I found a website that described what all the stats are on the side of tires, there were a few that contained this kind of information, google tire specs or something. Basically breaks down what all those numbers and descriptions mean, and how they are generally placed around a typical tire.

The Goodyear logo was found on the web.

The tread pattern is based on a photo of my car's tires and traced out in Photoshop to create a repeatable tile pattern.

All the text is just typed up in Photoshop with appropriate fonts.

The texture concept as one strip is a good one, it eliminates any texture mismatch of the side and tread and also curves all the logos and lettering for you. The trick is to find a way to unwrap the tire's UV so that it is one long strip, I ended up getting a partial solution with the unwrap tool and then doing it mostly by moving UV points manually. There must be an easier way to unfold it just using the tools and knowing them better.

well done mate. Yeh the numbers etc are the tyre size, max air pressure allowed, radial info etc.

I just typed in Google tyre tread patterns chilledout...or you could go to the tyre manufacturers websites and get them from there. You could then just grab a section in PS and repeat the pattern over the UV...make a bump or normals out of it and apply.

cheers bullet

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=ty...w=1440&bih=739

cheers guys,

yea dj its hard getting the unwrap right, i kinda maybe stole your picture of the tyre pattern(im sorry, ill never use it for anything other than the bump map testing i was doing) because i was intrigued to see if i could get a good bump map, and i literally unwrapped the geometry into one long rectangle, it turned out pretty ok, my problem was the bit of geometry where the uv's at both ends of the rectangle where from the same bit of geometry, required alot of tweaking. lol

I wouldn't mind seeing how you did the UV unwrap, sounds like it was pretty easy for you.
I had the same problem with the joins, I guess you mean they are a little curved right at the end, I think it has something to do with them being smoothed UVs. I just ended up moving the UV points in the UV texture editor until those bits joined up.

Today I learned how to use locators to control the rotation pivots of other objects, yay!

http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/...story_0259.jpg

I was trying to change the rotation pivot of the actual object and came across this cryptic instruction in another CG thread.

"Create a locator , rotate locator
Select object ,then select locator and press "p" key
Freeze Transformation
Transformation Tool--> Move Tool option , switch Local-World :bounce:"

The last line doesn't mean anything to me but the first three lines told me what I needed to do.

to move the objects pivot point hit the insert key then just move it to were you wish, and hit the insert key again :)


um my uv map looks like that, the blue circle is one side of the tyre, and i just basically put the picture of the tyre in it, duplicated it and put it on the other side and the red is the part of the tyre i didnt care about. lol.

so yea im not exactly a role model :P and may get shot by the pros for doing it this way :)

i got this result with hardly any effort, a bit of time and it would look nearly as good as yours.

you can select the object...or even verts if I remember correctly....be careful though as if the door pins dont line up one hinge may seperate...if you know what I mean.

well done chilled....nice.

I used to make a cylinder attached through the pins to make sure....

cheers bullet

Well spotted. That's exactly what I did regarding the pins, made a long thin box which revealed I needed to do a bit of remodeling to get them lined up. The thing about the locators is I could scale them up and they themselves became a good pin lining up reference.

Hey Chilledoutredhead, can you explain your method for the un-wrapping a little more.

basically man to get that long rectangle i did it the long way, i selected all the uv's then split them, then grabbed the uv's of the polygon face i wished to start on, moved them to a free space in the editor, then selected an edge and used the move and sew tool. i repeated that till i had one strip of polygon faces, then repeated the process for the next strip of faces, etc etc. to get them lined up straight i just selected a row of uv's and used the scale tool to straighten them. it did take a while but it was more tedious than hard if you know what i mean.

Thanks, it seems your way was different but not necessarily any easier. Here is how my UV mesh was laid out.

http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/...Horizontal.jpg

And considering it was a large texture at 300 dpi, a large image file to load back into Maya. Here's how the base graphics were laid down.

http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/...UV_graphic.jpg

This is a larger version that might be of use, but none of my final maps actually looked like this, these are just the base elements against grey, I turned this into a weathered diffuse map, a normal map and a reflection map. Still it may help someone test the idea.

http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/...V_graphics.jpg

Please don't anyone expect this to be an authentic copy of an actual tire, the specs are kind of random.

I tried uploading the original as an attachment but it would go through.

cool man. i think a lot of the time it comes down to personal choice as to how you achieve something in maya, definatly the end result with you tyre looks great, the added touch of the dust on them really helps

I had a lane-way model I captured using 123catch (autodesk free program), it provided me with some kind of environment to put around the car, I plan on making a proper background that isn't constructed out of a zillion wonky triangles but it does for testing for now.

http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/...an/Vray172.jpg

http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/...an/Vray175.jpg

http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/...an/Vray173.jpg

Almost the last thing I've put on this model are these curtains...

http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/...an/Vray177.jpg

http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/...an/Vray176.jpg

...basically finished apart from some tiny details here and there. So the next phase is making an environment in Maya, some dirty back street scene I think.

simply awesome man, its an awesome vehicle in real life and its very well modelled :D

hey, looks really great. :)

Nice model dj, I wouldnt give it the usual Steak and Kidney street mate (waiting for the bite...its coming LOL). Give it a nice easy beach carpark secene with a board or 2! like a nice clean place man (like Perth bahahaha).

cheers bullet

been watching this thread and your progress for a while, excellent work on the van
used to own one a lifetime ago, and seeing this brought back some excellent memories ;)

agree with bullet, I'd put it in a beach scene with a couple long boards as props

quick question ...... did you make the leather texture on the seats yourself or find it somewhere? I've been looking for a texture like that haven't found any I liked, yours are exactly what I've been seeking.

will be watching for updates ;)

There are a fair few cardboard textures out there which look really decent as a bump map for leather, odd as it may seem

@DJ - the van looks great man, I like the idea of a dirty back street scene better than Ant's Aussie fantasy :P

The texture is a mixture between a tile-able leather bump stipple and wrinkled paper (cardboard), the paper is put into areas where the seat would be more worn or saggy.

I would like to do both type settings, beach side holiday and dirty urban utility. I need to bust out of the car stuff now and get into environments and textures. Could take a while so don't expect anything soon. But thanks for all the help and suggestions you guys.