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.
Hmm, I've got a problem.
I know, it's terrible. But I need that to be a sharp corner. Help?
silentheart00 You've got a six-sided pole on a curved surface, that's a no no :). I think Kent had a section or exercise about this in his sci-fi helmet course, you might find some answers there.
baukepost Yeah, I figured that 6 pole was a problem. I'm trying to think of a way to resolve it without altering the existing geometry too badly.
Hey guys, I've got a question about UV mapping: when you are unwrapping you model unto the UV map, do you have every island pinned at the end so they don't change rotation (and position) when you unwrap again or is there a smarter way? I'm also using the rectify tool from Textools so I don't want to lose those edits.
Got a bit of an issue where whenever I go to apply a material there's a chance Blender will slow down to a crawl making it impossible to do anything and I have to reload. Any know about this?
thecabbagedetective My Blender always lags a bit too when I set the viewer to Material or Texture mode, but never that bad.
Maybe turning off the visibility of some modifiers?
jakeblended Wow, thank you for such a detailed answer. :-) I've been using shrinkwrap modifier quite a bit, but I'll have a look at the video all the same - seems like there are a lot more uses of it that I haven't thought of. (In this project I used it mainly to position a circle mesh where I wanted a circular cutout. Then I joined the circle to the original mesh, deleted vertices in the middle of the circle and filled in the topology. Long live the F2 addon.) I haven't had any issues when applying the shrinkwrap, though. I just had to move it to the top of the stack. I've seen it mess up the mirror modifier, but that's luckily not too hard to fix.
Homework Submission Week 3
my interior is not finished but this is what i could do for this week.
Just when I thought I was well optimized, the sculpting began...
Shame I can't use multires level 3 as Blender just melts on me when I try to render. Maybe I'll do it with CPU rendering in the future when I have an ice age to spare.
Tried doing that procedural wood texture and it just looks like splattered paint haha.
Homework Submission Week 3
This last week was quite busy, I ended up not having enough time to add as many details as I wanted. I had the game Subnautica on my mind while making this, the vehicles' interiors are so simple and clean!
Bonus Image:
@theluthier
Thanks, yah I tried to use the shaders from the forge course, the car paint and leather procedural materials but I think they are a little advanced for my current level of competency.
It would be great to have a tutorial series on cycles shaders that was a more intermediate level for dummies like me. The course was great, but I think too advanced for me to grasp.
Thanks for the GTX image, I'll use it when I go back and refine my model :)
Question: for next weeks assignment do you want us to try and sculpt the same vehicle or another new vehicle? If we sculpt a new vehicle do you want us to submit an image first in the thread?
@theluthier thank you for the grade. All these kind words inspires me to bang this model even further
ssilenthans Finished or not it looks damn fine. I can almost feel the leather in my hands when watching those seats
Homework Submission Week 3
I still had a lot of exterior work, added an engine (less detailed, as I can look through the grill up front).
Dashboard is simple, but for this car it's very basic. Reworked the car where I was not sattisfied (wheels, joints, ...).
Sketchfab:
Special thanks for the very good and fast community support, without I wouldn't be able to finish this model!!!