how do you tackle the creases, e.g. the part separating the door from the main body, etc. its the hardest part since i always end up with unneeded edge loops just to make those edges straight and not round. care to share any of your techniques? thanks
You probably want to use normal (bump) mapping. Take a look at this tutorial. (Rather than using a colored monkey, you’d just be using simple black lines for your textures).
http://feeblemind.tuxfamily.org/dotclear/index.php/2005/08/23/43-tutorial-blender-and-normal-maps
Give a screenshot of the problem please.
How about simply separating the part, then extruding the edges inwards? I haven’t really modelled any car but I would consider doing that to get the sharp separations…
here’s the blend file
you can see the problem outright in this image, the part separating the hood from the body, you can even see part of the chair. i just want to chamfer the edge so that it bevels inside…any suggestions? thanks
@grafix, yup i’ve tried that as well, but i get some weird creases in some areas when i turn on SS.
Generally, when somebody ignores my reply I assume that I misunderstood the question and my advice wasn’t pertinent. That may be the case this time too, so if you already know about all this then just ignore me. However, I looked at your blend, and it seems to me that you have an absolutely insane amount of vertices on those very simple hubcaps, and you really should be using bumpmaps for that. So, although I’m not much of a car modeler, I thought I’d throw together an example of what I’m talking about. The lines in the surface I’m showing you were not modeled with verts, but with a nor mapped texture.
Hope I’m not missing the point and this is somehow helpful.
@bugman: sorry for seeming to ignore your post, but bump mapping will be one process i’d like to skip for now since i really need to learn how to model. i know it would have been an easier step and much more practical in terms of polygon counts but i think it is more rewarding for me to re-invent the wheel. i have noted your post though and thank you for spending the time to reply. 
Bugman
I am fairly new to blender and am having some of the same issues described in this thread but I am very interested in learning how to do the bump mapping you are talking about. Can you tell me how you did the panel in the previous post?
Thanks,
Hi,
It’s really simple. The pattern of lines I just did in photoshop, basically I just made a square (I think 500 pixels by 500) and made black lines on white. I think the lines were 5 pixels wide. If you want your surface to have bumps that go both in and out (that is, bumps and indentations), then you should make your image background 50 percent gray and have the out portions in white and the in portions in black (or vice versa. You can reverse this).
You then make this into an image texture. Create a new texture in the materials editor on the appropriate material. Go into the texture editor (F6) and select “Image” for texture type, then click load image and load the image.
The best way to map the texture is to use UV mapping (http://www.ibiblio.org/bvidtute for a good tutorial on this). The important thing for bump mapping is that the “nor” button is pressed in “Map To”. Clicking that button twice will reverse the effect (white bumps black indentations/vice versa).
You can use this for cloth, veins, wrinkles, rivets, lettering, whatever. It’s really an incredibly useful thing to give your surfaces character.
For more detail, check out the tutorial I pointed to in my first post in this thread.
T
As I replied with this in a PM, I thought it might be of use here:-
Regarding clean crisp seams in bodywork.
For any body part on the car, that either opens or pivots, ie doors, trunk, hood etc, use the verts from an adjacent mesh section as your staring point.
So if you have started modeling the front wing & wheel arch, moving towards the rear of the car as you extrude, you will have a line of verts that lines up with the front most door seam on your blueprints.
Now, don’t worry about edge loops for now, but select the rear most edge of verts (next to the door seam) and duplicate them. Immediatly right mouse button to cancel moving the duped verts.
Press E and extrude these towards the rear of the car, to the rear door seam on your blueprints. Repeat the duplication of the rear most edge verts and extrude these back for the rear quarter panels.
Now for the tip you really want.
Select the two edge rows of verts for the front of the door seam, the ones that occupy the same space.
Once selected, select the two edge rows of verts for the back of the door seam. (You can also select the top and bottom row of verts on the door too if you wish. If not you can repeat this for those.)
Now you need to be in Top view, and extrude these verts into the middle of the car.
Process:- E> confirm top selection in menu > X> to confirm x axis constraint Hold shift and move verts into middle of car by tiny ammount. I usually use 0.930 or something. (Hold shift to move in tiny increments, ctrl to move in whole increments.) Then repeat the extrusion on these new verts, this time moving in a little bit more, ie 0.900.
This will give you a nice clean edge for the seams.
Now for the edge loops to tighten up the seams.
Either side of the seams, so on front wing, front & rear of door & rear quarter, use the Knife tool and the first option in the knife menu.
Now line up this loop to be 0.9000 so it is nearest the seam. (Use CTRL to move knife in whole units)
Repeat for each side of the other seams. You’ll need one for the top and bottom rows of verts on the door.
Hopefully this helps. 
I’ll try and knock out a couple of screen shots to help explain things if it doesn’t make sense.
Sonix.
Sonix
please post some up close screen shots as I am a visual person and that we be a great help.
Thanks,
Ok, if I have time tonight, if not hopefully tomorrow.
There are also a lot of very patient people asking me to write a car modeling tutorial, which due to no time, I still haven’t written.
I think it would be easier for me to do a video tute, which wouldn’t take me so much time.
sonix
I tried what you outlined but I get confused when I start to use the knife tool. Is what you are talking about just adding an edge loop on either side of the duplicate row of verts? I ended up just using ctrl r not the knife tool and seemed to have good results. Am I missing something? Should there be an actual seperation of the panels?
Here is what I tried.
Attachments
That’s about it mate. I’ll do some screens in a minute…
@sonix:
i copied your message to notepad, saved it, went home,
read it, opened up blender and…
the seams separating the middle panel was done
using Shift-D, the horizontal gap was added
later using the V command, as can be seen
it produced solid and crisp edges which are
perfect for cars with air-intakes.
big thanks for that tip sir!
Work went pear shaped right after my last post, so I haven’t been able to do any screenshots, but I see you’ve done it on your own.
Wicked seam work there bud. 8) A very nice clean mesh.
Can you post a wire frame as well please?
Well done.
Sonix.
Wicked seam work there bud. 8) A very nice clean mesh.
couldn’t have done it without the tip you gave…
when you mentioned that i had to extrude in small increment, i realized
instantly what my mistake was, i used to just extrude it towards the inside
without taking into consideration that once i turn on subsurf it’ll be curved
in huge proportions. you can see it in the following images.
Can you post a wire frame as well please?
Well done.
sure thing…and thanks again!
what it looks like when SS is off.
SS turned on.
rendered image with SS turned off.
sorry for the big images, forgot to size it down… 
That’s it. So when you want really crisp sharp creases/seams use edge loops that are close together.
Sonix.