Building my first car
 

OK, I've seen the threads of everyone making these beautiful car models and I would like to learn how to make one myself.

Can someone reply as to which is the preferred technique to doing this sort of modeling and pros / cons of each? If there are some awesome step by step beginners tutorials I'd love to see them!

Haven't seen a car tutorial here on SM yet...is there one coming?

Thanks! ;)

alright.. there is a car tutorial that is coming.. sometime.. i don' t know when. As for making a car.. there are two main ways:

POLY MODELING - CONVERT TO SUB-D

Pros
really smooth
You can get the panels in one piece
polys are easy on the comp
easy to manipulate surface (edit points are on the surface)
easy to texture

cons
takes a while to get a "finished" look to it
a lot of dividing the polygon.
really hard to get the curve to be really smooth

NURBS

pros
You can get a "finished" looking product really fast
easy to make holes in the surface (great for hoods, and front ends)

Cons
Birail can be a really big pain in the a$$
the surfaces are really hard to stich together (hard to get pannels in one piece)
pain to texture
edit points aren't on the surface

Now.. I did my car in nurbs... and i don't really know why... i just wanted to try new things, and nurbs are fast. If you look in the wip (honda CRX) you can see a nurbs car model.

Currently, i am working on the crx and also the s2000. The s2000 is being done in polys, then being converted to sub-d's. So far.. i am preferring to use polys.. mainly for texturing, and the panels can be made in one piece.

If you need any help, just pm me or else contact me at snowboarderCF on AIm.

Have Fun

Hi sjurick

Well first of all any surface is good because a car is a very tedious project and you should learn a great deal no matter which surface you use.

Probably the best way for me is to use nurbs (birail is great) and the convert to subds.

In my own post i am currently making a car using CPS. Not very hard but not as good as nurbs. this is just i technique i tried using.

So i say go with nurbs (great tut on Subaru WRX out there) or if you like poly check out Mikes tut.

good luck

Thanks guys. Could you point me in the direction of the Subaru WRX tut?

Use the "search" feature on the forums or the tutorial database...you'll find it.

Tried that, but maybe I didn't go deep enough. BTW, I downloaded the CPS tutorial and the first thing he says is "after you've installed CPS you see these 4 icons in your shelf".

Do I need to download and install CPS or what?

Apparently, you didn't. I just did a search for "subaru" and the link showed up in the McClaren M thread...
Yes. You can download it here:

Connect Poly Shape

:eek: Need to learn how to spell subaru.

Thanks. These tuts should get me started big time.

I tried getting the CPS plugin, but no go. Tried registering and they aren't accepting any more registrants. Didn't find a link anywhere to download it. Just the docs.

I don't know what kind of problems your having. I clicked the links on the page I gave and it downloads fine.

OK, I see. I thought there were executables to be downloaded and installed. It appears I download the documetation and follow the instructions.

It also appears that this is only for Maya 4.0. Does it work for 5.0 or even necessary (does 5.0 have this capability already?)

when you extract all the scripts and icons into the right dirs (C:\My Documents\yourname\maya\scripts and C:\same\same\same\yourversionnumber\prefs\icons) just go into maya and in command line type cpsSetup and then it should install all the icons.

http://www.blissdd.com/WRX/Tutorial/tutorial.html

hi,
The best solutions are cad technics for the industrial models.
In fact maya supports cad technics
For the ýndustrial models I offer you only nurbs modeling.
Never use poligon and subdivision.
You can use other cad program tutorial.

See you..

Aldudeau:

I've extracted the contents of the zip file to the CPS 3.0 Documentation file to C:\Documents and Settings\MyName\MyDocuments\maya\5.0 folder.

the files and directories in there now are:

prefs
presets
scripts
cpsControlReference
cpsReference
cpsToolboxReference
examples
faq
images
installation
overview
tutorials
Maya.env
index.htm

(Bolded are the directories that extracted from .zip file)

The instructions say that there are supposed to be .xpm and .mel files, but I don't have any.

I go to run cpsSetup in the command line and get:

cpsSetup;
// Error: Cannot find procedure "cpsSetup". //

now what you need to do is copy or move all the files in the scripts directory into you scripts directory in my documents. and then copy the icons to the icon directory. hmm hope you can understand this.

the easiest way to install is to open the documentation that comes with cps. everything is explained there.

alex

Notice my last reply...there is NO icons directory in the .zip file. I have looked through every directory and it's not there.

Obviously there is supposed to be an Icons dir along with the Scripts dir (which is there). What's up with this?

The prefs, presets and scripts dirs in my last reply are the ones created when Maya was installed, and there is nothing in them.

The other directories are the ones that extracted from the .zip file.

I don't think I have the same zip file as everyone else. Is it the 3.0 Documentation file, or is there another one?

I know you must think I'm stupid, but I'm really not. Just trying to figure out why everyone else's zip file has the proper files in it and mine doesn't.

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: