Making of tyre Pirelli PZero Rosso

[sm@rt]

Introduction

I want to excuse my bad English at first
This is the first tutorial about making of the car. This tutorial requires user with at least small experience in 3dsMax and knowledge of poly and spline modeling. It means, I will not discuss questions about creating and modifying primitives e.t.c. I will show you some methods of modeling that were used by me. I’m using 3dsMax 2008. Anyway, you can use all these methods in older versions of 3dsMax. Tutorial consists of two chapters: I will show you modeling of tread in first chapter, and modeling of sidewall in 2nd.

Chapter 1
Tread

At first, you need to define shape of the tyre. I’ve found a photo that can helps:

Create spline with shape of the tyre and apply Extrude modifier:

Convert this object to Editable Poly for editing.
Create plane with photo of the tread in the Top viewport:

Clearly, pattern of tyre consist of large amount of similar segments. You can see it if you will see at the tread with some attention. Edit part of tread and make it looks like part of pattern.

Use Cut tool to create new polys according to tread pattern. Then use
Extrude tool to make “depth” of tread.

First part of the tread done. Make copy of this object – we’ll use it later. This tyre requires 72 segments. Make 72 copies of this segment. All segments should be placed very close to each other. Then attach all copies to first segment:

Don’t forget to weld all vertices between segments. Select all vertices and use Weld too with very low Threshold parameter, to prevent welding of extra vertices. Threshold value depends of System Units and size of tyre. Weld should work with vertices between segments only. We have “planar” tread now. Use Bend modifier to make proper tyre tread.

Sometimes Bend places Gizmo in wrong direction. I’ve rotated Gizmo by 90 degrees to make proper result. Angle 364,17 was selected to make close tyre surface. Convert this tyre to Editable Poly and Weld all vertices between parts of tyre.

As result, I get this model of tyre:

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Chapter 2
Sidewall

Creating tyre sidewall starts with finding some good quality photos. We need to read all text from sidewall. I couldn’t found good photo with sidewall – most of text was unable to read. But texture «Pirelli Pzero Rosso 255/35 ZR19 | Tire sidewall map» by exidge (http://www.forum.cg-cars.com/showthread.php?t=5937) helps me a lot. But this texture has another tread height and another PZero logo. Anyway, this hi-quality texture helps me with reading sidewall text. I’ve started with PZero logo. I try to find this logo in the Internet, but no success. So I decided to draw this logo with splines by photo.

Next step – creating plane and sidewall texture on it.

I put PZero logo on top of exist PZero text.

Then I’ve created 3 splines: two lines (top and bottom of sidewall) and one Z-shaped line.

Then these splines was Attached in one spline. Length of top/bottom lines and Z-shaped line were set very approxamately. Use Bend modifier to make spline be round. Then I’ve corrected length of Zshaped line according to texture. Move vertices of spline to change length.

Spline should have some extra vertices for proper result with Bend modifier. More vertices – much softer shapes of rounded spline.

As you can see on previous picture, top/bottom lines has less vertices than Z-shaped line. This is because these lines are temporary. I will delete it later, when don’t need it.
Second and 3rd Z-shaped lines were done using same method.
You can create most of sidewall text using Tahoma font. Lets see
the example of creating text on sidewall.
1. Create Text spline. Use Tahoma font. Select size of text approximately as on the photo. Put this Text between the top/bottom lines.

2. Select spline with top/bottom and Z-shaped line. Attach this Text.

3. Turn on Bend modifier and see the result:

As you can see, placement and size of text doesn’t match the sidewall texture. Select spline again. Move vertices of spline (text part) to make better match with texture. I get this result as well:

I couldn’t found some fonts for sidewall text. So I draw this text using common spline lines.
Finally, I get this spline cage:

We don’t need top/bottom lines now. Delete it:

Spline cage almost finished. We need to make pattern inside the Z-shaped line now. Select spline and turn off Bend modifier.

Create spline line inside the Z-shaped line:

Make large amount of copies. I made 1000 copies. Then make mirror copy of these lines using Mirror tool.

Edit placement of these lines. Delete extra lines. Put this lines “grille” into Z-shaped line.

Copy this “grille” and put it inside the Z-shaped lines.
Select spline with Z-shaped lines and attach all “grilles”. Turn on Bend modifier. Spline cage is done.

Next step – match spline cage and sidewall.
Use copy of part of tread (we made it before). Select spline cage with Z-shaped lines and apply FFD modifier. Put FFD between Bend spline object.

Move FFD control points to match spline shape and sidewall.

Turn on Bend modifier and enjoy the result.

Some text that was drawn by splines (PZero and Pirelli logo some numbers of tyre) need to be matched using Move, Rotate tools…
Last step – is creating «visible» sidewall for renderer. Turn on Enable In Renderer option in the Rendering section of spline menu (settings). Select type of lines – Radial, width ~ 0,5 … 2mm (width depends of text on sidewall), sides – 4. Sometimes you need to use Extrude modifier Amount = ~ 0,5 … 2mm (depends of text).

Thanks You for reading this tutorial.
Hope it helps

Download PDF version of this tutorial from:
my website

[rodderworld]

nice stuff smart, thanks for taking the time on it.

regards,
rodder

[Domino]

Originally Posted by rodderworld

nice stuff smart, thanks for taking the time on it.

regards,
rodder

agree with this guy

[EquiNOX]

Interesting approach... thanks for sharing.

[P2sta]

nice to see this on the forum, thanks Kre

[sm@rt]

Thanks guys. Glad you like my tutorial. And thanks for Sticky thread

[DochevV]

This is very usefully thank sm@rt . But the link for the Tire sidewall map dont work

[P2sta]

I edited the post, it should work now

[kriscabrera]

great tutorial man thanks!

[digitaleyes]

I just saw this tut right now. Thanks Sm@rt for sharing. I will try it on my next pair of tires (I have some brand new pair of Micheline Primacy waiting to be mounted in garage so maybe take some photos and try to model them )