WIP_Lowpoly Hyundai Sonata 2011

Wintersun

Hello there guys , first poster here . It's my first attempt doing a low poly car so I guess I'm in the right forum.

Recently a team asked me to model a low poly hyundai sonata 2011 . I never did any low poly before but I knew the workflow ( I hope so) . So I started modeling the high poly and as you see I'm in the middle of high poly modeling . And from what I know I have to model the highpoly then retopo it to about the amount of polygons they want, UV it, and bake the normals and other stuff . Am I right?

but I've got some other questions too .

1.What do you guys usually do for headlights and tailights? do you model them or just use a texture on it? should I leave them as a separate element?

2.I've seen some tips and tricks about bakin normal maps, is there a problem with intersecting objects? like my rim? I can do both but its a lot more time consuming making that round steel attached to the rim.

I think thats it for now but I may have a lot more questions after starting the lowpoly.

This is how far I've gone.

krimzondestiny

I'm a bit confused. You say this is the low poly mesh? Is this for a game or a film? Low poly generally means no more than 20,000 polys, and that's for characters and vehicles. Details such as headlights and tail lights should be modeled completely in the high poly, generally as separate meshes, and then in the final low poly version, there could be silhouette geometry for them, but the normal map is where you would get most of your detail.

VPrime

krimzondestiny wrote: »

I'm a bit confused. You say this is the low poly mesh? Is this for a game or a film? Low poly generally means no more than 20,000 polys, and that's for characters and vehicles. Details such as headlights and tail lights should be modeled completely in the high poly, generally as separate meshes, and then in the final low poly version, there could be silhouette geometry for them, but the normal map is where you would get most of your detail.

I guess you skipped over this part in his post?

So I started modeling the high poly and as you see I'm in the middle of high poly modeling

theslingshot

Guess he skipped over the whole post...

Anyway I can't really give you tips on how to model the high-poly of a car, never modeled one myself. But where the roof and the doors meet at the top it's very square, and that same edge that goes down to the hood looks really sharp...But looking at the rest of the car I think you already knew that. The front grid is coming along nicely and those rims look really great! Keep it up ^^

Drav

The middle of the car needs curving, its very straight at the moment. Look at the doors in the pic above, and see how they curve back in as they near the ground. The wheel rims look good, the body needs a lot more work to make it look like the rea thing. Mesh flow looks mostly good tho, so just keep going!

krimzondestiny

Guess he skipped over the whole post...

Nah, I just missed that one sentence smart guy. Any ways, from the image Drav has so graciously provided, it looks like the actual glass part of the headlights can just be extruded from the edges you already have around the section where the lights are. There's enough detail there for them. However, it depends how you're going to get the actual light parts on there. Are you going to just project photo reference of them on there (which probably wont work because it's usually difficult to get your hands on an exact orthogonal view of the car with the necessary detail) or you can just model them yourself. Being that they are cylinders for the most part, I'd model and place those as separate meshes, and assign a translucent material to the glass part in engine to the glass to reveal the lights; the glass would have to be a separate object for that to work though. But, the final product is pretty much up to you and your client. Good luck man!!!

Xoliul

Flow looks pretty good man, and that's the hardest part. It does look like you missed some subtle curvature in certain areas (roof and a-pillars look a bit straight), compare that with some ref again.

Wintersun

Thank you all for responding, and thanks for all the critics and compliments.

Actually the model wasn't half finished as you see there , I was hoping to get more information on lowpoly modeling than on this model.

@theslingshot Thank you very much bro , I don't know If I have time to fix that or not but I may do that.

Drav Well thanks bro , the picture you show is not the car I'm modeling but the door looks the same and I haven't been there yet , but thank you anyway. hope you can spot the errors now and tell me.


krimzondestiny Well firstly thanks for the bump with the first post , I thought the thread died there. and secondly as I said that's not the car I'm modeling and I've modeled the headlights aswell , It's a bit different as the one Drav showed there , but the thing that you said about making them separate was actually what I was looking for

@Xoliul Thank you for the compliments , well yea I think I did that, that's easily fixable .


Well guys it was a bit frustrating because I actually almost didn't have a blueprint! If you search the internet there's only one blueprint for Sonata 2011 and that's horrible , like 300x400 dimensions! and that's why it took me too much to make it , here's the progress , they only want the exterior and I think If I model the door handle it's finished and I have to start the low poly.


So can you guys help me here? will xnormal understand the seams there? I didn't make a shell there , they're just simple planes and an open chamfer there.

Sithis324

Very nice topology, Makes me wanna do some hardcore vehicle modeling in the near future

Baking a high poly to low doesnt take topology into account, But dont have illegal polys everywhere.
The main thing u want to achieve on the high poly is the rounded/beveled edges that light would hit so xnormal can read it and bake out the normals
That said u can have intersecting meshes, iv always built my high poly as separate objects and grouping it when im ready to bake

Xoliul

For the door edges just model a small bevels inwards. For nromalmaps, I wouldn't really recommend baking them unless you're going for some big resolution, as they come of cleaner in photoshop with nDo for example. I'm doing a car right now, and I decided to remove al panel lines from the high poly, to draw them onto the texture later. Just make sure you have edges in the lowpoly that follow those lines if you want to open the doors (you complicate things a lot if you decide to do so though).

Btw same advice for the tire, don't model them, just use a tiling heightmap pattern in photoshop.

Wintersun

well thank you , again I read it after I made it to this part , yea the door seams are a pain in the ass. and no I won't open the doors for sure. this was the high poly I won't model the tires I'll use it for the normal maps. any ways thank you again for all the advices.