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Car modelling tutorials?


kenmo
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I get your point. It has been said in this forum that the best tool is a spline modeler with nurbs where contours can be created with precision.

The Freeform deformation primitives and cage in the Pose tool are there to give the user NURBS-like construction. Also, the Retopo tools don't have to be restricted to Retopo work only. You can actually poly model...just turn Auto-snap off, unless you are using the base object created from the Sketch tool as and underlying voxel object. Using the Plane tool in the Voxel Room, with the 3-4 points option, is like using a NURBS object to trim with.

Maybe we can get Andrew to develop a pseudo NURBS tool that lets the use construct shapes from splines created with splines from the E-Panel. Maybe get with the guys at MOI to implement a NURBS option for Retopo work. Would make 3D Coat an awesome tool for rapid prototype > straight to (manufacture) production (with a NURBS shell in the Retopo room). I would even use NURBS retopo construction from time to time, since it would present fewer snapping issues.

I don't think it's that farfetched. Splines in the E-Panel already have weighted control points (B-splines). That's what the "BS" in NURBS stands for. Maybe another option would be a plugin from the MOI folks?

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3DC simply doesn't have the tools necessary to create something as specifically precise as a car. You could get something close, but it's strengths do not lie there. I've tried and tried... And tried. It isn't feasible at this moment.

Really, I know it goes without saying... But it's best to use a tool for what it's good for and using a polygonal or NURBS modeling tool is the best way to create a car.

That all said, you could definitely kitbash a car together, that would be perfectly fine and awesome, but you'll still need to model parts or have someone else model parts for you to bash together.

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I watched the Z-Brush totals and they were simply amazing... Perhaps Z-Brush one day may offer a competitive upgrade from 3DC like e-on software once offered to upgrade from Bryce to Vue...

Freecad looks interesting but like any cad application I fear a steep learning curve...

I understand Blender now offers a sculpting mode... I'll have to check that out but Blender's interface is a big turn off to me...

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3DC simply doesn't have the tools necessary to create something as specifically precise as a car. You could get something close, but it's strengths do not lie there. I've tried and tried... And tried. It isn't feasible at this moment.

Really, I know it goes without saying... But it's best to use a tool for what it's good for and using a polygonal or NURBS modeling tool is the best way to create a car.

That all said, you could definitely kitbash a car together, that would be perfectly fine and awesome, but you'll still need to model parts or have someone else model parts for you to bash together.

That's too bad. I attended a few of your seminars in the past when you where with KurvStudio. They were awesome... and like Gary Miller at GeekatPlay, you're one of my all time 3D favorite tutors...

I believe I even purchased a tutorial or two from KurvStudio by you....

cheers

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Kenmo. Blender has NURBS modeling. That and polygonal modeling with subdivision surface. It's free, so it's worth a try even if you ultimately choose something else. It, combined with 3D-Coat makes a pretty awesome tool set.

Here is a Porsche 911GT3 RS car tutorial for Blender. Maybe see if you like that way of making a car: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9STM6bje9Y. You could still use 3D Coat for painting, UVs, adding fine details, etc.

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Thanks kindly for the tutorial link.... I really appreciate all the replies....

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Not that this is THE example to work from, but I think you can see from the roof here that this kind of work can be done. This was purely from sculpt and a reference, but I'm deviating from the design a bit. There are some parts that I would prefer to do in 3ds Max, first, but for now, this is purely 3DC, keeping in mind that all I've really done here is the roof and roughed out a shape for the car.

Car2.jpg

Car.jpg

Edited by alvordr
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I was reading that the user

Gian-Reto

modeled a car in voxels and repologized it

Where did you read this? Do you have a link?

Thanks kindly....

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Okay, just seen this topic and my name mentioned....

Just to show what I did in the last month: its a car... an armoured car / drone type of thing, mind you, not a clean modern looking car. But it has 4 wheels and stuff :)

The modelling itself was pretty easy. I had some expierience doing hard surface modeling in 3D Coat from a Revolver Tutorial which should still be linked in the tutorials section (here: http://pilgway.com/files/manual_pdf/3dcoat_workbook_part1.pdf). Pretty much everything you need to know is in there.

I even used some of the tinker objects from the downloadable tinker package in the resources section. I wanted to see if it would speed up the process... which it did, initially. Until I found out that a lot of the parts are much to complex for a game ready model and had to be "filled" to cut down on the complexity.

The hard part, of course, is the retopo afterwards, especially if you're doing it for a game model. I find it pretty hard to get a good model from your voxel sculpt when the model is a hard surface one. Well, maybe I just overdid it with the details.

The part I haven't really found out how to do it is the setup afterwards for animation in a game engine. But that might not interest you.

Anyway, in the attachment you'll find some quick images of the Voxel object (multiple parts, the wheels and the shock absorbers are instanced), the retopo model (separate uv and mesh for each part, the wheel and shock absorber are done only for one instance, and need to be cloned in an outside 3D App afterwards, so that they share the same UV-Texture), and the finished poly model without color texture (not done yet) inside the Unity game engine.

post-6386-0-38209800-1372976456_thumb.pn

post-6386-0-85492800-1372976462_thumb.pn

post-6386-0-49230000-1372979065_thumb.pn

Polycount is rather high, around 25k, I aimed for 15k but wasted a lot of polies trying to get a good flow and capture all details. Likewise the UV Mapping is not ideal, I used a lot of islands to prevent any stretching, but ended up with some visible seams. Might get back and connect some islands to make some of the seams disappear later.... and of course, LODs might also be a topic for later.

Texture size is 2048x2048 for the body, 1024x1024 for the turret, 256x256 for the front camera (done separate more because of the complexity of the mesh than because I wanted to animate it) and the MG at the Front, 512x512 for the Rest (Wheels, Shock absorber, Cannon, and so on).

right now, I just would like to be able to transfer the model into Blender, set up all the origins, transfer it back to 3D Coat for painting without the origins getting lost during export/import. But I haven't found a solution to that yet.

I might do a small tutorial for the whole thing, but besides lacking the time at the moment,

1) I'm not 100% if I would really recommend my way of doing things, boxmodelling seems to be a better start for a hard surface Project like a car, with 3D Coat being left for the detail work later on (did another car in blender 2 years ago, was a lot simpler, but was also very easy to do),

2) I'm pretty much an advanced noob when it comes to using 3D Coat, so I'm pretty sure a lot of people might be able to do better in less time,

3) I think, if you follow other hard surfaces tutorials, you will find what you need to create your car in 3D Coat in no time

Maybe some hints I found that are important when trying to hard surface model in 3D Coat:

1) never use any "brush". If possible at all, use primitives, voxlayer and curves to model new and cut into existing shapes... cut off is also very helpful.

2) use a vox resolution as high as your PC supports. The higher the resolution, the better and cleaner small details will look.

3) use multiple voxel layers, as many as still make sense. Makes your work much easier... also, when you hide a voxel layer, you hide polygons that slow down your work, and you can crank up the voxel resolution of the other layers as a result. Works like hiding part of the mesh in z-brush (kind of)

On the topic of voxel resolution:

- my main PC can handle around 70 million polies before the slow down is getting annoying (i7 970 (6C/12T), nvidia GTX 580, 24G RAM)... which is plenty most of the time

- my Slate PC can handle around 5 million polies before being completly unusable (but its much slower before... no CUDA possible) (i5 (2C/4T), iGPU (intel), 4G RAM)

If you have a small laptop to work on, working in voxels might be not the best idea for hard surface sculpting.... or you need to divide the model into more smaller part and put them into their own voxel layers to only have a smaller subset of polies visible at any time.

Anyway, hope some of this helps. If you see something I did completly wrong, feel free to correct me, I'm happy to learn :)

Gian-Reto

Edited by Gian-Reto
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Very nice indeed...many thanks for sharing....

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