Cars

[Ros. Riha]

Just for fun, I started plying with free models from 3DXtras.com ... I just texmeshed them into AutoCAD and fiddled with materials a little.

If anybody wanted, download from here (one of them attached to this post directly)

I did not scale them at all, so maybe putting them to milimeters and improvements in materials (I wasnt thorough at all) ...it might be interesting to prepare them really good and then just use them...in some childlike way it was fun doing it, so enjoy.

Where to put them permanently? accustudio?

[Ros. Riha]

range rover again, in ZIP, so it is downloadable:-)

[Miguel Tano Adanes]

Thanks Ros for sharing.

I think it is really necessary that someone with passion and ability in the minimal use of other "star" rendering software could spend a little time in preparing ready-to-use models for our nXt. The world out there is full of .obj, .max, .3ds, .etc files which actually cannot be used as they are in acad. This is the aim Accustudio was born for, but it's a little bit out of date!

[George Ioannidis]

Better late than never! :D

[Ros. Riha]

if this (nXt ready models) is going to become sort of long term project, let us try to establish basics sharing rules first:

• Units - I would vote for mm
• Materials - embedded textures or not?
• Versions - how to handle them? I am thinking of thefollowing example: 1)Ros prepared Rang Rover, but some materials are wrong, others could be perfected and units ar wrong... 2) Miguel downloads it and perfects it: is he supposed to overwrite the original one? could this be handled at accustudio? or elsewhere?

[Miguel Tano Adanes]

I totally agree with you.

As ready-to-use models I was referring especially to units and materials: unique unit (mm) and embed textures with same textures apart, in order to be able to change color, saturation, etc. without spending much time looking for theright decal, the right texture and so on. I personally won't worry too much about versions: once the model is "out" ready to share, everybody is free to change colors etc.

[Ros. Riha]

These models I posted sort of work that way already - you can change the color of the body very easily.

Materials: I forgot to mention that all materials, using embedded textues and being specific for this or that car should have nam starting with the name of the model, and all materials, that are "car default" (tyres, chrome...) should be named like Car-tyre or something...

I am quite curious, what would somebody else tweak from these models out.

[Rich Rosemann]

Hi  Ros,

 

I've downloaded a number of cars for rendering and my biggest gripe is too many layers. I.E. - FR-TIRE,  FL-TIRE, FR-FENDER, FL-FENDER, FR-DOOR, etc.

If the textures are embedded in the drawing, then there is no question that the layer is for the current car.  Another words, TIRES, BODY, WINDOW-GLASS, FRAME, HL-LENS, HL-BULB, ETC.  should serve.  (Does it matter if the tire goes on the right or left for rendering purposes)?  Any divisions would be done by the renderer.  Saving out a texture would be the time to be specific to the file name,

jaguar-body-red

jaguar-tires

The biggest nightmare is to open a drawing where all the layers are on the same layer, same color.

 

Enjoy the day, or night

 

Rich

 

 

 

[Ros. Riha]

Hi, Rich.

you hit exactly the stone that makes anyone walking this road to bleed.

My suggestion on how to overcome it is as follows:

 

TO THE MANAGEMENT OF A SINGLE MODEL

• If the model you downloaded allows you to work with nXt materials straight away, just enjoy the pleasure.
• If the model does not have any materials, layers, colors attached to it, just download another - such one is not worth the effort. The only possible exception would be a model, which does not show one of the above, but once you click on LF tyre, it highlights all four of them tyres - then you can attach materials By Object quite easily.
• If the model is divided by entities (as explained above) or by layers or colors, follow this procedure:
  • Isolate each material (as defined by entity, layer or color) - Express Tools would help here greatly...or Select Similar+Isolate
  • Attach a material to entities directly
  • Repeat the above for all materials needed
  • Discard all layers (necessary) and colors (voluntary, Byblock just makes management easier) - Express Tools would help here as well.
  • In other words - use the division of the model to make it work and then discard all the division
• In terms of nXt use, a model should contain only one layer 0 (zero) and all entities should be ByBlock, but with correct material assignments - there I would opt for %filename%-materialname
• Prior doing all of the above, a model should be simplified/optimized - from my first examples, are you able to distinguish 10x difference in the dwg size? - they are there, so why to use 50MB file if 5MB one does the same trick...

TO THE MANAGEMENT OF A DRAWING

• All data where applicable should be added as external references. I know most of you guys are not following this policy, but it really is a good one - especially once a model gets too complicated - external references do split it into manageable bits. The workflow also enhances this way.
• In other words, your car should be added into a model as an external reference - number of layers will not increase, once anything starts to behave strangely, you can isolate it....better way than using blocks.
• On specific things (such as rear lights of this particular Jaguar) it is good to have the separate material including embedded textures.
• On general things - tyres, chrome, wood panelling, seat leather - it is more memory efficient but more management demanding to have general materials with textures linked.
• Distinction between the above is difficult to draw, so until we will go further the road I would rather opt for embedding.
• All material settings should be tried out using the same lighting - that is why I provided free HDR and the setup, which works for me.

[George Ioannidis]

Rosťo, dík!