Hello all. Just taking a stab at modeling a car using both Anim8or and Wings (jumping back and forth between the two.) Anyhow this image shows my attempt to model a real car. I happens to be the first one that I owned, a 1989 Skylark Custom Coupe. Still need to work on getting the mesh geometry right, as I started out with a spline in Anim8or and made it into a solid panel. But when rendered the shape isn't too bad actually. Of course this is a work in progress. When I get it where I like it, I'm going to mirror it and merge the halves together.

This is another attempt but a little different. In this case, the car design is from scratch with no known real world counterpart. The wireframe being made point by point and constructed mainly in Anim8or. It's slow and tedious, but if it turns out good... This picture shows two different renderings as it went along. The top one is nowhere near complete, but I was goofing around seeing how it would look with wheels under it.

Looking pretty good! I'm no expert but I'd be a little concerned over all those three sided polys. They are adding an awful lot of polys without defining the shape of the mesh too well. Sorry I'm not explaining too well! I'm pretty much a beginner with no experience of this kind modelling but I think you would learn a lot from looking at other peoples car meshes. I'm sure a more experienced modeller will explain better. Sorry if I sound negative, I think you've done a great job but would find it easier with a different approach. Baz

Attached Link: http://www.geocities.com/paulthepuzzles/Bikewheel.html

The linked tut is for a basic (spoked) bike wheel - but easily adapted for other vehicle types. Done with Wings :) There's only minor differences (no need to combine prior to weld, RMB mirror creates a separate object and multiple loopcut now ok) between the version used and current one. Probably of no interest, but it's there if you want to peruse same. pp

Well, I know I'm not too keen on the excessive tri's in my first posting. But thats what happens when you fill in a spline in Anim8or. It makes lotsa tris. I suppose the trick is reducing the polys to a point where the wheel wells are still rounded. Personally I'd like to try to convert it to mostly quads (trying to avoid n-gons for sake of rendering.) Dunno why, but seems like it would make a "cleaner" model. Not only that, but I need to change the mesh for better geometry. In the real car, the doors are curved slightly as opposed to being flat and the wheel wells flare out a little bit. If anyone has a surefire method to clean up excessive tri's while avoiding n-gons and still maintaining curved geometry - please clue me in. The bottom pic has a nicer (cleaner) mesh than the model in the top. Perhaps I should screen capture the wire mesh view so I can show it. Just to see if it makes more sense than the top one. Obviously it's lower poly, as the wheel wells aren't quite nicely rounded. I guess I started doing this so I can have some models of the cars that I'm likely to see in the neighborhood rather than some exotic. I'm funny that way, while everyone else is modeling some pricey thing I'm trying to make the ol' beater down at the end of the street. :) P.S. The spoked wheel in my bottom series of pictures was made in Bryce. It's very simple to do in Bryce using multi-replicate. Just divide the number of spokes by 360 for the rotation angle and set the number of times to number of spokes minus one. Positioning them is just a matter of tweaking them all at once in object space mode. If you look close enough, you can see that I even managed to get a 4-cross pattern. Yeah I know not everyone uses Bryce, but when it's advantageous I usually end up hybridizing my mesh creations with Bryce primitives.

That wheel is seriously cool, I think Bryce is an underestimated piece of software, I just wish the renders weren't so slow! I've never used anim8tor but it sounds like its spline modelling tools leave a lot to be desired. Can you build point by point (detail up) in animator? I think the few car tuts I've looked at worked this way. If not I'd stick with Wings and try Subdivision modelling from a cube, I think you'll get a cleaner more efficient mesh. Of course things like the wheel arches will be a little tricky, Wings could really use some Boolean ops! I was reading a couple of work rounds last night but gave up they were so complicated! Cheers, keep posting. Baz

Just had a thought the wheel arches could probably be shaped using the inflate tool under deform in the vertices menu. You might have to shape them while the wing (UK)/fender?(US) is a flat panel so that it doesn't distort it's 3 dimensional shape, dunno, haven't really played with that tool! Baz

<< the inflate tool >> This'd work fine - assuming you don't mind having a semi-circular wheel arch - use the RMB option to pick a centre / radius - def. no need for needing booleans - fortunately :) Alternatively, just introduce sufficient verts along an edge and use Tweak (in view X) to shape the basic arch -then 'scoop out' the geom. behind to form the wheel well. pp

Attached Link: http://www.geocities.com/paulthepuzzles/arch.html

B - one way of many :) btw, whereabouts in UK are U? (e midlands) pp

That's a nice tut! I haven't tried any car modelling or any inorganic modelling at all actually LOL but I'll bear this technique in mind when I get round to it! I didn't realise you could set a radius/centre for the inflate tool. Wings continues to amaze me! I'm near Cambridge by the way. Baz

<< Wings continues to amaze me! >> You and me both! :) Can use the same technique (in 3D) to conform the eye (socket) geometry around the front of the eyeball. Select the centre of the eyeball as centre and rad by a vert on the relevant geom and drag to 100%. (Storing the eyeball centre as a selection makes life easier for future messing imo) Also similar technique to 'scoop' out (boolean subtract)spherical (or parts of) cavities from objects - like with wheel well ex. could have made the whole well in one go - just gotta make sure there's enough verts there to 'do the business' pp

Great tips pp, thanks a lot! Baz