanks for the suggestion, way cool. I love this new world where people who will never meet face-to-face can still help each other out. Very cool...

Have a good one man...

[RogerKnightly]

Looking nice man, totally agree that these need some beveling. also your HDR is very bland, there is virtually no colour in the render which makes it look really CG.
I'd use something with a little more colour range and make sure its lighting the scene., also some slight tints to your lights may help. I dont know how Cheetah manages this but it would really bring out your metal.

If you need some nice hdrs (for free) check out
http://www.crazy8studio.com/hdr.php

or the old classic
http://www.debevec.org/probes/

[SurfingAlien]

Originally Posted by RogerKnightly

Looking nice man, totally agree that these need some beveling. also your HDR is very bland, there is virtually no colour in the render which makes it look really CG.
I'd use something with a little more colour range and make sure its lighting the scene., also some slight tints to your lights may help. I dont know how Cheetah manages this but it would really bring out your metal.

If you need some nice hdrs (for free) check out
http://www.crazy8studio.com/hdr.php

or the old classic
http://www.debevec.org/probes/

Thanks for comments and links... i totally agree. don't know if i'm going to work again on this model very soon 'cause i'm quite busy with some other things right now but i'm sure one day i'll return on this scene (the new Cheetah 5 has a brand new material system so i'll try to get it better, once the Silo bevel thing is done...)

cheers,
Alessandro

[RogerKnightly]

Originally Posted by SurfingAlien

Thanks for comments and links... i totally agree. don't know if i'm going to work again on this model very soon 'cause i'm quite busy with some other things right now but i'm sure one day i'll return on this scene (the new Cheetah 5 has a brand new material system so i'll try to get it better, once the Silo bevel thing is done...)

cheers,
Alessandro

You can bevel in silo now perfectly well. What I do is do a flat bevel, then ring select the new edges cut them and CTRL+W move them out a little. Same effect. if not a little more time consuming.