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 I plan to learn dynamics and animation in Houdini. I also hopefully will find out whether I can access Houdini simulation data (such as heat and density) for rendering in Cycles. For some reason all the Houdini tutorials I can find use Redshift to render the scenes. I plan to upgrade from Apprentice to Indie soon. Too bad there isn't a Houdini Engine for Blender.
Homework Submission Week 3-ish
Here are some renders as well.
This thing took a large amount of time to get to this point. I also needed to do some traveling during the middle of week three, so you could have found me working on the side rear mirror at the airport terminal waiting for a flight. This is my first time modeling a car. I'm really happy with the results. I had the option in a class at college to either make a car or work on a self-portrait. I chose the latter, but had always wanted to see how much work was involved with this project. Now I do.
Hey guys now that we r done with this class ...any suggestions on how to start learning shading and texturing step by step from the scratch ?
It is not necessary that courses or tutorials suggested should be from cgcookie
@theluthier No because I didn't have strict idea for what I want, so sculpt really help to concept, even if it's simple at last :D
thecabbagedetective Hey, thanks! I've found zbrush works better with my style of sculpting than Blender's tools. Things make sense and are very intuitive in zbrush, whereas in Blender the detail size and relative size and those weird settings are more annoying and frustrating to me than just brush and go.
jakeblended I'm planning on finishing up this car, then revisit my stylized character sculpt. Learning-wise, keep slamming down those videos lol. I'm in the middle of several flows, so I need to finish those.
ffreddie82 Depends how deep you want to go. Do you want to go to a code level to learn how to make shaders, or in a higher level context?
ffreddie82 The Shading the Pancake Hobo course was very helpful to me when it comes to the workflow of creating different kinds of cycles materials, and on the side covers texturing-by-stencil in Blender quite well.
I would also recommend the three-part series on YouTube beginning with this video, covering different classes of materials via the new Principled Shader.
Also, in Kent's tutorial on Customizing your Startup File, there's a portion where he creates a node group, gives it a fake user, and saves it as part of his startup file so it's always available whenever he starts a new project. You can do this not only with utility node groups, but whole materials if you ever come up with a material that you think could be versatile but don't want to have to learn how to make over and over again.
jakeblended Thanks my friend! I like how the seats look like little beige ghosts taking the car for a joyride.
Week 4 Submission - Peregrine Falcon Plane
It's rough in parts, scraping off the rust in sculpting. Figured I should get something in, and birds are always fascinating to me, so it was a natural choice. Why not sculpt the fastest animal alive? Tried adding some details, but beyond a paint job, there didn't seem much to add that came to mind. Now, to finish this bloody car...
It's rough in parts, scraping off the rust in sculpting.
Yeah I hadn't touched Sculpt Mode since the last class; I had to look up a couple of hotkeys to jog my memory!
Awesome plane.
Homework Submission Week 4
Here is a massive people mover. Inspired by a Grasshopper, Jet Airliner, and Helicopter. I call it the Chopper-Hopper.
Just out of curiosity, what are peoples' post-class plans? What's next for you, learning-wise?
jakeblended Thanks for bringing that up !
I will probably allow myself a short break first. It's the first time I went for a CGC class, and I must admit at first I was skeptical on how effective this format would be. Turns out I've been modelling everyday and I tried to get involved in the thread as much as possible: the experience is even greater when you can also practice how to give feedback. Very positive!
For the future I need closure with my vehicle so I will shade it and render it. Then I will continue improving my HSM skills, but with more focus toward interior design: from a career perspective it's where I want to go. On the hobby side I wand to do more sci-fi stuff, exploring hardops and making mechs.
It was super nice to get closer to the community, it's fun to look forward for someone's homework or WIP. It's also very humbling and inspiring to see everybody's progression skyrocketing, it's really what fueled me this whole month, this and all the positive / constructive feedback from all of you :)
silentheart00 I just want to reach a level of making realistic materials.
jakeblended i watched the shading pancake hobo course and i understood the part of texturing only but once i reached the shading part i couldn't quite get it...like i understand what is happening but i cannot do the same alone. I'll watch the youtube series thanks for that suggestion
tbrbn My "post class plans" involves learning more about topology., that way i will hopefully be able to finish and complete the submissions. I got nowhere close to finishsing the exterior car model or the concept sculpt. I never got started on the interior so i will focus on finishing and completing mentioned projects.
baukepost Glad to you made some time for this! BTW working on your hover bike's UV's is an exciting revelation 🤩
Good job with the sculpt. Definitely an A for this week's homework.
"I didn't think it would be this fun!"
I agree! Glad you found this to be true.
Would you be interested in monitoring a vehicle texturing thread or would this be more something that would have to be created by us (since you are probably also busy with other things for CGC)? It would be really cool to have a 2 to 3 week curriculum for texturing with Blender or Substance. Something like: week 1 for UVs (depending on the vehicle), week 2 for the exterior and week 3 for the interior.
Unfortunately I can't guarantee consistent monitoring outside of a class month. Like you said, other CGC tasks keep me quite busy like coordinating content creation (tutorials, courses, etc) from various instructors, class planning, livestreaming and planning, hopefully finding time to record another shader forge or something, etc.
Which is why I cherish these class months because it's so satisfying being tightly involved with you all for 4 weeks! And I absolutely intend to do a texture/shading class ASAP; I'm eyeing October. I know that sucks to wait that long.
BUT you're 100% welcome to start a thread yourself and I'll try to pop in when I can. Just be sure to @ me.
shiennar I quite enjoyed reading about your inspiration for this design. And it's a cute design at that. I can EASILY see this being in my kid's favorite cartoon show! Really nice work - certainly an A for the week, as usual 😎