This is an improved Projection normals.
After projecting the whole car with Projection tool it was noticed that in front
and rear parts, the chrome (environment texture) bigger, than in the center of the car:
This happens because the normals in front and rear parts are, practically, parallel,
and this causes fitting a small area of environment texture into front and rear parts:
During some experiments it was noticed, that the best chroming is achieved when the
normals are like on the following image (green):
... and the bright red lines show where the axis center should be if we want to project normals
this way. As you see, there are a lot of points where the axis center should be - the
more vertices, the more different points. But the darker red line shows where all these
centers are located in general. So, we need to:
Specify the set of points where the axis center can be during projecting normals.
Project normals, placing the axis center in one of specified points.
Specifing the set of points was done by creating an object. This object I call Gismo.
As a rule, it's an elliptic object. Vertices of this Gismo-object are the points where the
axis center can be. Thus the gismo object should be high-detailed.
Choosing the point from set is done by the rule:
it's the closest vertex of gismo
object to current vertex of processed object.
To generate Gismo normals for the car follow the steps:
Choose Create\Spline\N-Gon and switch to top view.
Create very detailed N-Gon (30-100 steps) which fits the bright red area.
But spline is not an object, while we need an object for the gismo.
To create an object from this spline, you can use Create\Surface\Revolution in front
view, but I used Create\Surface\FillSpline and clicked on the spline. This tool fills
the spline with a faces, producing an object:
Rescale it horizontally, that it lloks like this:
... and move it to the lower part of doors:
Create a gismo object. (just done).
Hide all the objects, leaving visible only gismo-object.
Choose tool: Surface\Normals\Gismo (cars' body will turn gray (disabled)). It
means, that this object is currently selected as Gismo-Object. Switch to side view, zoom
closer and, holding CTRL key down, click on Gismo-object. It will turn gray.
Holding SHIFT key down (for 3D projection) click on cars' body. It will receive Gismo
normals
Delete gismo if it's not necessary, or adjust it and apply Gismo-normals again.
Well, the gismo normals looks like Calculate and Projection, but this tool is way
better, since you can modify gismo to generate custom normals. For the instance, the gismo
can be rotated a bit in the side view and chroming will look like this:
You can combine all the normals-generation tools, apply them to objects parts or even
to small group of vertices - all approaches are good in achieving realistic chroming and
shading.
After you have generated perfect environment mapping you can adjust shading a bit. This can
only be done with Surface\Normals\Scaleing tool. You can accurately adjust normals length
to imitate wells and for other reasons.
You can also adjust normals direction (a bit only, since it changes environment mapping)
with a Surface\Normals\Rotation tool. For the instance, the normals on a raised part of
the hood can be rotated (a bit) and it will imitate convexity:
Yeah, it's cool as hell. The file is HERE.
The normals were gismo-generated, glasses were detached and projected as before, the hoods'
convexity was done with rotation tool. Enjoy!