Digital Art Zone

Totte has made another road, this one is the country road, signs, cars aren’t included, in fact, this road hasn’t even been released yet, but it looks to be a winner.

I am on the fence with the 59 Impala and the 54 chevy. I want to buy them both.

Betsy…convince me!

twist my arm…or pull my finger…hehehe…or something!

music2u4u - 04 September 2012 08:52 AM

I am on the fence with the 59 Impala and the 54 chevy. I want to buy them both.

Betsy…convince me!

twist my arm…or pull my finger…hehehe…or something!

The 54 thats in that pic is actually the one from Dreamland, the one I use for closeup views is from Nationale7, that one is much nicer, and not that much more money, the 59 is incredible, you can make it a hardtop or convertable, in DAZ, you will need to use different shaders, I’m assuming you have a good supply of those, as both the N7 54 Chevy and Schurby’s 59 are made for Poser, I guess Schurby gave up trying to make DAZ files for his cars, but the car and all its components do load perfectly in DS4.5.

Well, we must be in car heaven here, so far in the past week, Schurby released a 59 Impala, and now Nationale7 has released a 34 Ford Hotrod, I probably won’t be getting the hotrod, as it really doesn’t appeal to me as hotrods go, if I want a 34 Ford Hotrod, I can make my own from the existing 34 Ford I have from Nationale7, but for those who are interested, here it is.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=95357

Okay, for those of us who also love the antiques, cars like the Model T and the Model, I did go ahead and purchase the 1929 Ford Woody, a Model A, as anyone who has bought anything from Meshbox knows, you don’t get to go and download it right away when make the purchase, however, a few hours later, I was able to get it, and also the 3DS version also.

The car is a nice mesh, like the Model T Roadster I purchased earlier, the mesh is wonderful, the first problem I ran into right out of the box, the car didn’t load in DAZ Studio, not a problem really, had a similar situation with the Model T from the same source, I simply closed DS4.5 and opened Poser 7, well wouldn’t you know it, seems the problem is a .cr2 problem, so the car doesn’t load at all.

So I pulled the .obj into Blender, man what a nice mesh! The model is very smooth throughout, didn’t even require any smoothing in Blender, the detail is exquisite, but there are a few things that are wrong with it, first and most glaring, anyone who knows their Model A Ford’s also know that the gas tank is in top of the cowl, (right above and behind the engine/hood), there should be a gas cap sticking up out of the top of the cowl, all Model A’s had that, from the 1928 model right up through the last 1931 model, so that is something that is missing and easily seen right from the get go.

For those of us who also appreciate a detailed engine, it does have an engine, but the modeler using artists license simply used the warmed over Model T engine model, complete with the four spark plug wires going to the four coils located behind the firewall, unfortunately, when the Model A went into production, Henry Ford had started using a distributor that was mounted right on top of the head on the right side of the engine, the coil is mounted in the firewall just underneath the gas tank, (don’t you just love the idea of all that electrical current flowing right under the gas tank?), the Model A engine was also the first engine from Ford to actually have a water pump, there were other considerations and differences between the Model A and Model T engines, maybe the modeler was just trying to save time, or maybe he/she didn’t realize there are very real differences between the two powerplants, either way, unless your an abolute rivit counter, it may not make any difference to the end user what kind of engine is under the hood, but for some of us, it does!

the interior is well detailed, simple, but so was the real car, the seats are laid out in the prototypical manor, (prototypical meaning simply that the prototype in modelers terms is the real car), the shaders are definitely set up for Poser, while this isn’t a big problem for those of us who use DS4.5, as long as you have good shaders, you can make anything look good!

Here it is!

Nice woody! I didn’t care for the hot rod either, no chrome, all black and bright redish orange….yuk!!!

Normally, especially lately, I’ve become excited when Nationale7 brings out another car, and he will again bring out something more appropriate, I’m sure someone somewhere likes it!

There are issues with the woody, as nice as the mesh is, I’ll have to go into it at a later time, but its still somewhat worth the $10 price tag, as it stands now, the only other cars I want from Meshbox are the Model T’s, the Woody will come in handy not only as a woody, but there are other bodies out there I can use on that chassis.

Okay, I finally made the time to rig up the Model A, I had rigged the front wheels and doors earlier, but now have finally fully rigged it, this now includes the back doors, I also added a Ford Script to the front top center of the radiator shell, which is a very glaring omission on the out of the box model, I don’t understand why the folks at Meshbox wouldn’t include it, its not like Ford Motor Co. would have any objections!

The one thing remaing is to make a gas filler neck for the top of the fuel tank, which is inside the cowel on a Model A Ford, another glaring omission in my opinion, and any Ford fan would notice it right off the bat, still the car, even with its .cr2 problems, is well worth the price of the out of the box model.

I made the script by simply downloading it from 3D Warehouse, pulling everything into Blender, and working on the script by sizing it to fit the front of the radiator shell, the car takes on a whole new look with the Ford script on the front, and now I’m even more inspired to actually finish it by making a gas filler neck and gas cap for it.

Daz has a new one. A 1936 Sports Car Morris. It goes to Platinum club members for $1.99. It also has a set of seperate textures also for $1.99. Nice little car.

get it here:  http://www.daz3d.com/shop/sports-car-morris

One of the things that really always bothered me about using Schurby’s cars, is the totally modern upto date license plates he always uses for his prop plates, I wanted something a little more appropriate to the age of the car, sure, a fully restored car would have todays latest license plates installed!

However, what if I wanted to render a scene from the past? So I set out to see how to change the license plates to reflect a more appropriate time period, something we model railroaders have dealt with for years, you have created a beautiful 1930’s era scene, but the only vehicles you could find on the hobby shop shelves were cars from the 1960’s and newer, that was until once company started making vintage car kits in HO scale in the 1960’s, tis the same situation in 3D modeling.

What I did was simply download some license plates from the 3D Warehouse, (its amazing what you can find there), while some of the textures supplied there won’t work well, the one advantage you do have is that you can use the model, and go to the ACME License Plate maker site, and make your own plates, those will work fine for this project.

Remember that in order for your license plates to even work in DS, you must convert the model into a .obj, so make sure your version of sketchup has the obj converter ruby.

Once you have the plate in DAZ Studio, you can use any of the .jpg pics of license plates you made at the ACME site, these lend themselves well to these sketchup license plates, you may need to resize your plates to fit your vehicles, but once you have it in place, then simply parent the plate to the vehicle.

They look pretty decent when you set them up right!

And heres a few more license plate shots!

There are also sites that sell vintage Plates and have pictures of them.
I used one for plate pictures on some trailer freebies I did on ShareCG

I didn’t think to look at those sites, maybe I will later, got things to do for now though!

Well I took Roberts advice and found some plates to use, here is one of them.

Good Deal Dan’s Classic Car Showroom!