Car Modelling Help
I am sure this comes up a lot . I am having trouble modelling a vehicle this one 
It is for a scene in UDK . I will use it as a prop, so detail doesn't have to be really high.
I'm not asking someone to walk me through this, but I am asking what techniques can you guys offer, and what type of modelling have you had the best results with. Thanks guys .
It is for a scene in UDK . I will use it as a prop, so detail doesn't have to be really high.
I'm not asking someone to walk me through this, but I am asking what techniques can you guys offer, and what type of modelling have you had the best results with. Thanks guys .
Replies
Personally I would try to grab some blue prints or scare up some reference that is as distortion free as possible. Then create a few reference planes and go to down. Probably tracing out the main shape(s) with a spline, converting that to geometry and while keeping it as quaded and as clean as possible I would start blocking in the details and refining it.
If you actually have access to the car there are several methods available to you that will help you plot points and translate the car into 3D.
MatchMover comes to mind as well as other 3D scanning techniques like Image Modeler or [ame="
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Sorry about that, I am using max.
The splines sounds pretty good, I'm not to familiar working with them however. I have seen people use the edge extrude method, but I could never get good topology doing that. I was thinking about box modelling it. Another thing I have to ask is, when people model cars to they spilt it up? (Doors, hood, hatchback/trunk)or would it be easiest to model it all as one piece.
Again, this is for a prop model, not looking for high detail that much.
Thankyou
Depending on your desired polycount, I'd recommend just spending a few minutes sub-d modeling it (edit poly with turbosmooth on top), and not worrying too much about fine details. once the basic shape is complete, either collapse it or throw an edit poly on top, and chamfer out any edges that need to be fixed. The trick I've found is saving all the fine details for the end; as fun as it is getting the front of the car to look PERFECT before moving on to the rear, it'll hurt you in the long run.
There's literally hundreds of tutorials on this, but here's one to get you started: http://www.3dtotal.com/tutorial/3d_studio_max/car_modeling_pontiac_trans_am/pontiac_trans_am_01.php
Ticotaco, I could write pages and pages about this, but the best thing you can do, is study wireframes of well made cars. Places like SMcars.net are great, just see how a proper car wireframe is crafted to represent a car body. Try it yourself by just drawing these over pictures of the car in Photoshop.
The reference wasn't used much minus the basic shape, I was trying to just really block something out , and get my foot in the door ( very tiny bit in there ).
So basically this in general is a mess. The problems I am having are
A) I can never get a smooth transition from the side to grill to hood
Again, this is a complete mess, any more help would be awesome.
Thanks again.
Also, when modelling cars, do you break it up? Eg. Model the side panel, then the door separate, then hood. I always wondered how people got the nice break up line in the doors, windows and hood.
1. make curves out of 3 point, example your front and rear wheel fenders are using lots of poly space.
2. Less is better, cause u want Mesh or Turbo smooth to do the heavy work for u.
Well im not sure you are modelling high detail car or doing it for game engine like UDK. If doing high detail than yes its always good idea to break the care into natural parts just like a real car, that way you get nice joint lines and gaps.
Hope it helps
Next, what Xoliul was saying about reference comes in handy on the corners and transitions; blueprints are most help on the center of the side, front and rear; when you get to the headlight area, it gets fuzzy. Reference photos will show you where to curve, and when. For the grill, I'd probably add another row behind the light, extending over the top of the hood as well.
As for breaking it up; no, not personally. I've seen some tutorials where they model every body panel uniquely, but I've found this just creates extra lines I have to sort out later. Usually I'll model it without any body panel lines. It's VERY IMPORTANT to make sure your polyflow takes into consideration where the lines will be later, but I usually wait until the bulk of the car is done, then collapse the mesh and edit the body panels in afterwards, either with a boolean, or connecting and extruding edges. Your polyflow looks pretty clean, so that should probably work for you.
Try and get some blueprints to match things up against (www.the-blueprints.com is a good source), then get reference of the parts that are causing you problems (headlight/hood/front quarterpanel is tricky, A Pillar/D Pillar is tricky, rear bumper is tricky), and try and break up the space as simply as possible.
Anyways, turbosmooth doesn't have to be applied, I wasn't really thinking about it to much.
Thanks for the help again, I am going to go reference hunting , and see what I can come up with.