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.
jakeblended two very common issues designers face are 1) doing too much too soon; going to far into a design too quickly without fleshing it out very loosely and 2) falling in love to fast; then there is a fear that you can't redo parts of the work or abandon it completely and start over. I'm going to add your point to my mental short-list as 3) facing the fear of concepting what isn't practical! I do the same thing - I get so far and then it's like I run into a wall of "reality"...stop...and ask myself, "would this even actually work in real life?!?!". Apparently we all do it!
Thanks.
michallis Wait. Are you telling me you've never created a material with Blender before this? 🤨
That would be hard to believe because this is turnout out great! Especially the worn painted metal of the car body - that's phenomenal.
tbrbn Haha that inspiration combo is pretty great 😆 Your concept turned out cool! I love the heavy rim/back lighting. Awesome job, Thibaut: A+
thecabbagedetective Wow, you're at a polish level in this sculpt. Great stuff!
michallis You and Thibaut rocking some crazy inspiration! Good job, Michallis. A pretty polished sculpt at that. It's an A in my book 👍
tthepainter Looking really good! Interior's are definitely slow going. But rewarding I'd say. Hope you agree :)
@theluthier
hi Kent, I used substance painter's smart materials as a base and following some tutorials from them. But spend most of the time figuring out how to get the UV's right. I've followed the cgcookie tutorial and that helped me a lot (especially the ID map). Blender wise, I followed the post processing topics you've teached for the mailboxes and some other stuff picked up from the net. But must say, a nice experience and learned a lot.
Homework Submission Week 4
I think I'm going to end this here, because I believe this is about as far as I would take this concept before I shifted to edge-modeling the smaller, more precise details and components. It's also the furthest I've been able to develop a concept before saying "Nah, I don't like this" and deleting it. This is try #7, ha.
This is some kind of spaceship; it is inspired somewhat by the shape of a swooping or diving falcon (by coincidence, silentheart00!). I decided to go with a spaceship possibly as a crutch to avoid my "practicality" conflict, since a fantasy spaceship can be shaped like anything and justifications for design elements can always be invented as required...
I guess the muse doesn't have me tightly right at the moment, but I definitely recognize the value of sculpting for concept design and could see myself using it in the future. After the work I managed in the last two weeks this feels like a rather flat note; but I'm really liking the designs other people have been able to pull off.
New concept start :
Only the body is sculpted here, I've modeled the arm to avoid hitting my head on my desk with the rounded shapes :D
Homework for Week 4:
Pretty soon, it started to look more like a fighter jet than a submarine, so I embraced that path.
williamatics is that proportional-editing with a Random falloff for the jet-flame? :)
jakeblended No, I used a cloud texture with a very strong crease brush.
Homework Submission Week 4
I tried to sculpt this initially but my file ended way too big, like 150 mb because I did too much dyntopo on the side panels and it got all messed up lol. So I did a re-topo then I did a multi-res modifier and it worked out better for me.
tbrbn Really looking forward to retopoing it myself, once I actually know how to do it haha. Thanks for the feedback too! Glad to hear about the surfaces, that was by far my biggest concern. Great to hear about the lighting too, the most consistent criticism of my previous work was dull lighting so it's nice to know I've improved over the past month or two.
michallis Dang, I gotta applaud the creativity on this one, I never coulda thought of that, nice stuff! Hope you decide to render it with a rider one day.
tthepainter Oooooo that topology, I'm jealous. Hoping I can be that slick one day.
@theluthier Really? Thanks! This is my first proper project with sculpting so I'm not particularly sure of the standards but it's good to know I'm doing well.
