Car Modelling Workflow?

Oren3Ds

I am creating my first vehicle, and several people have told me i am not approaching it right or using the correct workflow. I've watched a couple car modelling timelapses and I guess i am just dense because I don't see what I am doing wrong. For me I always block things out with basic primitives and use lots of placeholders, then model things part by part, eventually making a high poly by using subdivision surface. I am modelling a GMC Canyon 2015. Here is currently what i have so far:

What am I doing wrong with my workflow/approach?

teodar23

No approach is wrong as long as you get to your end goal. What exactly is your end goal? A high poly model for film/offline rendering or something more real-time?
What exactly is wrong with this approach from the perspective of those people?
Do they have other approaches in mind for car modeling? I suggest watching vids of other workflows and decide for yourself.

lluc21

A good practice when modeling cars is to make the whole surface of the car as one piece at first, without cutting the body panels. 
First you'd want to have a low poly blockout with clean topology, but no subdivision so that you can see all the shapes of the car and can modify the proportions easily if something feels off. Something like this: https://skfb.ly/6VD9R

After that you can start adding detail for subdivision (support loops, proper curves...) but keeping it one piece without cutting the body panels. 

After you got all the proper surfaces defined you start cutting the panel gaps and adding support loops around them. This way you make sure that the reflections flow properly from panel to panel. At this point it is a good idea to keep the uncut mesh as a reference to use shrinkwrap over it to guarantee 100% perfect reflections.

A very good course on car modeling that uses a similar workflow to what I mentioned is this: https://cgmasters.net/training-courses/master-car-creation-in-blender/

This is also an interesting read: https://80.lv/articles/vehicle-production-for-games/

Oren3Ds

@teodar23 I just want to make a mid poly still render of the truck for my portfolio. I've been told that I'm not supposed to block out things or have placeholders for vehicles, to just model it panel by panel. I'm honestly not sure what other approaches they have in mind but they said that its not the way cars are modelled, and that the current workflow i have is very time consuming.

sacboi

@Oren3Ds

Yes, there are many techniques however can be dependent on the end goal.

Now this particular tutorial, in my opinion is at least worth a cursory browse since the author discusses in depth, various optimisation methods relevant too your topic and workflow which by the way translates regardless of primary DCC software or indeed target object.

https://www.ebalstudios.com/blog/modeling-cars-polygons

(was really helpful when completing a client project, prior to final delivery)