This is my first ever attempt at modeling a vehicle and let me say this, it’s the most difficult thing I’ve ever tried to model. By far.
Concept:
Imagine a Baja bug, dusty, lights on. Glossy, candy paint that shines through rough/rusted/dirty/worn patches. It’s parked in a parking lot of a desert hotel, neon lights from the saloon shining on the car. Old worn out asphalt, perhaps wet from rain. It’s foggy out, so the light is dispersed in the fog. It’s dusty and sandy because it’s in the desert. The baja itself is lifted and rugged. Flagpole hanging off the back possibly.
So far, the 2 biggest challenges for me have been modeling the front piece where the headlights go and finding good reference photos for the chassis. I have been looking for a couple days and I just cant find any good references for how the wheels should connect to the body and how all of that should look.
Nice start!
Good car model choice too! It’s already interesting to look at.
Just search for a lot of reference pictures. Those can be hard to find for more rare models.
Just keep searching and if you can’t find some part you can improvise a bit (still use reference pic from same style offroad car!) as this car is more like put together with different (after market) parts it should be ok to improvise.
Update 6/17/2016: Lots of various changes and progression. Still struggling to figure out what the hell to do for the chassis.
Main changes and additions:
Added trim around doors, windows, and on front fenders.
Rebuilt windows with better topology
Added hood details.
Finally got the back figured out, that was very difficult for me.
Redid the front bumper piece for the 3rd or 4th time.
Added some basic drum brakes, nuts and bolts and such for the wheels
Refined various things and added depth to doors and panels.
Viewport render - Played with some super basic lighting +materials to get a rough idea of how my color scheme would look.
Viewport render - Wheel details
Viewport render of the back side. Easily one of the most challenging parts of the bug so far. Still havealot of clean up and smoothing to do. Getting all the little panels to fit together organically is not as easy as you’d think.
Thanks, it’s all coming along much better than I’d imagined my first car would, especially since this is such a unique vehicle without many good references.
I still need to figure out a good way to do the tires. I’ve tried a few different tutorials and none of them have been very helpful. I struggle using the curve/array modifier.
Wow that looks good! The surfaces look really smooth and, my small experience tells me that can be very hard (I’ve been struggling for months with a few problems) and these don’t look easy at all.
You modeled the different panels separately?
Thank you, I can give you a couple tips. To get smooth mesh, use as few poly as possible. edge loops are powerful but go very light on them or u will get too dense of mesh for sub surf to do its job. also, every panel might be re done 2-3 times before I’m happy with it. I think that goes for most good cg artists. I always ask myself, is this mediocrity? If so, scrap and restart. to answer your question, yes. I start with the hood. Usually, I’ll select the edge closest to my next panel, duplicate, Seperate and then extrude. This ensures your panels lines up properly.
A few few things that might come in handy for you if you don’t know about them yet. Just look them up if not.
looptools addon, for circle, space and flatten
shear tool
double tapping g to edge or vertex slide
learning how to scale to 0 to straighten lines, planes, etc.
Never had the feeling to do a car, but maybe I should give it a bash at some time, seems pretty tricky.
Your bug is looking good so far, are you planning to go the whole hog and do the inside too?
In post #7 there seems to be a problem as the straight line starts to meet the curve between window and back bonet, not sure if it is because of the render or AO or a topo issue.
Thanks for the tips! I have come across most of them in forums and tutorials, but I haven’t been able to extract that much juice from them yet.
In my model I did all the panels together first and then I separated them. Afterwards I had to redo some separately anyway.
Tires! (still need a bit of work) note: tire walls look like they are flat and bulge towards rim. This is a lighting illusion, not mesh related.
More definition to front
bumper + front bottom support
headlight trim
started working on read axle a bit
not-shown: started working on the engine and read bumper
Modeled engine (mostly, still need to add exhaust and some small details, like tie downs, bolts, etc.)
rear shocks
chassis support bars
engine support cage
door handle
next up: side mirrors, headlights, flagpole, windows, smoothing & clean up
I’ve started working on the final engine materials now. 100% custom procedural materials. Not perfect yet. I want to perfect the intake filter, reduce bump on some things, add a more smooth variation to some texture.
)
