Hi this is my first project, so far Ive only modelled Space Eye in blender. I dont have much interest in cars, but I saw this Porsche on Top Gear last week and thought it would be a good project to learn blender with.
Still a lot of work to do obviously, but any C+C or tips would be good as i’m still nubbin’ it!.
The model currently only has two materials, Bling Bling Chrome courtesy of sonix excellent car materials pack, and a marble texture for the floor.
oh yeah, im sure ive seen blender pics of mesh’s with the textures shown in the 3d view, but for some reason they dont show up in mine, although im sure I have at some point been able to see a texture in the 3d view, which is frustrating. this is the first image shown from the cameras view in blender. im using 2.37a and my graphics card is Nvidia Geforce3.
its in potato mode, but WHERES MY POTATO1??!>
Could you please post some wires?
yes. yes i can!
I think that you have a lot of redundant verts in the following areas: hood, trunk, space between the seats, upper part of the windshield. Straighter areas can be done with less verts.
You might have a problem in the front side of the door. The mesh is not clean there. You can see the problem in the rendered version too.
The curvy backpart in which the tyre comes (lol i am not too good with car parts) is not as round as it should be. Slight problem near the trunk.
The hood might be too flat, not Porsche like at the moment.
Good job avoiding unnecessary tris. I think that you can have some tris on your model if they are on a flat surface. Sometimes you can save a lot of verts that way but optimizing a model that way should be left near the end of the workflow so that it is easier to modify the base mesh.
Which model this is by the way? I would love to see the real thing.
[edit]D’oh, should have read the topic header, found it.
http://blueprints.onnovanbraam.com/modules/bpview/bpview.php?nr=784
[/edit]
have you used reference images? i can’t find mine anymore but something looks really odd in top view. back is too narrow and the entire car too narrow. looks squeezed like that. can be wrong though as i’m not a car man but it looks odd to me.
To me, the top view looks fine, but in the first shot the back of the car looks significantly wider than the rest, like the perspective is backwards or something. I think it might just be the angle though.
Most of it looks good, except the funky door as mentioned, but you should light it better so we can see it better in the renders.
Yes this is a very messy mesh! I knew it was going to go that way, ive never used a high-poly modeller before blender, so i thought id go nuts and make as high-poly a model as i could, hence the choice of car, this things curvier than pamela andersson! Im not really worrying about verts i dont need, unless they get in the way or when i get problems such as - as you pointed out - the front of the door, which I think im close to sorting. My main concern is trying to stik to quads, im used to creating objects solely with tri-polys, the editor im used to using wont let you create a quad that has vertices on different planes (bent faces), now im tryng to get my head around using quads and not tris, arg!
The curvy backpart in which the tyre comes (lol i am not too good with car parts) is not as round as it should be. Slight problem near the trunk.
yeah that really shows up on the second pic, im on it!
The hood might be too flat, not Porsche like at the moment.
yeah i wasnt sure on this, ill make it rounder see how it looks.
I cant find a top-down reference except the Carerra concept which is significantly different from the actual Carerra, so its not a good reference. I still think the proportion are off, I think its slightly too wide overall, I slimmed the rear half on purpose, but i was never sure about this. Ill have another look at the scale.
thanks for your input guys, big help. can you help with my second post, about textures not showing in the 3D views?
Ok you can see it better here, the only changes from the other images are: gave the wheels and head lights materials, added another lamp and changed the chrome material to a different but similar one.
oh yeah, im sure ive seen blender pics of mesh’s with the textures shown in the 3d view, but for some reason they dont show up in mine, although im sure I have at some point been able to see a texture in the 3d view, which is frustrating. this is the first image shown from the cameras view in blender. im using 2.37a and my graphics card is Nvidia Geforce3.
AFAIK it works properly only with UV maps. Though if you have a material with alpha value less than 1, you can make it look transparent by checking object\drawtype\solid and object\draw extra ransp. This works only in 2.4. A new feature. 
Are you going to model the seams?
ok i googled around and found the images i had used back then for my model (that never got far as i had been too new to blender to tackle such a project). maybe they help you (i don’t know that car and those are gt pictures, not gt 2, but i guess it looks alike).
front
side
three-quarter
top
back
interior
cockpit
good luck with it.
I have a lot of reference pics thanks to google, but the top view is EXACTLY what I was looking for, assuming this model has the same dimensions as the model in my references. If you compare your top imagewith the concept top image - the only top view i could find, and therefoe had to use as a close reference - you can see where my dimensional problems stem from. Using your reference should sort me out though, thanks a lot!!
Ah I see, bugger. So the best way to texture accurately if you arent UV mapping then is repeated edit/render trial and error? Boo.
Are you going to model the seams?
Yeah looks like its going that way, kinda needs it.
Ah I see, bugger. So the best way to texture accurately if you arent UV mapping then is repeated edit/render trial and error? Boo.
You can make texturing faster if you render only a small part of image.
You can do it this way:
I don’t know if this helps but one way of setting up reference pics is to UV map them on a plane. First you have to set up the image you want to use as a background picture. Then you have to scale a plane to fit it exactly. Then you can remove the background picture and apply the image on the plane using UV mapping. -> Select UV Face Select mode, select the face of your plane. Open up a panel with UV/Image Editor. Load up the picture (Image/Open). Scale your plane in UV/Image Editor to fit it exactly. Note: the edge colors are important! There you go.
to be honest: not really. the pictures are quite the same except the field-of-view is a bit different. but hopefully it helps 
