3D digital modelling using 3ds max.

 

 

Having done a little digital modelling in the animatic for the FYP, I've decided to do a bit more. I would like to try a digital version of one of the scenes from the FYP - something without too much movement - but obviously requiring a character, with rigging, and props/environment. I.ve done a bit of set building and lighting for the animatic so I'm going to start with prop making. Modelling in general (of props/ objects) will be a case of combining and manipulating primitive shapes to match reference drawings. With lots of online tutorials available, I decided to start with modelling a car. Not for my animated scene, but more to get used to the software.This could then be animated to drive around a track, or something like that.

 

I figured that a VW Beetle might be easy enough to do, as it seems to be a collection of spherical shapes. It turns out that it's not that simple. First of all I sourced some reference drawings of the car - front, back side and top views. These came as a single file and then had to be separated into four individual images - of the same scale - as they would be set up onto four separate planes in the view port. This was done in Photoshop where the images could be scaled to match each other using the grid. Each image is then applied as a bitmap material to each plane. Naturally you would assume that they should be saved as bitmap images in Photoshop? No, nothing is that simple or straightforward in the workings of computers. So having failed to import the images as bitmaps I had to go back into Photoshop and save them as jpegs, which is the correct format to import as a bitmap image.

My initial plan to connect a series of stretched and squashed sphere primitives didn't work out as the beetle has flat sides and a flat windscreen. Though that did work to a certain degree (i.e. from a distance) for the wings. So I had to follow a tutorial that moulds the basic shape from a box - rectangle - primitive, which was divided into lots of segments, and then shaped into the images profile by moving rows of vertices. I placed each reference image on it's own layer so that it could be switched on or off depending on whether or not it was obscuring my view as I worked. I took a few screen shots as I went along which I've uploaded here.



In the first image the side profile has been shaped. I must have made a mistake during this though because the cars bonnet (or boot lid in the beetles case) had disappeared. I know it looks as though the drivers side of the car is missing in the image above but it's just the way it rendered - probably something to do with normals. This is when I leant to use the 'bridge' (polygon) tool. After filling the gap I then had to cut my new polygons into sections to match the front to back edge-flow of the existing top view polygons. The front and back reference images were turned off while I shaped the side and top profiles.

 

With the 'bonnet' gap filled in I then switched to the top view port to shape the sides, I said earlier that they were flat - which they are (sort of) - but they do taper towards the centre at each end. 

 

 

A perspective view shows the sides and top/ floor are roughly shaped at this point. I also removed the floor (which I wasn't going to need) as I kept accidentally selecting vertices on it - which in turn distorted the side I was working on.

 

I didn't get any screen shots of the wings being constructed but I only made rough versions by Squashing and stretching a doughnut primitive. I then deleted some of the inner rings of polygons. The remaining shape had the bottom half removed, and one side edge stretched away from the centre. I started with one front wheel wing and copied this for the back wheel. These were then mirrored for the opposite side. The wheels were also just a rough draft - a doughnut primitive shape - coloured black, and a cylinder with a few bevels and extrudes applied. Again this was copied and mirrored. I added a turbo smooth modifier (temporarily) to the body just to see how it would look when added later. The overall shape is looking fairly good though. I think I would get away with this if it was moving in an environment. Obviously the windows, doors, lights and bumpers will be added first.

 

The side windows proved to be a bit more difficult than I had anticipated. I had planned to manipulate two box primitives - with lots of segments - into the same side profiles as the side widows, and then cut out the shapes using Booleans. I mustn't have used enough segments because after spending far too long trying to replicate these (window) shapes it just wasn't working out. In the end I had to do what I should have done at the start, which was to draw the window profiles using splines. the splines were then extruded to cut out the window shapes in the body - using Booleans.

 

After cutting out the side windows I applied the turbo smooth modifier again to see how it looked. What I hadn't noticed was that when I cut the window shapes in the main body I had distorted the edge flows along those planes (each side) from front to back and between each side. You might just be able to notice the distortion's towards the front of the roof. There are a few others that are not as obvious in this image.When I removed the turbo smooth modifier almost all of my previous edge flows were gone. Considering how long it had taken to replace the edge flows on the bonnet earlier I don't know if I will continue with this model. I realise now that I should have added some edges outside the window hole cuts - before I cut them - which would have preserved the previous edge flow lines. Even more importantly I should be saving incrementally rather than just saving regularly. For some reason I couldn't undo back far enough to regain my original lines so they are gone for good. Now I have to figure out a way of fixing the distortions or it looks like I'll have to start again from scratch. Hopefully by the time I post again I'll have fixed this and added some more parts.