[ENDED] BC3-1806 - June 2018 Class Homepage - Vehicle Modeling with Blender

Kent Trammell

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 đŸ™‡đŸ»â€â™‚ïž


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 đŸ’Ș

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! 😎


SYLLABUS


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:

  • RSVP and attend the Live Events
  • Watch the courses outlined below
  • Ask questions
  • Submit homework
  • Generally be active in this thread

WHEN? The class will take place from June 4th through July 2nd (ish)

✅WEEK 1: Hard Surface Primer (June 4 - 10)

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:

✅WEEK 2: Vehicle Exterior Modeling (June 11 - 17)

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 the exterior of you chosen vehicle [post images and/or a Sketchfab embed]

✅WEEK 3: Vehicle Interior Modeling (June 18 - 24)


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:

  • Model the interior of you chosen vehicle [post images and/or a Sketchfab embed]
  • OR if you didn't finish your vehicle exterior from week 2 or didn't have time to fine tune it as much as you wanted, you can choose to do that for week 3 and skip the interior. Just understand that I will grade you based on how much visible difference there is between your week 2 and week 3 submissions. In other words, if it looks like you barely did anything on your exterior for week 3 you'll get a lower grade.

✅WEEK 4: Vehicle Concept Sculpting (June 25 - July 1)

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:

  • Sculpt a unique concept vehicle [post images and/or a Sketchfab embed]

✅WEEK 5: Class Wrap-Up (Early July)

Also by popular demand, we'll be doing a 5th live stream to close out the class, review week 4 homework, and possibly a special guest vehicle modeling guru. Once I get confirmation on that guest I'll add the Live Event to the calendar.

Hark! June is here.


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.


  • Bauke Post(baukepost) replied

    thecabbagedetective The complete vehicle production course by CGMasters also has a section on shading, you can find it on Udemy for 10$ at the moment. That course helped me a ton while creating my Lamborghini, since you can just use the car, course and materials (as a reference).

  • Bauke Post(baukepost) replied

    Just noticed I didn' t have symmetry turned on while sculpting my seats:(, does anyone have any ideas how to fix it without applying the multiresolution modifer?

  • silentheart00 replied

    jakeblended Thanks!  It's getting there.

  • Kent Trammell replied

    dieedi Your interior is coming along very well.

    tthepainter Thanks for the clay renders! Not that one is better than the other - they each provide their own useful depictions. Really great model btw. And sure, you've more than proven yourself an active participant this month. You can submit late.

    tbrbn By all means, yes. At this point in my interior I'm fully aware of the plethora of pieces that need to be modeled and am fine with you (or anyone else) using HardOp's pre-made pieces.

    mmartinlisen  That mesh is so minimal! Pretty amazing.

  • Kent Trammell replied

    michallis If they're supposed to be rubber, I think indeed they read well. I would have guessed them to be metal...

    I don't think you can accomplish that kind of duplication with a mirror modifier. You can duplicate the object and link their object data for an optimal duplication while maintaining individual axes of rotation.

    silentheart00 jakeblended I'm in the club as well, having started over multiple interior pieces from scratch.

  • Kent Trammell replied

    silentheart00 Clean and optimal hood topology 👌

    mmartinlisen Whew look at that render! 👏

    williamatics It's these two edges that are so close to each other while all other edges are spread out more from one another:




  • Kent Trammell replied

    thecabbagedetective Fantastic progress, Aaron! As far as modeling quality and even the lighting preview, it's looking great. I have a questions about the layout of the seats/floor.

    It seems like there's no leg room between the back seats, nor a drop in the floor for feet to be adequately lower than the seats?

  • Kent Trammell replied

    tbrbn I love all those doodads. Awesome, Thibaut!

  • Kent Trammell replied

    jakeblended Coming along very nicely, Jake 👌

  • Kent Trammell replied

    dieedi That red leather is đŸ”„

    Excellent job this week, Jeremy! I cannot wait to see this with an HDRi playing in the reflections. An easy A in my book.

  • Kent Trammell replied

    thecabbagedetective I'm at 2.1 million faces right now. Maybe another 500K to go? I wouldn't be surprised ending up around 3 million if I'm diligent with the details.

  • Kent Trammell replied

    williamatics You definitely could distribute a random collection of knobs, switches, gauges etc using a particle hair system. Instead of splines you can choose the group of objects as an option. However I can't imagine it would look "designed" and merely a random mishmash..but it's your concept tank and you have the liberty to do what you want :)

  • Kent Trammell replied

    silentheart00 Sir. Those surfaces are clean and smooth as they can be. Wow. I'd say it was the right call to start over from scratch. Not that your first go was bad, it just wasn't this good. Awesome job!

  • Kent Trammell replied

    aarev I suppose you could separate the interior from the exterior if you want. It just feels so good to feature them both in context 😅

    How come you want to separate them?

  • Kent Trammell replied

    mmrdojo YES! I was looking forward to seeing your full truck exteriorÂ đŸ€©

  • Kent Trammell replied

    tbrbn Of course Thibaut beat me to the punch! Listen to him williamatics 

  • Darren McBain(oboshape) replied

    Homework Submission Week 3


    well, ive done pretty much as my little ole laptop and me can handle, so ill call it there.Just need to keep practicing..https://sketchfab.com/models/b8f9006e78ed4e44bee94f470aca753d


    I definitely think that next time around I will plan ahead.  went through too many iterations of deleting and restarting when something were just getting too tricky and frustrating to tweak to what i wanted, it was just better to restart over..

  • Kent Trammell replied

    tbrbn williamatics Now I feel better about my interior's level of detail 😅

  • Kent Trammell replied

    baukepost Vehicle texturing/shading has to be a [near] future class. I'm already getting the itch to tex/shade my car 😎

  • Aaron Rudderham(thecabbagedetective) replied

    baukepost Oh yeah I remember seeing that, thanks for the heads up!