My first go at a car

despite having been doing 3D stuff for more years than I care to remember, I have never made a car. I figured it would be nice to make MY car. It’s a lot harder than I expected. I’ve junked it several times and started again.

I’m using blueprints, and have finally settled on modelling each separate panel. I’ll sort out the detail once I get the rough shape correct. Got to say, it’s not looking close at the moment, but I’ll persevere with this technique until I have the whole shape. Then I may junk it again.

I’ve never had this much of a problem modelling anything before.

I’ve deliberately made the material such that no-one can guess just from that what car it will be. so if anyone does get it I must be on the right track.

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looks like a camaro? the way i model cars is i start by making the overall big shapes regardless of panel separation, and then once i’m happy with the shapes, i start cutting the panels out. i find it helps with the flow between panels if they were initially modeled as one piece.

It’s not a Camaro - more European. To be honest, if this method doesn’t work, I’ll then try the blocking out method, and separate later, but for now, with snapping enabled I can see that this might work. I’ve junked and started again 4 times. One more won’t hurt if I have to.

I can give you a clue. It’s no longer in production, classic convertible.

Cars are notoriously hard. This one’s looking pretty decent so far.

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Looks like a solid start. Are you following any tutorials, or just going head first into the deep end?

I’ve been modelling for more years than I can remember, but this is a whole new level of hard :slight_smile:

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No - I have a problem that I haven’t worked out how to fix. The cut outs on the lower bumber need to be more angular, but I need the subD to get the smoothness. Not figured out how to beat the SubD on that, yet, but I will.

I’m currently a few hours in to this tutorial from CG Masters/Chris Plush. Maybe you’ll find it useful. I didn’t buy the course so I could start making cars, though. I bought it to increase modelling confidence in blender and I couldn’t think of anything more time-consuming, complex, and detailed than a 47-hour course on how to make a supercar inside and out. Now I can tackle modelling that toaster in my kitchen anytime the mood hits me :slight_smile:

Also, the course is Blender right out of the box so no need to learn or know 3-5 other separate products to get it done.

47 hours of SubD hard-surface modelling - $60

Actually, regardless of the method you’ve chosen to implement creating this car, the fundamental principles for hard surface modeling would still apply i.e.:

  • Block out low res primary shapes

  • Define secondary detail

  • Further add tertiary detailing

  • Finalise or unify the above output

So just as a casual observation of your progress thus far, what is very apparent well to me at least. Via the OP image is surface distortion, highlighted by the reflective matcap which usually occurs when manually adjusting overly dense geometry, rather than slightly lower topology resolution edge-flow, alongside use of vanilla mesh operators such as vertex and/or edge slide or basic pivot point transformation - Active Element - for uniform scaling of connected vertices…etc

EDIT:
Indeed, very much agree generating automotive content, can be a challenge at the best of times.