I have been working on modeling a Nissan 350Z in Maya for a few days. I still have to tweak the normals, map the UV's and then texture it, but I was wondering if anyone could give me any constructive criticism on the model so far.

Not a gear head so I can't critique the accuracy of the car itself, but...

The modeling looks alright in general (from what I can tell without a wireframe overlay), my main concern is that it seems like you're not sure whether it's supposed to be a lean, low poly model or a high detail model. Either you've modeled a bunch of features that should have just been textured on, or you are lacking a lot of definition that should be modeled in.

The door handle, indents on the hood, grill, detail on the hubcap, crevices in the door frame, and back lights all contribute next to nothing to the silhouette. This means that you could save yourself the polygons and just texture them on. Additionally, it looks like you are using far more divisions than necessary on the exhaust pipes and could lose a loop on the bevel of the tires.

Alternatively, if you want high detail in the geometry itself you should really go all out and be defining a lot of the edge around the windows and such.

Two issues that go beyond merely tweaking the normals or texturing:
- Glasses (including rear view mirrors, which look the worst) are flush with the surrounding body, doors, etc. They are more important than the already done rear lights and door handles.
- Around the wheels there are cylindrical cavities obviously lacking all the entrails (suspension arms, brakes, tubes and wires) of a real car wheel. Actual cars have empty space, not solid volumes.

may i get a wireframe render, target hardware to run on, current polycount (in tris), and your actual target polycount? with this information i can then give some good crits.

p.s. and how does it look with proper smoothing groups?

I have made some changes. One big one is that I got rid of the tire/wheel. I am going to redo those later. As for the windows, they have depth to them. Also I have just made numerous small changes.
Poly count: 4392

well, looking at the wire i can see a few polys that can be removed, like around the upper tire section on the car, and quite a few in the mufflers. your car body is great, but wherever you use cylinders you go overboard (assuming this is for a game). cylinders really don't need that many divisions, especially the mufflers, which could have half its current amount. then you also don't need to completely hollow out them either, unless the player will go face to face with them, and even then you must ask yourself, "will it be that big of a difference?"
with the mufflers you could not hollow them out and then use a good diffuse to make it look fine.

[Edited by - Jarrod1937 on August 14, 2007 9:40:04 PM]