I’ve started work on the model of a future car, designed for urban travel with lots of traffic and little room for parking. It will be used as a portfolio piece representing my design and modeling skills.
Orthographic views of the vehicle, for use as blueprints for the 3d model.
The front and rear views of the car are pretty much placeholders, as I haven’t decided yet on the final design of the headlights or taillights.
Yesterday I started some preliminary mesh work after finishing the spline cage. I focus on getting a nice topology since that really pays off in the end. It makes the difference between a good car model and a great one.
I really like the idea. It looks really cool and the cage looks nice as well. Do you plan on using this for anything? Also kinda makes me want to make a future car, but my would be no where near as cool. Chances are i would just make hot rod from the 1980 transformers movie. Man i love that guy. Great i know am going to make a transformer all due to you. I thank you for influencing me. Keep up on your car too i cant wait to see it finished.
Joshua_Riley: Thanks man, the plan is to eventually use it in some kind of future cityscape illustration, but in the meantime it will serve well as a portfolio piece. Good luck with that transformer of yours.
The car is coming along nicely. I’m very pleased with the smooth look of the body, something that was usually lacking in previous efforts of mine.
So I’m finally back with an update. Just about finished the most important parts. On to detailing and creating an interior.
The front of the car is already looking very presentable. I used a default 100% reflective material on all the parts except the tires so it’s easier to spot mesh “defects”.
looks cool, i like how yu have put it in a real world enviroment too, ive just finished an epicly huge model of a car showroom for my cars, mind telling me how you did the background?
I think the rear window could do with a little more definition, like an inwards extrusion a tiny ammount, nice one, keep it up
bizla: Thanks, the background is an HDR panoramic photograph I got from smcars.net. Used it as a world texture. And obviously beveling and giving the bodywork and glass some thickness is the next step.
This update is a little less interesting than usual as I’ve mainly cleaned up the mesh (compare with the previous post to see the improved reflections) and did some material tests.
I also stumbled upon a couple of problems:
For aesthetic reasons I omitted sideview mirrors from the design (instead displays inside the car are used), but one thing I completely forgot to incorporate were windshield wipers. Currently I’m thinking of having hidden wipers in the side of the windshield (as opposed to on the hood) and having them pop out whenever they’re needed.
If you look below you’ll see I also did a render test in Luxrender. In comparison with the blender internal renders there’s one thing that stood out to me: the glass. When using fresnel values to determine how much a surface reflects, as in the physical world, blender seems to fail. the fallof is way to sharp. I’ve played around with the fresnel and blend values of the reflection but I can’t seem to make it look right. In fact, I have a feeling they both do exactly the same thing. I’ve looked into material nodes but I can’t seem to replicate the same effect the fresnel node has in cycles.
If someone has experience with this it would be very helpful to share some advice or tips.
I’m bringing this thread back from the grave. I’m not letting this project dissappear in my vast collection of unfinished models.
Couple of things I’ve done: Interior, everything besides the dashboard and steering wheel, Head and taillights, rig the doors to open like gullwings ( I know it’s not the most practical thing for a compact car, but it looks damn cool.) and switching all the materials and textures to Cycles.
Very good concept!
In my opinion it’s an electric car for today… not for the future!
Can you explain how did you use the spline cage?
I mean, did you use the splines to model the car, as guides to the mesh or something else?
I’m really curious!
Thank you for all your responses, gives me that extra bit of motivation to finish this project as fast as possible.
adam450: Mirrors are going to be monitors on the dashboard, see the sketch. I just thought that would be much more convenient in large cities where cars are parked very close to each other and sideview mirrors are often vandalised. I tried a license plate, but I can’t seem to make it work without breaking the flow of the lines of the car.
mib2berlin: The design itself is mostly inspired by the work of Syd Mead. Especially the simple geometric features of my car. Also lighting and materials are far from finished, just needed something practical to easily spot dents and creases in the mesh.
kaixax555: Thanks! I do have a background in Industrial Design. I dropped out after 4(!) years but if I continued car design would probably be the direction I would’ve chosen.
Utopia780: Yep, that’s pretty much it. I did the main lines of the car with splines while keeping the isometric drawings as a secondary guide. Splines in blender are well… let’s just say there’s quite a learning curve ;). It’s hard to resist going straight to mesh editing, but in this case it really payed off. Splines really helped getting consistency across the different parts, so you can achieve a very smooth look.
FlykeR: Thanks! Wait till you see the finished ones!
And some updates: Both doors have functional rigs for opening. I’m thinking about adding a secondary hinge, or some sort of hydraulic arm cause right now it looks a bit flimsy. I might do an animation since render times are still pretty acceptable for CPU only. Also a crappy sketch of the dashboard.
