It’s finally finished!  I cleaned up model quite a bit and is starting the animation process.  Meanwhile, here is the latest renderings.

The car is modeled and rendered entirely in Blender 2.5.  Render time is around 20 minutes at 3200×2400.

A few of you asked me how I setup the material/lighting/rendering options.  Without releasing the Blender file (yet), here is a screenshot that might help:

From left to right, you can see the world settings, world texture settings, car body material, and finally car body texture.

PS: Happy New Year!

Continuing my work on this car, I’ve added the headlights today.  Apparently that’s what those rounded headlamps are called on a BMW – Angel Eyes.

And since a few of you asked about what lighting system I used, here is the setup I am using:

Sorry to disappoint.  Yes the car is lit with just a single Hemi light source.  (Take that David!)  The rest is done with Ambient Occlusion using an HDR image texture.

I added a few details during my spare time yesterday.  Exterior modeling is now complete except for the rim, headlights, foglights and tail lights.