Jon's Works in Progress
JonnyRay
Posts: 1,744
I've started work on modeling a 1968 Dodge Charger since it happens to be my girlfriend's favorite car. I have a blog post that I will keep updating with WIP images. It's not really a "tutorial", I'm following the process that is outlined in Dreamlight's Master Hexagon - Car Modeling Basics tutorial. Just thought I'd share some images as it progresses.
TheBeast362-WindshieldandRoof.png
1380 x 856 - 166K
Post edited by JonnyRay on
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Please let us know how you get on with the video, I've added the "Hexagon Revisited" to my wishlist.
My take on the car modeling tutorial (which is just one part of the whole Hexagon Revisited package)...
It starts with the idea that you have a basic understanding of working with Hexagon. For someone brand new this wouldn't be the first video I would pick up. Also he seems to be using an older copy of Hexagon. It crashed a lot on him. But the interface is still the same so that wasn't a big deal.
His approach was different than the other car modeling videos I've seen. But that has proven for me to be a good thing as I've made a lot of progress much more quickly than my first 2 attempts and I don't have to re-work the mesh as much as I was the other times either.
He speaks clearly and doesn't move too fast so the video was easy to follow. There are a few times when he does the "okay, I'm going pause while I repeat this step and clean this up a bit" but it seems to be at appropriately tedious times. He didn't skip any major steps or anything and when he comes back from the "pause" it's easy to see what he's done.
I would say that it was interesting that a couple of times I would find myself thinking "It would have been easier if you'd used XYZ tool instead of that one." I think like most of us he has the modeling tools he's most comfortable with and sticks to those. But, on the flipside, he used a couple of things like "Tweak" that I didn't normally use much and I could see the benefits of them; so I also learned a little about Hexagon through the video.
I picked this tutorial up on sale for $10. Was definitely worth the money. I have the whole Revistied package on my Wishlist too for a future sale and time when I have the budget for it.
Bonus: I've attached the latest WIP. I added in the side today.
Watch out for the poles in your mesh which will cause dimples. Try to keep your mesh as quads only.
Thanks for the review. DreamLight quiet regually releases products so I'll get the "Revised" version when its on sale too :)
Looking great so far,thanks found two of tutorials 100% off so Ii bought them
Thanks for the tip. Used it to clean an issue in the back yesterday. Still need to adjust that one in the front quarter panel though.
I have been looking to model a car for a long time. there are not a lot of tutorials out there and none that i can find that go through the whole process from start to finish. You have inspired me to tackle this and look forward to seeing your finished model. I have started but its very early days and i have just managed to get the blueprints set up and the basic shape started. Keep us posted on your progress.
Nice work there, Doughnut. :)
I'm almost finished with the main body shape for mine. I spent a few hours last weekend removing triangles and n-gons and the smoothed shape looks a LOT better now. Next up is getting the windows to maintain shape, add the trim zones around them, and finishing the rear-end. Then I have more details to work into the model like the air vents on the sides and such.
Just a quick post of the current progress. I took a bit of a mental break for a while, but getting back into it now.
The project is moving along well so far. I have almost all of the base body modeling done. Now I have to figure out how to work in details like the lines for the doors, hood, and trunk. Will also have to cut-in the side air vents just in front of the doors. That will probably add a lot more geometry to avoid triangles and n-gons.
I just wanted to quickly share a video series I found on modeling a car that I've really gotten a lot out of. He's using Blender as the tool, but he also talks a lot (especially in the first several videos) about WHY he does things the way that he does. And in most cases I can look at the tools he uses and figure out a Hexagon equivalent. It's a 20+ part series, each video between 20 and 30 minutes long; so he doesn't skip over anything. :) You can tell it's not 100% professional because at times he clearly isn't sure how to address a particular area. So you can also see the starts and stops and restarts for solving problems, which also has value since you can see the wrong way to do it and avoid that. :)
https://www.youtube.com/user/testedpancake/videos
I needed a little break from staring at the lines of the car body mesh; so I modeled the mag wheel that I'm going to put onto the car. Still a little cleanup to do on it, but it turned out pretty good!
Nice looking wheel Jonny, your car is coming along very nicely
Thanks, John. I'm really happy with how that turned out. I need to get back to the main body and get it finished up now. Then really work some of the pieces like the grill, door handles, bumpers, etc.
great looking wheel Jonny,looks like its more than me that do the "roundrobin" method,you switch to a different task when you get stuck
Yeah, it helps me keep motivated to be making progress. When I feel like I get bogged down I'll switch to something else for a while. :) Otherwise I might just walk away and leave it alone if I feel like the "fun hobby" is generating too much stress.
Since I cleaned up the wheel today and finished it, and I made a lugnut for it too I decided to share those on ShareCG.
Mag Wheel on ShareCG
Lugnut on ShareCG
Both are UV mapped although I didn't worry too much about scaling them since that's fairly simple.
I did post an update on my blog about this project, but it doesn't really have anything in it that isn't already here in the Hexagon forums.
https://karl3d.wordpress.com/2018/09/24/update-on-the-beast/
Okay, I think I need some advice on this project. I'm hung up on the side windows.
I've tried starting with a plane, extruding the frame, etc. But as soon as I hit smoothing, it all gets distorted badly. Especially the glass areas which get pulled into the center and warped from their shapes. So I add control lines around the frames to try to reduce the effect smoothing will have and I end up with a really messy geometry that becomes very hard to work with. So I scrap it and try again with different cuts and angles and end up with the same result.
Anyone have some suggestions about how you would approach modeling this part of a car?
Make the glass and the frame separate meshes.
Put supporting edges around the ones you want to keep sharp.
That's a good suggestion. Thanks!
I was feeling like I was getting too stuck on how I thought it should work, but my brain wasn't coming up with other options.
You'll probably benefit from looking up some tutorials on hard surface modeling.
I have. Several. It's a brain issue. Sometimes I get stuck on one approach to something and I can't get myself to look at it from a different angle. That's why I posted here because I realized I was stuck but couldn't think of another approach because my brain insisted the first way "must work, you're just missing something"! One of the side effects of my ADD.
Thanks again, @Ascania. You nudged me in the right direction. It didn't even take that long last night to get a decent mesh of the windows and frame once I stopped trying to make them a single mesh.
Having the windows as a separate mesh will also allow them to roll down. :)
Yeah, I thought of that as I was working on it too. Although for that car I'd have to do more than that. The chrome in the middle is actually attached to the rear quarter window; so it would have to move with the glass. But I don't plan on rigging it at this time. For my purposes a static prop is going to be "good enough".
That can easily be done by just grouping them or combining them into a single object. Do remember that an object is NOT required to be a single continuous mesh.
great work... it's fun doing all this stuff.. I don't use hexagon much for modeling but do use Carrara..
basically the same .. I started on a London Taxi last week starting with just a cube.. very challenging and fun...
keep up the great work and enjoy it
I'll follow your progress
Of course. :) It just isn't worth the effort for the use case I have for this particular model. I don't intend to model an interior at all as only the exterior is planned to be used in renders. So having the windows roll down wouldn't serve any purpose for me.
Thanks. :) I'm hoping to have the model done this month depending on how things go with my "free" time in the evenings.
It's not just for rolling down windows. It also makes modeling easier, without having to create extra geometry to achieve hard edges, to have edge flows that don't interfere between parts. Think about wheel nuts. Do you want to model them each individually, integral part of each rim, fiddling with the geometry of the rims so they work at all? Or do you want to create a single one, copy it a couple of times, arrange the copies in a rough circle, and place that whole group on a rim? And group it all together with the rim and the tyre in a complete wheel assemby and copy that three more times.
Which of those do you think is faster and less work overall?