Hi Fellas.
Alright I’m new to blender and have gone through the basic tutorials on they’re website on how the interface works and how your supposed to model and so on. This is for the Windows version BTW.
What I’m looking to create is a car model for the PC Game Grand Theft Auto IV. Looking aroung it seems that the first thing you should get when trying to model any car in blender is some quality blueprints that you can use as templates. Yet at The-Blueprints.com, for most of the models i’m interested in making (British Leyland ones) and especially for the Rover above, they only have the Side and Top blueprints, so I’m kind of at a loss as to where to start on this project since I’ve never actually done any 3D Application stuff before, I mean like never before. I can probably manage the sides and the roof but filling in the front and back with grilles, headlights and whatnot might be tricky, might just need to look at pictures and guess it fairly well.
I’m amazed how people manage to make such detailed 3D Car models as mods for games and I always wonder how they do it, it cant surely be done simply by examining photos of them and tryin your best to replicate the shape and bodyworks plus all the minor details, they get interiors right aswell, granted there’s probably a few of them at it but it never ceases to astonish me how they do it.
So has anyone any ideas of how I can take this forword?
Cheers
Hi sam4, as well as the-blueprints.com, there’s also www.smcars.net, I think you have to register if I recall, but then you have to with the other to get full size blueprints anyway.
I know you probably won’t need as much detail in your cars, but for a comprehensive tutorial on car modelling, I’d suggest you look at Johnathan Williamsons Porche tutorial, it’s in several parts and you might want to download the videos to follow them easier offline as there are a lot of them and a lot of detail. check out http://cgcookie.com/blender/ and do a search for porche.
It does take time to model cars as they tend to be very technical and organic at the same time, certain tools will make the whole thing a lot easier. Plus you’ll also find that blueprint generally don’t line up perfectly, even if you have more than two veiws, so you’ll need plenty of reference pictures to help. My Golf Mk4 I put up on blendswap was a hole lot easier because I actually had the real car for a while and took a lot of pictures from different angles.
Blueprint gives you general shape of vehicle. You do need to be able to “read” orthographic print. And, on its own print contains limited information. It is just as important to get as many photo of the vehicle as well. You need to get that general form seen from all directions in your head before you can model it out in 3D.
Just did a quick google image search for ‘rover sd1 blueprint’ and found an image with top/front/back/side views. Additionally, for my current car modelling project I’ve collected about 40 images from ebay motors. I was a little unsure as to how the exhaust pipes looked so I googled it and found enough images to help me there as well. I was also unsure about the front grill, found one for sale on ebay…
A key point (at least for me) is that it’s way better to start with a modeling cage of your car rather than modeling it or portions of it with polygons/surfaces right away.
