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.
@theluthier Thank you! I hear what you're saying about the floor and the seats as well.
The floor you see in that render isn't the actual floor, it's just the skirt of the car that I extended under just to give me a basic idea of the floor at the time, I've added a proper one since.
I've also been making adjustments to my seating as well, might redo the back seats entirely, but when I look at pictures the limo doesn't seem to have much legroom to begin with:
So I'm not sure how inaccurate I've made it, I'm sure it's definitely too cramped but I'm not sure by how much. You have any idea, looking at both this and the render? Here's an OpenGL render from a similar angle:
Just looking at these two I can see a couple areas to improve but nothing that would drastically increase legroom. Sorry if this makes me appear stupid so I'm gonna use the "tired" excuse as it's 2AM and hope I get away with that haha. Thanks again for the feedback and a massive thanks in advance for anyone with advice on this situation.
@theluthier Thanks! Doing my best and actively applying the knowledge I've gained since last time.
oboshape You've come a long way, Darren! Overall it's a very clean model both in surface, detail, and topology. Good job on the interior as well. It's an A from me this week! 👍
thecabbagedetective Actually your model looks pretty accurate to me. Sorry if I spoke to soon - keep up the great work! Love those details 🤩
@theluthier cheers Kent, onwards and upwards.
couple of hours each night and once i got into it, did enjoy it. few troublesome areas but its all good practice.
another step along the learning journey ;)
Oh good grief. Bumpers are a pain. Sharpened up some lines. Looking pretty sweet!
Of course, some things to hammer out, like that massive hole in the bumper. That's where the fog light is suppose to be, and it's fairly complex geometry. Might just make that a flat surface and punch a hole in later.
Hi guys, another quick question: what do you think would be on this dashboard thing? Would you think there would be some good old fashion gauges (with a futuristic tint) or just a screen with some buttons around it? I decided not to model the green thing on top of it by the way, since I already have a lot of empty space to fill.
baukepost The green screen you mention is a Head Up Display (HUD), which usually gives extra informations for the driver, in an augmented reality (AR) fashion. So that mean, if you remove it, that these info must be somewhere else, so on the dashboard.
I would go for a big screen on the middle of it and some buttons on the sides. I think it's a great idea to keep it a little bit old school as well. For the screen I was thinking of something like this display:
The tricky part would be to make it look a bit less futuristic perhaps ?
Since it reminds me of a motorcycle, you need to also think ergonomic: both hands of the driver are needed for driving, and the driver should avoid having to play with all the buttons while driving :) Safety first!
tbrbn Thanks, this is the first time I really have to design big parts of an object so that definitely helps!
@theluthier I want to seperate because the exterior isnt completely finished. But as it turns out i am not feeling too well today, so i dont think i will be able to finish this weeks lesson today.
oboshape Looking good! Glad you stuck with it, you've come a long way. It's honestly quite impressive how much work you've managed to get done in the time you had considering you started fresh.
@theluthier Ah no worries, I'm glad you did actually, helped me locate a few areas that need improvement. Thanks for the compliment as well, details are my favorite part so they probably get more attention than the main part of the vehicle haha.
Day 4 & 5 done!
Not gonna lie, I was rather disappointed with the work I got done on day 4, probably because I spent too much time on small details which I usually reserve for last, or maybe it's because the dashboard was a massive pain in the backside to model. Probably both.
Day 5 however I really felt I compensated for the lack of work done on day 4, to the point of outside of the area for the pedals I'm pretty much done with the main interior and can concentrate on my favorite part: the small details!
This took 9 hours to render by the way, maybe 2,500 samples was too much? Maybe I shouldn't be running Blender on a toaster? Who knows? Either way it's been really fun so far and good luck to all of you working alongside each other!
thecabbagedetective Nice work Aaron, you did so much work in one week! I'm still working hard to get it done on time, kudos to you.
@theluthier Thanks! I'm really glad with the result so far, I have always avoided vehicles interior as much as possible, but this time with the group's dynamics it's really much more enjoyable! :D
Week 3 Homework submission
Wasn't too sure how to present this so I just snippety snapped some screenshots with the clipping tool.
This part included pretty much work because of all the details. Damn the details seemed endless! And still there is so much to tweak so it would be called finished. The whole interior is full of first versions of everything at the moment but I'm glad I got so much of them done by the end of the week.
Homework submission Week 3
This was a difficult week, but I'm fairly happy with how things turned out in the end. It is far from perfect ( and I didn't have time to texture it properly) but I've managed to do a lot more than I expected.
Side view:
Side view close-up:
Dashboard:
My home this week. I aimed for the steeple and didn't even reach the clock. I wanted to realistically model a race seat but ended up spending what time I had on researching and modelling stitching. I am still way off what I hoped to achieve, however, I have succeed in finding many ways not to do it. The first image is a later attempt, I definitely felt progress, from the second image which was an earlier attempt.
baukepost Ta very much! I won't lie I'm starting to get a little tired of Blender at this point but we're so close, best to soldier on. Don't think you've shown us your interior (or the equivalent of) yet so i'm looking forward to seeing it.
It's always reassuring when Blender crashes every time you try to go into rendered mode. This is going to take like a month to render, isn't it?