1949 DeSoto
The 2-door DeLuxe coup was the best looking of the DeSoto's in that era.
Technical Details
I modelled the mesh entirely in XSI Mod Tool using subdivision surfaces. I had some good straight-on front and side photos to use as a background image during the modeling. I exported the mesh to the display program written in Microsoft's Visual C-Sharp Express XNA environment. I wrote Direct X surface shader code for the chrome, paint, headlights, tires, tail-lights, glass etc. This was my first venture into using bump maps. They worked out well to add detail to the splash panel in front of the rear wheels and on the tail-light lenses. xNormal generated the bump maps from hand drawn height map files I created in Paintshop Pro. I applied all the shaders inside the display program. Its a project for another day to learn how to apply the shaders inside XSI Mod Tool. There was one interesting challenge in developing this model. My work method so far has been to model only one half of the car in XSI, and to mirror that inside my viewer program. The viewer program was fixing the normals to make them vertical along the seam, but I was still unable to make the seam invisible. Eventually I tracked it to a problem in the shaders where they were mirroring the environment reflection, instead of having it continue smoothly across the seam.
I still have some work to do to improve the tail-light material. It still lacks the translucency look it needs. And I have noticed the environmental reflection is a little off, on some parts the cieling is reflected in horizontal sides, and the floor on vertical parts. I think I have some work to do with handling the world matrix right.
