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
Hooooo boy this was a time sink. Fun though. Has problems like the lights not being that great and the materials not being up to snuff in certain areas but overall I think I did a good job:
Apologies for the fireflies but I wanted to get this uploaded before Christmas.
Sketchfab link goes here. Had to tone down the subsurf so it won't be *as* smooth but should be pretty close. Upon uploading it there appears to be some glitchy surfaces and I'm not sure why, so if someone could have a look and help me out I'd very much appreciate it, I'd hate for it to affect my grade.
The biggest pain was the Spirit of Ecstasy, aka the hood ornament, with which I'm paradoxically proud of and disappointed with. Proud because the body was fairly well done plus I have no character/anatomy experience and very little sculpting experience, but disappointed because of the head:
It's mostly the eyes, fortunately it's not that noticeable in the grand scheme of things. Did I say I never studied anatomy before? Yeah...
Believe it or not this is a better version, it originally looked like one of those ancient African statues:
Wait, nope, that's still more anatomically correct.
In all seriousness though I had a lot of fun doing this and feedback is welcome. Well done to those who have finished and good luck to those still modeling!
The struggle: creating a silky-smooth block I can shrinkwrap to.
The Approach: I started by making two primary loops to outline the front and side silhouette.
Personal Wins: I made some 2-->4 junctions! (Though I did end up with varying degrees of lumpiness.)
Self-post-mortem: maybe I should've blocked this just like Johnathan Williams did w/the Toy Plane (basing the block off a cylinder and then extruding the cap to create the nose-cone (or in my case: the entire cockpit shape).
Barring any feedback, I might cut my losses on this primary-loops-approach and try to redo a shrinkwrappable block how Johnathan did for the toy plane.
thecabbagedetective I think you did a great job sculpting for someone who's never tried it before. And It's really great that you got your second wind and finished the limo, it's ace. I think a night time shot and turning on the lights was a good idea, I don't think anyone else has done it yet. And with the lights on it's difficult for anyone to notice if they aren't that great.
A trick for getting rid of fireflies: in the Properties editor in the Scene tab near the bottom there's a Denoising function. It gets rid of the speckles and only increases render time by maybe a minute and a half or something like that, IF that. I just turn it on, I don't fiddle with any of the settings.
stonewing You have two 3-to-1 junctions that will probably result in two little bumps that will "ruin" your silky smooth surface. I think you'll probably be able to remove those without too much effort.
thecabbagedetective Lookin' good! Great job on the sculpt, impressive work for a first "human". I definitely wouldn't have been able to make that, especially in such a short time period.
@theluthier
I've been researching interiors for that period, generally for all trucks, since references are a bit scarce, and from what I've seen, it's kind of simple, so during this week I will work on tires and bed as well. After the event is over, my intent is to lowpoly-ize it (2 LODs), bake everything and make it gameready.
If it all works well, I'll make sure to post some screenshots in here.
is there news if the homework for Week 2 will be extended ? I had 3 super busy days with no time to finish my exterior model but I think with 2 extra days I can finish it (maybe I can even cram it in within the interior deadline).
Loving all the work from you guys btw. Really glad I joined CGCookie!
jakeblended Well damn, never even knew that existed, really appreciate the tip. Thanks for the feedback as well, it's all greatly appreciated! Your model is looking fantastic as well.
stonewing Thanks Ryan! Liking your helicopter too, you were pretty smart with the mesh and the topology, which is definitely my weak point so I can always appreciate someone doing it well.
baukepost Cheers for that! Yeah if I'm honest that statue probably took me like 3 hours to do, though hopefully as time goes on I'll be able to shave time off of that, really need to learn anatomy. Lovin' your model as well, very unique!
mmrdojo Whilst I'm not 100% certain I believe all homework will be reviewed until the course finishes aka early July. Naturally @theluthier would be better suited to answer this but this is how the character creation class went if I remember correctly.
ffreddie82 Fantastic result! I love love love your topology. Super clean, super even, super optimized. My two notes are pretty minor: The indentions on the hood read much deeper than the real thing imo. In the image below, they look very subtly indented:
And the indentions on the trunk look more rounded in the edges and the whole indention design extends into the main body/roof piece, as seen in this image:
Again those are fairly minor. You've still earned an A for the week!
oonelesspuppy Thanks for posting your progress so far. It's taking shape well! And those wheels are looking fiiiine. These vehicles just take time. It's a B in my book for the level of completion + quality of the model so far - nice job, Logan 👍
thecabbagedetective Wow, was this worth the wait! Amazing model, Aaron. You've done awesome work this week. You've spared no expense, as John Hammond would say. Every inch of this exterior has received attention and detail. You even added an engine behind the grill.
From the render, I can't see any issues with the model. On sketchfab, I can spot a very slight bit of wobbliness in various areas but the vast majority is smooth as butter with crispy, refined edges. To offer a measure, I'd say your surfaces are 95% perfect with 5% of bumpiness. Here's some examples:
That last one depicts the subtle ridge I see in the middle of the roof. Again, these are super subtle issues and my notes are nitpicky. You crushed it this week with an A+.
mmrdojo During the stream today I'm going to offer extending week 2's homework (vehicle exterior) in place of week 3 (vehicle interior) for those that want it. After the stream I'll update the homework outline (description of this thread).
PS: We're glad you joined CGC as well!
@theluthier Thank you very much! I've practically been glued to my PC for the past week so it's nice to know my work paid off. Thanks for pointing out the issues as well, I didn't even notice them myself and they seem easy to fix, so I appreciate your eagle eye.
@theluthier "Super clean, super even, super optimized" this sentence means a lot to me for i have never made something clean 😂😂 Thanks a lot
