CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #7 (July 5, 2018): BC3-1806 is officially over! The Class Wrap stream recording is available to watch and the closing post is on page 63. Please take a minute to fill out the Questionnaire 🙇🏻♂️
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #6 (June 20, 2018): Week 4's stream recording has been edited together - curse you computer freeze! - and is available to watch. This is the final week of the class! Spend some time sculpting a wild and crazy vehicle design and let's finish strong 💪
Also a reminder that we will be having a 5th stream to wrap up the class on July 3rd, so don't miss that.
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #5 (June 20, 2018): Check out Week 3's stream recording if you missed the broadcast! I also updated Week 3's homework for those of you that want to finish your vehicle exterior.
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #4 (June 13, 2018): Week 2's stream recording is now available to watch if you missed the broadcast. Also the additional timelapse video mentioned in the stream is available here.
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #3 (June 11, 2018): Week 1 is done! Thanks for getting your homework submitted on time. Here's a link to the report card if you'd like to keep track of your grades throughout the class. Onward to Week 2!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #2 (June 6, 2018): Week 1's stream recording is now available if you missed it. Also I've secured a concept car blueprint thanks to the talented 2D/3D artist, Milen Ivanov (see page 9 of this thread to download it). This is the vehicle I'll be modeling and you're welcome to model it as well if you don't want to find your own!
CLASS ANNOUNCEMENT #1 (June 4, 2018): Class is in session! Today officially begins the BC3-1806 class. Please check the syllabus below for Week 1's focus and assignments. Begin watching the pre-recorded courses if you haven't already and begin searching for a cool vehicle you want to model. The first Live Event is tomorrow at 2pm EST - SEE YOU THERE! 😎
Vehicle model by Chris Kuhn on blendwap.com
Welcome to the CGCookie Class: Vehicle Modeling with Blender! Here by popular demand, this class is designed to be a holistic learning experience about the art of modeling vehicles. If you’re diligent in watching all content and hitting homework deadlines, by the end of the class you'll be prepared to build digital vehicles to your heart's content! This is an intermediate-to-advanced class which means you’ll do best by having some experience with Blender and 3D modeling before committing to this class.
This is the third "Class" format where Citizen members are invited to focus together on a particular topic/skill for a month. Participation looks like this:
WHEN? The class will take place from June 4th through July 2nd (ish)
Abstract: Vehicle modeling is pure hard surface modeling. Therefore it's important to be proficient with general polygon modeling techniques. This first week we're ramping into this particular modeling skillset to prepare us for the vehicle modeling extravaganza to come!
Goal of the Week: Level-up and/or dust off your hard-surface modeling skills.
Pre-recorded course to watch:
Week 1 Live Event (Remember to RSVP!)
Homework:
Abstract: When I say "Imagine a vehicle" I'll bet a million dollars you're thinking about the exterior. And that's why the exterior is important. It defines everything about a vehicle's visual perception: Style, utility, purpose. This week we're going to build a vehicle exterior based on concepts like building to scale and building from blueprints.
Goal of the Week: Build the exterior of your chosen vehicle based on blueprints. This will be good practice in strict adherence to orthographic front/side/back/top view modeling.
Pre-recorded courses to watch:
Week 2 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Model by Neubi on blendswap.com
Abstract: The insides of vehicles involve more organic, soft shapes as well as opportunity for lots of fine hard surface details. Often vehicles renders focus on the exterior where the interior can be hidden or approximated. But not in this class!
Goal of the Week: Model the interior of your chosen vehicle to gain experience with fine hard-surface details in a confined space.
Pre-recorded courses to watch: Admittedly we don't have much in this context specifically...
Week 3 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
Abstract: There's another facet of vehicle modeling that doesn't involve strict adherence to blueprints. Instead, Concept Sculpting is about designing a vehicle from scratch using the artistic approach of digital sculpting. This can be an extremely fun, experimental method for creating unique vehicles.
Goal of the Week: Sculpt a vehicle exterior from scratch; Practice hard-surface sculpting techniques.
Pre-recorded courses to watch: Again we don't have much in this context specifically, but we have a couple courses that cover hard-surface sculpting in general:
Week 4 Live Event (Don't forget to RSVP)
Homework:
This thread is reserved for CG Cookie Citizens that are participating in the "Vehicle Modeling with Blender" class. Its purpose is to serve as central communication for all participating Citizens (excluding Hobby plan Citizens) to ask Kent and fellow participants questions and to post homework. As the instructor of the class, Kent will be monitoring this thread on a daily basis (especially Mon-Thurs) throughout the month of June to review homework and answer questions.
Free members are welcome to observe the thread but please respect that communication is reserved for Citizens.
Homework Submission Week 2
I think it's fair to say that car modelling is not going to become my thing. I did try my best, though, reworking each area more times than I can count (another month or so and it might start to look like a nice car). I've picked up a few tricks in the modelling courses I worked along recently, but there are still many areas of the Fiat that could have the topology laid out better, I think.
Anyway, I did the UV unwrapping and materials because I'm fairly sure I won't be able to squeeze that in next week with all the interior modelling (I'm still doing the one-project-per-week thing so I need something presentable on Sunday). I was originally working with simple principled-based materials but I switched to Substance because I like the Iray render a little better. If you'd like to see them compared, I have both of them on my Blender blog.
EDIT: I have also uploaded the Fiat to Sketchfab with SubSurf level 1.
adsb2035 
oboshape Definitely gonna second this. When I started this course I couldn't even model the hood without screwing up and getting frustrated, a nagging feeling that I bit off more than I can chew. Failure is only failure if you learn nothing from it, and the best way to learn is to constantly push yourself, which you've admitted you've been doing.
Whilst naturally we can't tell you what to do, I'd encourage you stick with it at least a bit longer. You might surprise yourself as to what you can do. But even if you fall short, hey, dust yourself off, take away what you did learn, and apply it to your next project.
HOMEWORK SUBMISSION WEEK 2
I've put it on sketchfab with subsurf level 1 just to have more smoothness :D
Seeing some awesome results popping up in this thread, great job already guys!
shiennar It seems I've managed to win the Sketchfab battle this time. Here is the link. You can enable wireframe in the model inspector (the SubSurf is set to 1).
shiennar That looks great Katerina! I do think the tires are too small.
shiennar Nice work. Just curious, how many hours did you spent on this ?
Homerwork Submission Week 2
Tried to spend as much time as i could, but to make nicer details i would need a one week of time more. This course is great however i think it is very fast paced for people with fulltime job and families.
People, how many hours did you spend this week on modeling your car ?
tthepainter Thank you. I had a head start because I finished the homework for week 1 before the class began. It's hard to say how much time I spent on it overall, but I think around 30 hours, maybe?
Homework submission Week 1 Part2 Primitives
Thanks for the opportunity to submit later.
tthepainter
I didn't count the hours.
I'd say around 12 to 14 h. It includes time searching for references and studying them.
It is not the most of the time, but it takes some time to work on references.
I'll try to track more precisely the time spent next week.
WEEK 2 HOMEWORK SUBMISSION
This has been very exciting modeling experience this far and many things has been learned. I think my Matu looks fairly OK at the moment but still there are some places that I wish could be a bit smoother. Here's the Sketchfab link and some sort of a render below.
Homework Submission Week 2
Here's my hoverbike so far. Please note that I had to turn on simplify for the export to sketchfab -also for the shrinkwrap objects- so some things don't look smooth enough.
Sketchfab: https://sketchfab.com/models/ffbfd09b249b4388866f51d61b113b5e
Woohoo hit the 1,000,000 verts club, looking forward to my viewport running at 15 FPS. Thank goodness for the simplify modifier.
Homework Submission Week 2
Not much difference compared to the previous post. The powertrain part will take me forever and is currently draining my energy. I'd better change my mind with the cabin interior this week and catch up that later. Regardless, I'm very happy with what I have :D
"Beauty" clay render:
Homework submission week 2
I wasnt able to finish it, so the model has some isues. This doesnt mean i am not satisfied. Its the first car i have modeled completely on my own (without use of videos or other learning material). I will do some more modeling on it so that it will be easier to model the interior.
Homework Submission Week 2:
This is the work for this week. It was a lot of work, but fun. I'm still not happy with the wheels, and I still have to do the tires.
Because the wheels are outside the sports car I will model the detailed axes next week (as my cockpit is very minimalistic)
So my goals for next week, besides the cockpit:
- model the wheel axes
- model the visible part of the front mechanics (because this part is visible)
Hope this will do it for submission week 2:
Hey guys,
just here to say, that I won't be able to continue the class. Some personal stuff came up and I won't be back for about 1,5-2 weeks, which means I will fall back too much to complete the class in a timely manner.
Not to mention that I am still struggling with modeling those exterior shapes....the time I could spend on it during the past week was spent to start and redo the hood of my jeep about 20 times^^ I also had to work 90% from image reference since none of the blueprint avaliable for my vehicle are lined up or even half-decent in terms of shape. All I could use the blueprint for was the general scale of the vehicle.
Anyways, all I managed to do so far is the hood. :D But owell, maybe I will finish it in the future. I guess I still have a lot to learn when it comes to these more "organic" hard surface shapes.
