Polygon Modeling 7: Car Body

Well pretty essential in this tutorial is naturally having actual blueprints... I picked the one that I just (re-)made an hour ago, the ones for a Ferrari Enzo.
Now crop all the different views in PhotoShop so that they fit exactly in the image (see below). I have made a small error with the mirrors (the Enzo has two differently sized ones, but I used one for the front and one for the rear, and naturally picked the two different ones...:), so the front and rear are not exactly as wide. Doesn't really matter, just that you know.

Alright: now save these images (or the ones from your blueprints) with some easy names, like bp-front.jpg, bp-side.jpg etc. This will come in handy when we have to pick them later on, bp-01.jpg doesn't really say much...
But before we go on do this: in the customize menu select 'Units Setup':

And set it to 'Generic Units', meters don't really mean much when your 3D'ing, it's all about relative sizes, not absolute, as seen below.

Now in explorer (or with something like ACDsee) try to find out what resolution all the different parts have, if the blueprints are good then the top would have to be as wide as the side, and the front and rear should be as high as the side and finally the front and rear should be as wide as each other. In this case you can see (image below), that the front and rear are not as wide, this is because of the mirror-issue. But the rest matches up very nicely, if I may say so.

Now create a plane with the size of the resolution that the side image has, so in this case 791x195, set the length and width segments to 1.

Fill in the following values in the absolute position at the bottom of the UI (User Interface). I used 195/2, because the pivot point is at the middle of the plane, so the z position of the plane is half as high as the height of the plane: 195 / 2.

Et voila: the plane is positioned perfectly:

Now clone this plane (Edit > Clone) and rotate it 90 degrees.

Change the size of the plane to match the front view:

Before we continue we first set some viewport options right, so that it won't cause problems later on. For instance when you work with planes and don't put 2-sided on, it doesn't show in certain viewports, very frustrating. So right click on 'Perspective' and click 'Configure...'.

Click the '2-sided' and 'Default lighting' radio buttons and set 'Apply to' to 'All viewports'.

Now your perspective view should look something like this (if not then it might be that you have to press 'F3', this toggles between Wire-frame and Smooth and Highlights mode.

Create the remaining two planes yourself, with the right sizes (= matching their image view sizes) and positions. At the end of that you have something like this (I don't put the front and rear at the same x-position since they would interfere with each other):

Rename all your planes to something so that you can find them easily, stuff like BP: Front always works easily, I tend to just name them after the view they represent, so Front, Rear, Side, Top.

That was the setup of the planes, now we are going to apply the right materials to the right planes. So open the Material Editor and in the first slot click the small square for the diffuse material...

...from the pop-up click 'Bitmap'...

...and select the side view from the blueprint, in my case bp-setup-02-side (from this tutorial):

Select the plane called 'Side' and apply the material, also click the checkered square to 'Show map in Viewport':

Repeat this step for all planes and all their corresponding bitmaps.

Now right-click perspective again and select 'Texture Correction', this makes sure they are shown rightly in the viewport, sometimes they don't really do what they're supposed to, the texture correction solves this.

What you should have is this (almost finished now! :):

The final step is to change the setting to optimize the quality of the texture in your viewports, so go to Customize > Preferences... > Viewports > Configure Driver

The only things you should change are the 'Apperance Preferences'. I have them like this, this may differ for other video cards (I have a NVidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 64Mb... [AT THE TIME OF WRITING]).

That's it, we're done. You may want to rotate the planes if they don't match with your viewport names (as I have here, the side is in the Front viewports), but that doesn't really change much, they're all orthogonal...

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The modeling of the body of a car can almost always be sliced up into different parts, literally and figuratively speaking. Litereally because most of the time the front and rear bumpers, the entire 'cockpit', mirrors etc. are all loose parts. Figuratively because when you model it, it can be done in steps: first a rough simple (but rightly shaped!) basis and then the refinements, such as chamfering edges and making the creases.

Blueprint Setup

Setting up blueprints is a 5 minute job, I have explained the way I do it earlier in the tutorial about how to setup blueprints. Only this time I chose a different car, since almost the whole world seems to model it: the Audi TT. Another reason to model this car, is because it's one of the easiest car to model. After we have done that (1), it's time to jump in.

PS: When I would be modeling a car I would try to find as much reference photo's as possible. As I have stated before: I don't use the blueprints that much when I model my car, only for the rough / global shape of the car I use them, photo's are way better reference since they show all details. So get Google out and try to get your hands on wallpapers and personal photo's of the car you try to model. Sometimes it can be very hard to find any (for instance for the 993 GT2 and the Alfa Romeo SZ I modeled), but it's essential if you want to end up with a good representation of the original. I am not talking about a couple of photo's... usually I would try to find around 50-100 wallpaper sized (800x600 or larger) photo's. In this tutorial I won't go into modeling all details, since only the concept is important, not the modeling itself.

Finding a Place to Start

I have the feeling that many people have a (healthy!) fear or starting to model a car. 'Where do I start?', is a logical question. And there is no definate answer. Anywhere would be the best I can think of. It just doesn't matter, yet the way you approach the modeling process does.

So I am just going to start at the front, and model the hood. What I will think of from the first second I start is that the whole car is symmetric (apart from the tank cap), so I am not going to model both sides, but only one half. So I'll start with a single plane, but the way I create it, is by creating a box from the side view (1) and then deleting 5 out of 6 polygons (2). This way side of the polygon is exactly in the middle and I can use the symmetry modifier without any troubles (3).

So now that we have made the basis, the hard work is up! I start from the top view and shift-drag some edges, slice once and move the vertices to match up with the blueprints (but only from the top view up until now!) to create the entire hood (1). After doing that I realize that the most front part of the hood goes downward and that I need more polygons there (what you see is smaller than it really is, because of the orthogonal top view) and so I model the front grill too (2). I always model this with the symmetry modifier visible, so I can see the result immediately.

Now is as good as any time to not only make it match the top but also from the side (top and side view are most important, I think, front and rear view I don't use very often). So we move the vertices so they match. Both the most inner row and outer row of vertices are easy to place (3), since the blueprints have a line there (the crease of the hood) in the top and side view. The line of vertices in between should be placed by feeling...

PS: Notice how the blueprints I used do not match up. This is a common flaw of almost any blueprint, and there is nothing you can do about it, just live with it and correct your modeling so that it looks best according to your own feeling. This is also why I say that you shouldn't trust on blueprints alone.

After making the two other rows match too, you shold have something like (1). Looking good if you ask me. Realize that the lines on blueprints usually correspond to creases and / or sharp edges. When you want to model them, you need edges there (to create the creases as explained in a previous tutorial).

Going Sideways

Well we can't go any more further to the front, all is done there (well roughly), so we should go towards the side. I selected the entire row of edges (2), shift-dragged them out (3) (once again) and editted the vertices I just created to match up again from top and side (4). Looks fairly good, but I made a small mistake: in the last part I didn't realize I was looking from above again and so I didn't have enough vertices to match the shape of the body, this I will set right by cutting an extra row and place the newly created vertices correctly (5).

Since I won't be modeling the entire car (why would I? Then the tutorial would cover how to model an Audi TT ;), I will now start with some detailing (which I would normally only do until I have finished the rough model of the entire body.

The edges on the hood are a good place to start. First we select the edges (1), chamfer them (2), move one lower than the other (3) then chamfer the new edges again only now smaller so they will become more sharp (4). Add a MS modifier with 2 iteration to see whether the result is satisfactory.

I now will model the headlights and the crease of the hood. Since the headlights look to be perfectly smooth with the body I will just make creases around it (and not delete them and later on try to remodel them back in). And with one sweep I will also create the crease of the hood. So I select the edges (1) I want to crease and apply the technique explained in an earlier tutorial (2). With a 2 iterations MS modifier (3).

Would I continue from here, then I would be in deep trouble, making the creases continue onto the wheel arches is undoable (as explained). So realize that this is just for tutorial purposes that I start detailing already.

Last thing I will do is make the grill. I didn't take into account modeling it (I have no vertices there), so I will slice where needed (1), then extrude inwards (2), delete the not need polygons (3) and finally chamfer some edges (4).

So in the end it looks like this:

Modeling the rest of the body is just more of the same. Only you would first model the entire car, then make the creases and hard edges and then do all the final tweaking.

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