IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (music playing)
| | 00:04 | Hi! I'm Ryan Kittleson and welcome
to Modeling Vehicles in Maya!
| | 00:08 | In this course, we'll be creating a Shelby
Cobra from blueprints and photo reference.
| | 00:13 | Additionally, I'll introduce how to begin
modeling a concept car based on 3D scan data.
| | 00:18 | I'll cover the whole process of vehicle
modeling from basic polygon editing to
| | 00:23 | the finer points of curve-based construction.
| | 00:26 | The things you'll learn here will help with
all kinds of modeling, not just for vehicles.
| | 00:31 | I'll be showing not just how the
tools work, but how I apply them in
| | 00:34 | professional practice.
| | 00:36 | This course is for
intermediate and advanced Maya users.
| | 00:39 | You should already know the basics of
the Maya interface and how to interact
| | 00:43 | with objects in your scene.
| | 00:44 | Some existing knowledge of
modeling is also helpful, but not required.
| | 00:48 | Well, I'm excited to start Modeling
Vehicles in Maya, and I hope you are too.
| | 00:52 | Let's get to it.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a premium subscriber at Lynda.com,
you have access to the Exercise
| | 00:04 | Files that I will be
using throughout this course.
| | 00:07 | You can download them by clicking
on the Exercise Files Tab on this
| | 00:10 | course's main page.
| | 00:12 | Once you open up the Exercise Files
folder, you'll find two different folders;
| | 00:16 | one for different versions of Maya.
| | 00:17 | If you're using Maya Version 2012, you'll
want to use the files within this folder.
| | 00:21 | If you're using Maya Version 2013 or later,
you'll want to use the files in this folder.
| | 00:26 | Now, let's see what's inside.
| | 00:28 | We have folders that correspond to each
chapter of this course, and then within
| | 00:32 | those, we have folders that
correspond to each movie within the chapter.
| | 00:36 | Now, the Maya files that I will be
using reference external scenes and images
| | 00:40 | through Maya's project-based structure.
| | 00:43 | For this reason, it's important to
set the Maya Project folder before
| | 00:46 | loading any Exercise Files.
| | 00:48 | It's a simple step--but an important one--
to make sure that the files load correctly.
| | 00:53 | Let's see how it's done.
| | 00:54 | With Maya open, you'll want to go into
the File Menu, and then click Set Project.
| | 00:59 | Then, go into the Exercise File folder, and
pick the version of Maya that you're using.
| | 01:03 | I'm in 2013, so I'll just
select this folder and click Set.
| | 01:07 | Now, Maya knows where to look for the
files relative to this folder structure.
| | 01:12 | As long as this project is set, you can
open any Exercise Files in this course
| | 01:16 | and be confident that
they will open as intended.
| | 01:19 | If you close Maya and reopen it, you
can quickly set the project again by going
| | 01:23 | to File>Recent Projects, and
then clicking on the Project folder.
| | 01:28 | With this step completed, you're ready to
open the Exercise Files for this course.
| | 01:32 | Setting a project is a step that you
should take even if you're using your own
| | 01:35 | files, as it will help Maya
know where everything is located.
| | 01:39 | Now, let's open up an example file.
| | 01:41 | I just want to demonstrate something that
might happen that you should look out for.
| | 01:44 | Let's go into File>Open Scene.
| | 01:46 | And I'm just going to open
the example exercise file.
| | 01:49 | Now, there's occasionally a glitch in
Maya where it will open up different
| | 01:53 | camera views incorrectly.
| | 01:55 | So, for example, we're seeing a side
view here, a front view here, which is
| | 01:59 | good, but we're also seeing another side
view here when we should be seeing a top view.
| | 02:04 | Maya sometimes forgets which
camera should be in which viewport.
| | 02:07 | So, in order to reset it, simply go
up to the Panels Menu of the viewport
| | 02:11 | that's wrong, and then go down to Orthographic,
and then set to the correct viewport type.
| | 02:16 | So, in this case, it should be Top.
| | 02:18 | Now, everything is good to go.
| | 02:19 | This is just one little glitch that
you should look out for when opening up
| | 02:22 | Exercise Files in Maya.
| | 02:24 | Now that we've got everything
set up, we're ready to get working.
| | 02:27 | Let's get to it.
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1. Preparing Maya for ModelingSetting up Maya for modeling| 00:00 | Maya is a complex program, but we're
only going to be using certain parts of it
| | 00:04 | when we're modeling vehicles.
| | 00:06 | We can set up our scene to make it
easier to model, while ignoring the things
| | 00:10 | that we don't need, like dynamics and animation.
| | 00:12 | So, when I'm modeling, I usually like to
set my shelves and my menu sets for modeling.
| | 00:17 | So, for example, we can change our
default menus from Animation to Polygons.
| | 00:22 | So now, up here, we have menus that are
specifically for modeling with Polygons.
| | 00:26 | Also, what I like to do
is set up my Polygon Shelf.
| | 00:29 | So, by default, it's on the General Tab
and most of the buttons that I like to
| | 00:33 | use are here in the Polygon Shelf.
| | 00:36 | Now, you can actually add
your own buttons to the shelf.
| | 00:38 | Let me show you how it's done.
| | 00:40 | So, for example, if you find yourself
using a particular tool over and over
| | 00:43 | again, all you have to do is hold down Ctrl
and Shift, while you click on that menu item.
| | 00:49 | So, let's say I use The
Insert Edge Loop Tool all the time.
| | 00:52 | So, I'm going to hold down Ctrl and Shift,
and then just click on Insert Edge Loop Tool.
| | 00:56 | Now, Maya on the Mac is a
little bit tricky with this.
| | 01:00 | It doesn't update the shelf right away.
| | 01:01 | So, usually what I do is just
go to Subdivs or some other tab.
| | 01:05 | And then, when I come back to
Polygons, it's going to be there.
| | 01:08 | So now, we've got the Insert
Edge Loop Tool here on our shelf.
| | 01:12 | Now, if you want to get rid of
one of these buttons, all you do is
| | 01:15 | Middle-mouse+Drag from the button to
this little trash can right up here.
| | 01:19 | And then, this also has trouble
updating right away, so it might take a little
| | 01:22 | while, or you might have to go do
something else, and then it will update later.
| | 01:26 | Let's also drag this one to the trash.
| | 01:28 | Now, something else you might have to
do when dealing with Maya is sometimes
| | 01:31 | your Preferences file can get corrupt.
| | 01:34 | Now, the Preferences file is simply a
file that stores any changes that you make
| | 01:37 | to the Maya interface, like
adding buttons to the shelf.
| | 01:40 | Sometimes Maya makes a mistake,
which causes this file to go bad.
| | 01:44 | When this happens, all kinds
of weird things can go wrong.
| | 01:48 | Usually, it means that Maya just
doesn't behave the way it should.
| | 01:51 | So, when this happens, I usually find
that deleting the Preferences file fixes
| | 01:54 | the problem nine times out of ten.
| | 01:57 | Unfortunately, the process to do this
is different depending on which operating
| | 02:01 | system, and even which
version of OS you're using.
| | 02:04 | So, if Maya is not behaving correctly,
I recommend doing an online search
| | 02:08 | for deleting Maya preferences, and then
include your OS and OS version in the search.
| | 02:14 | Hopefully, that way, you can find the
instructions that you need to reset your preferences.
| | 02:18 | Okay, now that we're set up for
modeling, let's move on with the rest of
| | 02:21 | the course.
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| Using Blinn materials for modeling| 00:00 | By default, objects created in
Maya use the Lambert material.
| | 00:04 | Now, the problem with the Lambert
material is that it's very dull; it has no shine.
| | 00:09 | And so, it can be hard to see
exactly how a surface is curved.
| | 00:12 | In this movie, we'll be creating a
better material for modeling, and apply it to
| | 00:16 | everything that we make. All right,
| | 00:17 | let's start out by just making a sphere.
| | 00:20 | I'm just going to place it in the middle here.
| | 00:21 | It doesn't really matter how big you make it.
| | 00:23 | Now, what I want to do is duplicate it.
| | 00:26 | Hit Ctrl+D, and make sure you're in
Move Mode by hitting W, and let's just move
| | 00:30 | this off to the side a little bit. Okay.
| | 00:32 | Now, these models have the Lambert
material applied by default, which makes them
| | 00:36 | look really matte and dull.
| | 00:38 | So, to put a Blinn material on them,
simply place the cursor over the objects,
| | 00:41 | and hold down the right mouse button.
| | 00:43 | You'll get a pop-up menu.
| | 00:44 | Now, move down in this menu to Assign
Favorite Material, and then come over to
| | 00:49 | Blinn, and release the mouse button.
| | 00:51 | So, this created a new Blinn
material and applied it to the object.
| | 00:55 | So, I'm just going to click in
an open area to deselect that.
| | 00:57 | Now, let's rotate around
just to see the difference.
| | 01:00 | So, it's much easier to see the
curvature on the surface with the Blinn
| | 01:03 | material, and this is because this
material allows for specular highlights or shine.
| | 01:08 | Now, let's assign this
material to the other object.
| | 01:11 | I am going to hold down the right mouse
button over this one, go down to Assign
| | 01:15 | Existing Material, and pick Blinn.
| | 01:17 | Since we've already created a Blinn,
we don't need to make a new one.
| | 01:20 | We can just keep applying the
same one to all of our objects.
| | 01:24 | When you get into modeling objects
with complex curvature, the Blinn material
| | 01:27 | can really make it a lot
easier to see what you're doing.
| | 01:30 | It gives you a lot more visual
information about the shapes and curves in a model.
| | 01:34 | I make sure to apply a Blinn
material everytime I start modeling
| | 01:37 | anything new.
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| Understanding surface normal direction| 00:00 | In Maya, sometimes an object will be
flipped inside-out. Other times, we expect
| | 00:05 | an object to have a particular front
and a back side, and Maya might see it
| | 00:09 | the other way around.
| | 00:10 | In this video, I'll show you a simple
way to see which side of an object is the
| | 00:14 | front side, and also how to
correct it if Maya gets it wrong.
| | 00:17 | Let's check it out.
| | 00:19 | Now, any model that's created in Maya
has what's called a normal direction.
| | 00:22 | Now, this isn't the
normal use of the word normal.
| | 00:26 | In 3D modeling terms, the word normal
refers to the direction that a surface is facing.
| | 00:31 | It's how Maya knows which side of a
surface is the front side, and which is the
| | 00:35 | back side, or, if an object is closed,
which is the inside, and which is the
| | 00:39 | outside surface of the object.
| | 00:42 | By default, Maya makes both
sides of an object look the same.
| | 00:45 | So, it's hard to tell which side is which.
| | 00:48 | This can make things complicated,
because, many times, it's really important to
| | 00:52 | make a model with specific front and back sides.
| | 00:55 | If you can't tell which side is
which, how can you set it properly?
| | 00:58 | Now, there are many ways to do this.
| | 01:00 | But, possibly the easiest way to see
which way your normals are facing is to go
| | 01:05 | into the Viewport Menu, under
Lighting, and turn off Two-Sided Lighting.
| | 01:09 | What this does is it makes the Viewport
light not shine on the back side of objects.
| | 01:15 | It's now easy to see in this scene
which objects are inside-out, and which side
| | 01:19 | of each model is the front side.
| | 01:21 | So, for example, on this hemisphere,
you can easily see that Maya thinks that
| | 01:26 | the inside is the front of the normals.
| | 01:29 | On this half of a torus, you can see
that the normal direction is facing
| | 01:34 | outwards like you might expect, and
one of these cones has an outward-facing
| | 01:38 | normal, and the other has
an inward-facing normal.
| | 01:41 | Now, let's say that we want to switch
which side of these models is the front side.
| | 01:45 | That's very easy to do.
| | 01:46 | Simply select the object.
| | 01:48 | Make sure you've got the Polygons Menu set.
| | 01:50 | Go to the Normals Menu and click Reverse.
| | 01:53 | That's all there is to it.
| | 01:55 | I usually like to leave Two-Sided Lighting
off, so make sure that this is unchecked.
| | 02:00 | And that way, I can instantly see if an
object has flipped to normals, because it
| | 02:03 | will turn black in places that
I don't want it to turn black.
| | 02:06 | However, sometimes I do want to be
able to see what the backside of a surface
| | 02:10 | looks like as I'm working on
it, so I might turn this on.
| | 02:13 | So, it's a good idea to check this
option every once in a while to make sure
| | 02:16 | that all your normals are
facing in the right direction.
| | 02:19 | Flipped Normals can cause problems for
shading, lighting, dynamics, and other situations.
| | 02:24 | With these simple tricks, you will
keep your scene cleaner and easier to
| | 02:27 | work with.
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2. Modeling Based on Scan Data or a Digital SculptImporting a scanned or sculpted model| 00:00 | In the old days, vehicle concepts
were often sculpted by hand out of clay,
| | 00:04 | or carved out of wood.
| | 00:06 | Now, with 3D Scanners and Digital
Sculpting software, vehicle concepts and 3D
| | 00:11 | models can be created much more quickly.
| | 00:13 | The resulting models have all the right
proportions and shapes, but the meshes
| | 00:17 | are messy and unworkable
for rendering an animation.
| | 00:20 | In this video, we'll import a model
that could have been made with 3D scanning
| | 00:23 | or digital sculpting.
| | 00:25 | This chapter will cover some of the
specific topics that relate to modeling
| | 00:29 | based on scanned data.
| | 00:30 | And then, the rest of the course will
focus on modeling a realistic car from
| | 00:34 | blueprints and photographic reference. Okay,
| | 00:36 | so let's open up the scanned
model by going into File and Import.
| | 00:41 | And now, let's go to our Exercise
Files for this movie, Chapter 2, and
| | 00:45 | importingScan>conceptcarscan.obj and Import.
| | 00:49 | It looks like just a mess
of wireframes right now.
| | 00:52 | So, I'm going to hit 5 on the keyboard
to go into shaded view. And, let's just
| | 00:56 | tumble around this model, and zoom in just
to get a sense of what we're looking at.
| | 01:00 | And I'm also going to apply a Blinn
material, just so we can get a better sense of
| | 01:03 | how all the surfaces look.
| | 01:06 | And let's click in an open area to deselect it.
| | 01:08 | This model was sculpted digitally in
Sculptris, but you could get a very similar
| | 01:12 | result from 3D scanned data.
| | 01:14 | If you want to see how this car
was sculpted, check out my course on
| | 01:17 | Sculptris on Lynda.com.
| | 01:19 | Now, from this distance, the
car actually looks pretty good.
| | 01:22 | You may be wondering what else
needs to be done to it other than
| | 01:25 | duplicating some wheels.
| | 01:26 | Well, let's click on it
and zoom in a little bit.
| | 01:29 | With the wireframe visible, we can
see that it's actually a total mess.
| | 01:32 | Digital sculpting programs do a great
job of helping you design and sculpt all
| | 01:36 | of these shapes, but the resulting
polygonal mesh is really not suited for
| | 01:39 | rendering your animation.
| | 01:41 | We're going to need to basically remodel the
car, using the scan or the sculpt as a guide.
| | 01:46 | So, starting a model based on scanned
data or a sculpt is really great, because
| | 01:50 | all of these shapes and
proportions are already established.
| | 01:53 | These preparations will make it a lot
easier to create a mesh that is cleaner
| | 01:58 | and better for rendering an animation.
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| Preparing the mesh for remodeling| 00:00 | Now that we have a rough model of the car
to work with, we could just start modeling.
| | 00:04 | However, there are some things that we
can do to help make the process easier.
| | 00:08 | First, we can make the rough model
semitransparent, so that as we work, we can
| | 00:13 | see through it to the new
model that we are making.
| | 00:15 | Second, we can make it so that the new
model snaps to the surface of the rough model.
| | 00:20 | And third, we can place the rough model's
parts on display layers for easy organization.
| | 00:25 | Let's see how it's done.
| | 00:27 | So first, I want to make this car
semitransparent, so that it won't get in the
| | 00:30 | way of the new model that we're trying to make.
| | 00:33 | Let's open up our Hypershade.
| | 00:34 | Go to Window>Rendering
Editors>Hypershade. Okay.
| | 00:38 | So in here, we can see the original Lambert
Material, and then the Blinn that we made before.
| | 00:43 | Now, let's make another Blinn.
| | 00:44 | Let's go ahead and click on Blinn here,
and let's edit some of its attributes.
| | 00:48 | I'm just going to scoot this out of the
way, so we can see our Attribute Editor
| | 00:51 | over here; scoot it a
little bit more. All right,
| | 00:55 | let's change its name to semitransparent,
just so we can keep better track of it.
| | 00:59 | And now, let's go to
Transparency, and just slide this up, oh,
| | 01:02 | I don't know, about three-
fourths of the way. All right,
| | 01:05 | now, let's apply it to the model.
| | 01:06 | But, let's do it a
different way than we did before.
| | 01:09 | I'm going to scoot this, so that we can
see the model and the material, and I'm
| | 01:11 | just going to middle-click and drag from the
material over to the car. All right, great!
| | 01:15 | Now, let's get our Hypershade out of the way.
| | 01:17 | I'm just going to close this.
| | 01:19 | And let's rotate around a little
bit, just to see what that looks like.
| | 01:22 | So, Maya has a feature that lets you take one
model and stick other models to its surface.
| | 01:27 | To do this, let's select the car, and then
go up to the Modify Menu, and click Make Live.
| | 01:33 | Now, let's make a new polygon plane.
| | 01:35 | I'm just gong to click on that.
And then, let's click on the car.
| | 01:39 | So, what this did is it built that new
polygon plane on our car, rather than on the grid.
| | 01:44 | This is great, except for one problem.
| | 01:46 | In this mode, the object that's made
live has all of its edges turned green.
| | 01:50 | This can be a little distracting.
| | 01:52 | So, I'm going to do a little
trick with display layers to fix this.
| | 01:56 | So, let's make the car not live anymore.
| | 01:58 | I'm going to go ahead and hit Delete,
because we don't need that polygon plane anymore.
| | 02:02 | Let's go up to Modify, and click Make Not Live.
| | 02:05 | So now, it's a regular object again.
| | 02:07 | So, let's make a display layer, so
that we can easily hide this car.
| | 02:11 | Go ahead and select it. And
let's go into our Channel box.
| | 02:13 | Now, let's go into the Layers Menu, go
ahead and click on this, and then click
| | 02:18 | Create Layer from Selected.
| | 02:20 | And now, let's change the name to
something that makes more sense.
| | 02:22 | So, I'm going to double-click on
Layer 1, and let's type in something like
| | 02:26 | carLive, and then click Save.
| | 02:29 | So now that the car is on a display layer,
we can turn it on and off by hitting this
| | 02:33 | little box here with the V on it. All right,
| | 02:36 | let's make another version of the car.
| | 02:37 | I'm going to hit Ctrl+D to duplicate it.
| | 02:39 | Now, what we're doing right now might
not make a lot of sense, but it will make
| | 02:43 | sense a little bit later
on, so just stick with me.
| | 02:45 | Let's make a layer out of this duplicate.
| | 02:48 | Again, Create Layer from Selected, and
let's double-click on Layer 1, and change
| | 02:51 | this name to carVisible, and click Save.
| | 02:56 | So, what I have is two
identical cars on two separate layers.
| | 03:00 | Let's hide the carVisible for now,
and let's select this carLive Layer, and
| | 03:05 | select the car, and let's go up to
Modify, and make it live again. All right.
| | 03:09 | Now, let's switch the visibility.
| | 03:11 | So, we're going to make carLive
invisible, and then carVisible, well, visible.
| | 03:15 | Now, we've got a live object that's
hidden, and a regular object that's visible.
| | 03:19 | One more thing I want to do here
is change this to Reference Mode.
| | 03:23 | So, go ahead and click on the second
box. And we're going to click it twice
| | 03:26 | until there's an R in this box.
| | 03:28 | That means it's Reference Mode.
| | 03:30 | So, what this means is that the object
looks regular, but you can't click on it;
| | 03:34 | you can't select it.
| | 03:35 | The other modes here, if you just click
it one more time, that's back to normal,
| | 03:38 | if the box is empty. And then,
click it one more time; that is T Mode.
| | 03:43 | That means it displays in wireframe only.
| | 03:45 | This is also non-selectable.
| | 03:47 | Let's just go back into
Reference Mode. All right.
| | 03:49 | Now, let's make another polygon plane.
| | 03:51 | And I'm just going to click and
drag on the car. All right,
| | 03:54 | let's rotate around just to
see what it looks like. Great!
| | 03:57 | So, it's snapping to the car that's live,
but the car that's live is invisible,
| | 04:01 | so its green lines don't get in the way.
| | 04:04 | This is just what we want for easy modeling.
| | 04:06 | Now, there is one little quirk to remember.
| | 04:08 | If you save a scene with an object
that's made live, then you close that scene,
| | 04:12 | and load it back up again, the
object will not be live anymore.
| | 04:16 | You'll have to make the object
live manually to continue snapping to
| | 04:19 | its surface.
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| Snapping polygon vertices to the concept car| 00:00 | With the car all prepared for remodeling,
we can actually get into the process
| | 00:04 | of building a new polygon mesh over top of it.
| | 00:07 | In this video, we'll go over some
basic polygon editing techniques, as well as
| | 00:11 | some ideas of how to get the modeling started.
| | 00:14 | As I mentioned in the last video, if
you're opening up a scene that had an
| | 00:17 | object made live, you'll have
to reset it to a live object.
| | 00:21 | If you're just continuing from the same
scene as you made in the last video, and
| | 00:25 | you didn't close or open any
files, you can skip this step.
| | 00:28 | So, the car that we want to make live
is here in this hidden display layer.
| | 00:32 | You don't even have to make the car visible.
| | 00:34 | All you have to do is right-click on
the layer, and choose Select Objects.
| | 00:39 | Now, that car is selected, even
though it's not even visible.
| | 00:41 | Now, just go up to Modify and Make Live.
| | 00:45 | You'll have to do this every time you
load an Exercise File with a live object.
| | 00:49 | Now, let's get into some of the edits
that we can make to this polygon plane to
| | 00:53 | start building out the new car model.
| | 00:55 | Go ahead and select the polygon
plane, and go into Vertex Mode.
| | 00:58 | I like to do this by holding down the right
mouse button, and dragging over to vertex.
| | 01:03 | As a quick tip, you can even do this faster.
| | 01:05 | You don't even have to
wait for this menu to pop up.
| | 01:07 | You can just click and drag really
fast, and go to Vertex Mode, up to Edge
| | 01:10 | Mode, down to Face Mode, to the right,
to UV Mode, to the upper-right, to go
| | 01:16 | back to Object Mode.
| | 01:17 | I'll click one more time, and
let's go into Vertex Mode. Okay.
| | 01:20 | So, in Vertex Mode, let's go ahead and
pick different vertices, and move them to
| | 01:23 | different spots on the model.
| | 01:25 | So, make sure you're in Move Mode with
W. I'm just going to click and drag on
| | 01:29 | some of this to move it around.
| | 01:31 | And, notice how these vertices are
automatically snapping to the surface of our sculpted car.
| | 01:36 | Now, I'm building this polygon over
the window, but there is really no
| | 01:39 | particular part that you should do first,
or any particular part of the car that
| | 01:43 | should be covered here.
| | 01:45 | I'm just looking for a good place to start.
| | 01:47 | As you continue building this out,
you can adjust and edit the positions of
| | 01:50 | these polygons to fit better.
| | 01:52 | Now, with just one polygon to work with,
we can't really follow the shape of
| | 01:55 | this door very well.
| | 01:57 | Notice how there is kind
of a zigzaggy shape to it.
| | 01:59 | Let's increase the detail of this mesh,
so that we can get the model looking
| | 02:03 | closer to the concept.
| | 02:04 | Go into the Edit Mesh menu, and
let's click on Insert Edge Loop Tool.
| | 02:10 | Now, we can use this tool to split a
polygon, or even a row of polygons in 2.
| | 02:14 | So, just go ahead and
click on an edge to use it.
| | 02:17 | You can even click and drag to fine-
tune the position, and then release.
| | 02:20 | So, we've got a new edge
inserted inside of our polygon.
| | 02:23 | Now, you might notice that the new
edge isn't snapped to the concept mesh.
| | 02:28 | So, I'm going to go back into
Vertex Mode. And, let's select a vertex.
| | 02:31 | I'm going to zoom in a
little bit more closely here.
| | 02:33 | Now, watch what happens
as we start to move this.
| | 02:35 | It's going to snap closer to the surface.
| | 02:37 | Let's just adjust this one here.
| | 02:39 | All right, let's do the
same thing with the other one.
| | 02:41 | Notice as I start to move it,
it's going to snap. Oops!
| | 02:44 | It accidentally snapped onto the
rearview mirror. Let me move this over here.
| | 02:47 | And, let's just look at this
from a couple of different angles.
| | 02:49 | Make sure everything is good. All right,
| | 02:51 | go ahead and insert a few more edge
loops to define the shape of the door a bit
| | 02:55 | more. And then, tweak again to line
everything up, and snap it to the surface.
| | 02:58 | So for example, we could go to Edit Mesh
>Insert Edge Loop Tool again, and maybe
| | 03:02 | you're going to insert an edge going this way.
| | 03:04 | Now, back in Vertex Mode, we could just
tweak these positions a little bit just
| | 03:09 | to make sure it lines up better
with the concept. Okay, great.
| | 03:12 | So, building our new car model by
snapping polygons to the concept car will make
| | 03:16 | it a lot easier to recreate
the same shapes and proportions.
| | 03:20 | Just remember that vertices will have
to be adjusted manually, one at a time to
| | 03:24 | snap to the concept car.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Extruding polygons| 00:00 | So, we saw in the last video how to
create more detail within existing polygons
| | 00:05 | with the Insert Edge Loop Tool.
| | 00:07 | But, how do we build out more
polygons around the rest of the car?
| | 00:10 | In this video, I'll go over extruding
edges in polygons, in order to create more
| | 00:14 | surface area of the vehicle.
| | 00:16 | Since I just opened up this scene, I'm
going to have to make the car live again.
| | 00:20 | So, let's go ahead and right-click on
carLive>Select Objects, Modify>Make Live,
| | 00:27 | just like we did in the last video.
| | 00:28 | Now, one little tip before we continue.
Sometimes the new model covers up the
| | 00:33 | concept, and makes it hard to
see what we're trying to recreate.
| | 00:36 | In cases like these, I like to put the
same semi-transparent material on the new
| | 00:40 | model, as well as the concept models.
| | 00:42 | I'm going to click on what we've
started to remodel here, and hold down
| | 00:45 | the right mouse button.
| | 00:46 | Go to Assign Existing
Material, and place semitrans on it.
| | 00:51 | Now, there are two semi-
transparent models on top of each other.
| | 00:54 | So, it's going to be a little bit
easier to see the lines of the sculpt
| | 00:57 | through our new model.
| | 00:59 | It's kind of up to your preference
if you really need to do this or not.
| | 01:01 | Okay, now to extrude.
| | 01:03 | Let's start with edges.
| | 01:05 | So, I'm going to select our new model, and hold
down the right mouse button, and go up to Edge.
| | 01:09 | Now, let's select these
two edges along the top edge.
| | 01:12 | I'm going to hold down
Shift to select two at once.
| | 01:15 | And now, let's go up to the Extrude
button here in our shelf, or you could go up
| | 01:19 | to Edit Mesh, and click Extrude.
| | 01:21 | When we're in Extrude Mode, we can
shift new edges relative to their starting
| | 01:25 | angle by grabbing different axes.
| | 01:27 | So, for example--let me rotate a little
bit, so I can see this better--I'm going
| | 01:31 | to grab the blue axis.
| | 01:32 | So, that kind of shifts them out of this angle.
| | 01:34 | I'm going to hit Undo, and then, let's see.
| | 01:36 | Let's grab the green one, and that
shifts that angle, or we could grab the red
| | 01:40 | one, and that shifts side-to-side.
| | 01:43 | Go ahead and hit Undo again.
| | 01:44 | Now, I actually want to move
them more or less straight across.
| | 01:47 | So, I'm just going to hit W to go into Move Mode.
| | 01:50 | And now, I can just move these new edges.
| | 01:52 | Right now, they're overlapping,
so you can't really see them.
| | 01:54 | But, if I just grab on this red
axis here, I can just slide them over.
| | 01:57 | Now, just as before, we can tweak
individual vertices to get them to snap to the
| | 02:01 | concept, and also
position them where we want them.
| | 02:04 | So, as you can see, the new
model isn't exactly snapping.
| | 02:06 | So, I'm just going to go into Vertex
Mode, and let's position some of these new
| | 02:10 | vertices, and this will also get them to snap.
| | 02:13 | Okay, I'm just going to rotate
around to see if that worked. Great!
| | 02:17 | Okay.
| | 02:18 | So, notice one thing that there's some
of the shape of the window here that I'm
| | 02:21 | not exactly following.
| | 02:22 | There's plenty of opportunity later to
insert some edge loops, in order to get that shape.
| | 02:26 | But, really what I want to do is
start covering more of the area. Okay.
| | 02:30 | Now, let's extrude entire polygon faces.
| | 02:32 | So, I'm going to hold down the right-
mouse button, and move down to Face Mode,
| | 02:36 | and let's grab some of these faces
that are here underneath the rearview
| | 02:39 | mirror, or the side mirror.
| | 02:41 | I am going to select one,
and then Shift+Select another.
| | 02:43 | This is going to be a little bit more
tricky, since there are more vertices to
| | 02:46 | deal with, and they need to
conform to a more complex shape.
| | 02:50 | So, let's go ahead and click Extrude.
And, I'm going to rotate to the side just
| | 02:53 | so I can see this better.
| | 02:55 | And let's hit W to go into Move Mode.
| | 02:56 | I'm just going to pull this out.
| | 02:58 | And I just want to try to cover the
shape of this mirror a little bit better.
| | 03:01 | So, I'm going to go into Scale Mode, and
maybe rotate, just trying to get that a
| | 03:05 | little bit closer to the shape of that mirror.
| | 03:07 | So, you could try to get the entire
shape of this mirror, or the entire length
| | 03:11 | of it in one extrude, or
you can do it in segments.
| | 03:14 | So, extrude only part way and
then try to position this correctly.
| | 03:17 | So, I'm going to go back into Vertex Mode,
and just try to snap these vertices a
| | 03:21 | little bit closer onto that mirror
shape. I am just taking that one at a time,
| | 03:25 | just trying to snap
around the whole shape of this.
| | 03:27 | Okay, that's pretty good.
| | 03:29 | Now, I can go back into Face Mode.
| | 03:31 | Select these two, and extrude again, and
go back in the Move Mode, and pull them
| | 03:35 | out, and then continue tweaking.
| | 03:37 | So, the process of modeling out the rest
of the car is basically more extruding,
| | 03:42 | inserting edge loops, and tweaking vertices.
| | 03:44 | However, after this video, the rest of
the course is going to focus on modeling
| | 03:48 | a Shelby Cobra from blueprints and photos.
| | 03:50 | The same techniques that I'm going to
cover for the Cobra apply equally to the
| | 03:54 | concept car from here on out.
| | 03:56 | So, at this point, we're going to
bid farewell to the concept car and
| | 03:59 | switch over to the Cobra.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Modeling Based on Reference ImagesGathering reference images| 00:00 | Many times, when you're modeling a car,
you won't have the luxury of a concept
| | 00:03 | sculpt or a 3D scan to work from.
| | 00:07 | Most often, you'll need to work from
blueprints, and if you're modeling a vehicle
| | 00:10 | that already exists, from photographs.
| | 00:13 | In this video, I'll show you how to
set up blueprints and pictures, so that you
| | 00:16 | can have a guide to work from.
| | 00:18 | It's the next best thing to
having a 3D scan to snap to.
| | 00:22 | Let's see how it works.
| | 00:23 | Now, for image planes, the best
kind of reference is blueprints.
| | 00:27 | Most any vehicle that has
been produced has blueprints
| | 00:30 | that can be purchased or
found for free on the internet.
| | 00:32 | If you don't have blueprints,
photographs can sometimes work, but only
| | 00:36 | under certain conditions.
| | 00:38 | If you're using photos as image planes,
the pictures need to have been taken
| | 00:41 | with a telephoto lens from a great distance.
| | 00:44 | This is because the closer you are to
a car, the more perspective distortion
| | 00:48 | there will be in the photo. You'll want to
get perfect front, side, and rear views.
| | 00:53 | It's also great to get a top view.
| | 00:55 | But those can be very difficult to get
accurately; maybe from the top of a tall building.
| | 01:00 | If at all possible, you want to use
blueprints for image planes. Okay,
| | 01:04 | so let's go into Photoshop.
| | 01:06 | You can really use any
image editing program you like.
| | 01:08 | For example, there's a free one called Pixlr.
| | 01:11 | You go to pixlr.com.
| | 01:13 | That's pixlr.com/editor.
| | 01:17 | There's a web-based Photoshop clone.
| | 01:19 | It works really great.
| | 01:21 | So, let's open up the
blueprints that I have for the Cobra.
| | 01:23 | Go to File, Open, and in our Exercise
Files, there's a folder called Images, and
| | 01:28 | in there is our blueprint.
| | 01:30 | I like to have my top and
side views facing to the left.
| | 01:33 | It makes them orient better in Maya.
| | 01:36 | You'll also want to make sure that all
your different views line up with each other.
| | 01:39 | Sometimes, when you get a picture off the
internet, the photos might not line up.
| | 01:42 | So, I always like to check this out.
| | 01:44 | If your ruler isn't visible, you want
to hit Ctrl+R, or Command+R on a Mac, and
| | 01:50 | you can bring up the rulers,
toggle those on and off.
| | 01:52 | And, I just like to drag down guidelines.
| | 01:54 | Just make sure that different features
are lining up with each other. Like the
| | 01:57 | top of the hood is lining up with the
top of the hood in both of these images,
| | 02:00 | and headlights, and so on, and so forth.
| | 02:03 | You can also drag a vertical guideline
to make sure that the fenders and the
| | 02:07 | center of the cars are all lined up.
| | 02:09 | If you need to make any adjustments,
you can just use to select Rectangle, and
| | 02:13 | then grab it with the Move tool, and
you could move things around, or you could
| | 02:17 | hit Command+T or Ctrl+T, scale things,
change the size relative to each
| | 02:22 | other, just to make sure everything lines up.
| | 02:24 | So, I'm just going to hit Esc to undo that, and
let's go to Edit, Step Backward a few times.
| | 02:29 | Once you've got your blueprint all lined up,
go ahead and save it out as a new image.
| | 02:33 | Now, blueprints can only take us so far.
| | 02:36 | They're good for getting the overall
proportions and major lines in the right place.
| | 02:40 | But to really model a car right,
you'll also need a lot of photographs.
| | 02:44 | I usually head to Google image search, and
set it to only find high-resolution images.
| | 02:49 | Like, I'll search for cars, and then click
Search Tools, and go to any size, and pick Large.
| | 02:55 | Then, I gather up as many photos as I
can, and organize them into folders such
| | 02:59 | as front, interior, rear, close-ups, and so on.
| | 03:02 | It's not unusual to have hundreds of photos.
| | 03:05 | So, for this course, we got custom
photos taken and you can find them in the
| | 03:09 | Exercise Files under a folder called
reference. And you can see it we have a
| | 03:13 | whole bunch of images in here. Okay,
| | 03:15 | so now that we are armed with a ton of
reference, we'll have a much better idea
| | 03:19 | of what it is we need to model.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting up image planes| 00:00 | Now that we've got blueprints set up,
we need to get them into Maya, so that
| | 00:04 | we can begin to model.
| | 00:05 | The front, side, rear, and top views of
the car can be placed in corresponding
| | 00:10 | Maya viewports to help us model accurately.
| | 00:12 | Let's see how it's done.
| | 00:13 | All right, let's make sure we can
see all four standard viewports.
| | 00:17 | Go up to Panels in the Viewport menus, and
come down to Layouts, and click Four Panes.
| | 00:25 | There's also buttons down here on the
left side of the interface that you can
| | 00:28 | click on, but my screen size is kind
of small, so I can't see them. Okay,
| | 00:32 | let's get an image plane
in the front view first.
| | 00:34 | Go ahead and click on View in its
menu, and come down to Image Plane, and
| | 00:39 | click Import Image.
| | 00:40 | Now, let's open up the Images folder,
and pick the blueprint image, and open.
| | 00:45 | Now, we've got this image
attached to the front viewport.
| | 00:48 | Let's position the image plane so that
it's better aligned with the grid. Okay,
| | 00:52 | let's go into the Attribute Editor.
| | 00:54 | Image planes can't be moved around
like regular objects, so we have to edit
| | 00:58 | their attributes to move them.
| | 01:00 | So, with this image plane selected,
let's go into the Attribute Editor, and make
| | 01:04 | sure that the Image Plane tab is active.
| | 01:06 | So, I'm going to actually scoot this down
a little bit, so we can see more of this
| | 01:11 | Image Plane Attributes tab.
| | 01:12 | And, I just want to scroll down into
the Placement Extras tab, so I'll make
| | 01:16 | sure that this is open.
| | 01:17 | Now, what I want to do is position
this, so that the front view of the car is
| | 01:21 | more aligned with the center of the grid.
| | 01:23 | So, right now, the center of the car is over here.
| | 01:25 | I want to move it over here.
| | 01:26 | Now, to move this around, we have to
change the X, Y and Z values of its position.
| | 01:31 | So, I figured out beforehand
what these numbers should be.
| | 01:34 | If you're using your own blueprint
image, you're probably going to have to
| | 01:37 | experiment to get it right.
| | 01:39 | But for this one, I'm just going to type in 9.7
here, and in here, I want to type in -1.1.
| | 01:46 | Okay,
| | 01:46 | so with that, now the wheels are
sitting right on top of the horizontal axis.
| | 01:50 | Now, let's do the side view.
| | 01:52 | Remember, go into View, click Image
Plane, and Import Image. And, let's see,
| | 01:57 | we will go into the Images folder and get
that same blueprint image, same as before.
| | 02:01 | Let's get this image aligned. Okay,
| | 02:03 | so for the Y value, we want to have the
wheel sitting right on the horizontal plane.
| | 02:07 | So, in this axis, we just want to move it
down, the same amount we did before, so -1.1.
| | 02:13 | Now also, one thing to consider is this
image plane is sitting right here in the
| | 02:17 | middle of our perspective grid.
And, this is where we want to model.
| | 02:20 | So, I don't want this image to be in the way.
| | 02:22 | So, I want to scoot it way back.
| | 02:24 | So actually, what I'm going to do is
come in to the X-axis, and just put in a
| | 02:28 | big number like -80.
| | 02:30 | So now, you can see that if I rotate a little
bit, it's kind of pushed out of the way.
| | 02:33 | So, we're going to be modeling the car
on the grid, and the image plane is going
| | 02:36 | to be out of the way.
| | 02:38 | And actually, let's do that
same thing to the front view.
| | 02:41 | So, I'm going to go into View, Image
Plane, Image Plane Attributes, and pick
| | 02:46 | one we already created.
| | 02:47 | Now, we can come to the image center, and we can
push this one back as well. I'll put in -80.
| | 02:52 | Let's make sure it's correct.
| | 02:54 | Yeah, I can see it there now. Okay,
| | 02:56 | now let's go into the top view, and do
the same thing we did before. View>Image>
| | 03:00 | Plane>Import Image.
| | 03:01 | Go into the Images folder.
Click that blueprint. Open.
| | 03:05 | Now, let's look in the perspective view.
You can see that this image plane is
| | 03:08 | sitting right on the grid.
| | 03:10 | I want to push it down lower,
so it's not getting in the way.
| | 03:11 | So, I'm just going to type in -80 in here.
| | 03:14 | Make sure that's down there.
| | 03:15 | Yeah, we can see it down below.
| | 03:17 | Now, there's going to be something a
little bit weird about how the blueprints
| | 03:20 | line up with the viewports.
| | 03:21 | So, let me demonstrate.
| | 03:22 | I'm going to create a box to test
where that car would be in 3D space
| | 03:26 | relative to the blueprints.
| | 03:28 | So, what I'm going to do is make a box.
| | 03:30 | Let's go into the side view.
| | 03:31 | Now, I'm just going to drag this
box over where the car should be.
| | 03:35 | And I'm going to drag one more time
to set the heights. Okay.
| | 03:38 | So, we can see it here in the side view;
this box is pretty much over the shape
| | 03:41 | of the car. Here in the front view as well,
it's over at least half of the car. That's good.
| | 03:46 | But notice in the top view how
it's going in the wrong direction.
| | 03:50 | I'm going to hit Spacebar to zoom in.
| | 03:52 | So, the length of the car is going vertically.
| | 03:54 | But here in the top view, we want
to have it going the other direction.
| | 03:58 | We have to rotate this camera
to make it orient correctly.
| | 04:01 | So, here in the view cube, we want to
click on one of these rotate arrows.
| | 04:05 | I'll click the rotate clockwise arrow.
| | 04:08 | Okay, let's zoom out a little bit. Okay,
| | 04:09 | so now we can see that the length of the car
is lining up with the length of the blueprint.
| | 04:15 | So, what I'm going to do is just
hit Delete, get rid of that box.
| | 04:18 | We'll go into View, Image Plane.
| | 04:20 | Image Plane Attributes, and select the
image plane we already created in the top view.
| | 04:24 | Now, we can edit its position.
| | 04:26 | And, I want to edit the X-axis here.
| | 04:28 | I'm going to type in -3.56. Okay.
| | 04:33 | So, now we can see that the
center of the car is lined up with the
| | 04:37 | horizontal axis of the grid.
| | 04:39 | So, that's exactly what we want.
| | 04:40 | Now, I'll hit Space bar to
go back to our four views.
| | 04:43 | Okay, so you can see we've got our
front view, side view, and our top view.
| | 04:47 | Now, you might be using your
own blueprints or other images.
| | 04:51 | So, depending on how the views are
arranged in your reference, you might have to
| | 04:54 | position your images
differently in order to get them set up.
| | 04:58 | One thing is for certain. It's worth it
to spend the time to make sure that the
| | 05:01 | image planes are perfectly
lined up before you get to work.
| | 05:04 | Otherwise, your reference images
won't be consistent, and the resulting
| | 05:07 | model will be inaccurate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling with image planes| 00:00 | Modelling with image planes is
similar to modelling over a 3D concept.
| | 00:04 | The difference is that, instead of
snapping vertices to an existing 3D object,
| | 00:09 | you're lining them up with the
reference in each orthographic view.
| | 00:12 | If a vertex is aligned with the same
point on the reference in all three views,
| | 00:16 | then you know it must be in the right
point and space. Let's see how to do it.
| | 00:20 | I'm going to start with a
relatively simple part of the car, the hood.
| | 00:24 | So, let's go into the top view.
| | 00:26 | I'm going to hit the
Spacebar to make that full screen.
| | 00:28 | I'm going to zoom in a little
bit more close on that hood.
| | 00:31 | Okay, now I'm going to create a new plane,
and just click and drag in the view board.
| | 00:36 | Now, something weird happens sometimes.
I'm not really sure why it does this.
| | 00:40 | I think it's a bug within Maya, but
the proportions are not going to match how
| | 00:44 | you drag out this plane at all.
| | 00:46 | So, what I like to do is just make it there,
and then, let's tweak its shape afterwards.
| | 00:50 | So, I'm going to go into Vertex Mode, and
now, reposition these vertices, so they're
| | 00:54 | lining up with the hood better.
| | 00:56 | Okay, let's hit Spacebar and go back
to some of the other views here. Let me
| | 01:00 | zoom in on the Perspective view.
| | 01:01 | I want to hit 5 to turn on the Shaded
Mode. And I'm also going to hold down the
| | 01:05 | right mouse button, and go to Object Mode.
| | 01:07 | So, notice that it's created on the
floor. So, we want to drag this up, so that
| | 01:11 | this plane is closer to the hood.
| | 01:13 | So, we can see it here in the side view
and the front view. That plane is now
| | 01:16 | more where the hood is.
| | 01:18 | Okay, so now back into Vertex Mode.
| | 01:20 | I just want to line up all of these
vertices, so they're matching the reference.
| | 01:25 | So, let's see this front and center
vertex. Let's get it lined up with this line,
| | 01:30 | right here where the hood
meets the panel of the body.
| | 01:33 | And, you can see in the front view, it
needs to drop down just a little bit.
| | 01:36 | And, we can't see it very clearly on the
right view, so we'll just have to kind
| | 01:40 | of guess on that one.
| | 01:41 | All right, let's do this one now.
| | 01:43 | I am going to move it forward, and it's
definitely going to need to drop down a
| | 01:46 | little bit more here.
| | 01:48 | I was trying to guesstimate a little bit.
| | 01:49 | Sometimes you can't be sure exactly,
so there's definitely going to be
| | 01:52 | some tweaking involved.
| | 01:53 | All right, let's try this one back here.
Going to move it back a little bit.
| | 01:57 | Can we see it here? Yeah.
| | 01:58 | It looks like it needs to move up in
this view. Looks pretty good here. And, let's
| | 02:03 | do this last vertex here.
| | 02:05 | Okay, so that's pretty close.
| | 02:06 | So, you might be noticing that the hood
has a little curve to it, but our polygon
| | 02:11 | plane is perfectly straight.
| | 02:12 | So, we need to get some more polygons in
here in order to build up that curvature.
| | 02:17 | So, I'm going to use the
Insert Edge Loop tool for this.
| | 02:21 | Edit Mesh>Insert Edge Loop tool.
| | 02:21 | Let's click in the front view, or the
top view rather, and I'll just insert a
| | 02:26 | new edge loop here.
| | 02:27 | I'm going to use the Hood Air Intake as
a landmark. So, I'm going to go into Move
| | 02:31 | Mode, and just scoot this forward a
little bit until these vertices and edges
| | 02:35 | line up with that air intake.
| | 02:37 | Okay, so now that I have created a new edge,
I just go back into Vertex Mode. And,
| | 02:40 | let's see. Let's tweak this vertex, so
that it's lining up better with the shape
| | 02:44 | of the hood. Actually, I had the whole
edge selected. Let me deselect that.
| | 02:48 | And, let's see. Let's pick this vertex and move it
up a little bit, so we can match that
| | 02:51 | curvature a bit better.
| | 02:53 | Do the same thing with the other one.
| | 02:55 | So, there's lots of tweaking. And,
this is a very important point here.
| | 02:58 | Building this model is going to be a
back and forth process of creating more
| | 03:02 | detail, and then tweaking it, until it looks good.
| | 03:05 | You want to be careful about
adding too much detail at once.
| | 03:08 | So, for example, if you came in here
with the Insert Edge Loop tool, and you just
| | 03:12 | made a whole bunch of more edges, and then,
you planned to tweak them, you could run into
| | 03:17 | trouble, because there would now be a
lot of vertices that need to be tweaked.
| | 03:21 | I usually find this better to add just a
little bit of detail, and then tweak it, and
| | 03:24 | then back to adding a
little bit more detail again.
| | 03:26 | So, I'm just going to hit Z
a few times to undo that.
| | 03:29 | All right, I'm going to hit
W to go back into Move Mode.
| | 03:31 | I'm going to go into Vertex Mode. And,
what I actually want to do at this point is
| | 03:35 | line up these vertices with
the side of the hood panel.
| | 03:38 | Let's just make sure they're lining up
in these other views as well. Okay, great.
| | 03:42 | Now, let's add some more detail,
but with extrusions this time.
| | 03:46 | Let's get the rest of the front end
done, or at least a basic block out of it.
| | 03:50 | I want to go into the Edge Mode in the top view.
| | 03:52 | Now, hold down the right
mouse button; go to Edge Mode.
| | 03:55 | Okay, now I just want to click this
front edge. And now let's extrude it.
| | 03:59 | And, I want to go directly into Move Mode,
so hit W, and let's scoot this edge forward.
| | 04:03 | Let me move in my Perspective view, so
you can see all these polygons better.
| | 04:06 | Now, we want to tweak this new edge so that
it lines up better with this front air intake.
| | 04:11 | So, I'm going to move my views around
a little bit. Let's see. We'll get the
| | 04:15 | front view lined up. Let's see about
the side-view. It looks like it needs to
| | 04:17 | come down a little bit. And let's go
into Vertex Mode. And I want to tweak
| | 04:22 | this one, so it matches
better with the blueprint.
| | 04:25 | In fact, it needs to come back here, too.
| | 04:27 | So, don't worry if you can't
line it up exactly for now.
| | 04:30 | I just want to get as much of the basic
shape of the car done. And then, later, I
| | 04:34 | can worry about the specifics.
| | 04:36 | Okay, something else I
want to point out right here.
| | 04:38 | Let me go onto the "Top View," and I'm
going to zoom out a little bit, so we
| | 04:41 | can see this better.
| | 04:42 | So, you can see that I'm modelling
these edges, so that they line up with the
| | 04:46 | panel that separates the hood
from the rest of the car body.
| | 04:49 | Eventually, the hood is going to get
split off into a separate object, but for
| | 04:53 | now, it's going to be easier to keep
the body of the car in one solid piece.
| | 04:57 | This is because if I need to change the
position of some of these vertices, I'd
| | 05:01 | have to be very careful to move
vertices on two separate objects, in order to
| | 05:05 | keep them together, if they were separate.
| | 05:07 | Since I'm keeping it together,
however, it's going to be a lot easier to
| | 05:10 | tweak things for now.
| | 05:12 | So, whenever you see seams, make
sure you're lining up the edges of your
| | 05:16 | polygons with those seams.
| | 05:17 | It will be a lot easier to
separate them into panels later on.
| | 05:20 | So, using blueprints in image planes
can take a little while to get used to.
| | 05:24 | It can also seem tedious to
tweak all these vertices by hand.
| | 05:27 | Don't worry though. You'll get the hang
of it. It's really exciting to see the
| | 05:31 | car take shape as you work, so stick with it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blocking out the basic shape| 00:00 | On the surface, blocking out the rest
of the vehicle seems like it might be as
| | 00:04 | simple as just Extruding and Inserting Edge
Loops, and Tweaking, but there are a few challenges.
| | 00:09 | Compounding the issue is
that every vehicle is different.
| | 00:12 | So, the way you approach it is
definitely going to be different as well.
| | 00:15 | In this video, I'm going to continue
roughing out the shape of the car, and talk
| | 00:18 | about the decisions that I make along the way.
| | 00:21 | Okay, so we have got a very
rough, basic start to this car.
| | 00:24 | So, one of the things I want to do is
try to continue some of these polygons
| | 00:28 | around to more parts of the car.
| | 00:30 | So, for example, let me zoom in on the hood here.
| | 00:33 | Now, I want to continue some of these
edges, and create some more polygons down
| | 00:37 | into the fender area.
| | 00:38 | So, let's go ahead and do that.
| | 00:39 | I'm going to go into Edge Mode,
and select these edges along here.
| | 00:43 | And now, I'll just simply extrude them
and go into Move Mode with W. I'll just
| | 00:47 | scoot this out here, and tweak,
moving them to line up in the top view.
| | 00:52 | And then, I'll definitely want to go
into the front view, and make sure they're
| | 00:54 | lined up here as well.
Definitely, a lot of tweaking to do.
| | 00:57 | Now, I don't want to spend the entire
time spending hours and hours of tweaking,
| | 01:01 | so I'm going to kind of
skip around a little bit.
| | 01:04 | Also, I wanted to talk about some issues
that I run into when I'm doing work like this.
| | 01:08 | It's very easy to feel overwhelmed
when you look at an entire car with all of
| | 01:12 | its complex shapes and its curves. And, you
might feel like you don't know where to start.
| | 01:16 | And, don't worry if you feel that way. I feel
that way a lot of times when I model as well.
| | 01:21 | One way of thinking about it that's
helped me is to not worry if everything is
| | 01:24 | modelled the right way at first.
| | 01:26 | I just want to get something made that
covers the overall shape, and then I can
| | 01:30 | always edit and adjust it later.
| | 01:32 | But until there's something there, it's
always going to feel like it's too much to handle.
| | 01:36 | So, for instance, in this area right
around at the front headlight here, I might
| | 01:40 | not know exactly what to do. So, I could
just try placing different polygons in
| | 01:44 | different places, and see how it works.
| | 01:48 | So, maybe I'll go into Edge Mode here,
and I'll select this edge, and extrude it,
| | 01:54 | If it doesn't work, I can always
delete it, and try something else.
| | 01:54 | and bring it around in between here.
| | 01:57 | And, there's no one right way to do this.
| | 01:59 | There are many different approaches
that you could take to blocking this out.
| | 02:02 | You just don't want to get bogged
down and find details right away.
| | 02:05 | You just want to get something
that covers the overall shape.
| | 02:08 | So, I'm going to zoom in here. I'm
going to go back into Edge Mode, and try to
| | 02:12 | extrude some more edges.
| | 02:13 | I want to get something that tries to
cover this fender area a little bit better.
| | 02:17 | And, something else I might do right
here. Notice how the curvature of these
| | 02:20 | edges isn't really lining up
with the curvature of the fender.
| | 02:23 | So, I might go into Scale Mode and just
try to scale this a little bit. And, let's
| | 02:28 | Okay, it looks like I could actually
rotate this entire structure as well.
| | 02:29 | see how this looks here.
| | 02:32 | So, by moving all those pieces at once,
I saved myself the work of having to
| | 02:36 | tweak all those vertices individually.
| | 02:39 | Now, it's pretty close. I can
just do a little bit of tweaking.
| | 02:41 | Woops! Sometimes you might accidentally
click that, and in order to get back, just
| | 02:46 | go to Previous View, and it
should move back to where it belongs.
| | 02:49 | I just want to get these edges
lined up with the top of the fender.
| | 02:52 | Okay, that's pretty close.
| | 02:54 | Let's see. I could go do that one more
time. Pick all these edges, and extrude them.
| | 02:59 | Now, let's start bringing it down the side.
I'm going to move the modeling up to
| | 03:03 | the side a little bit, so I
don't accidentally hit that.
| | 03:05 | Okay, so here's one tricky area.
| | 03:07 | This is where the fender
meets the wheel guard right here.
| | 03:09 | So, we have to make some decisions
about how we're going to model this.
| | 03:12 | So, one thing I think I'm going to do
is start tweaking these vertices so that
| | 03:16 | they line up with that wheel guard
right here, but then start extruding down
| | 03:22 | around the side of it.
| | 03:23 | I'm going to go back in Edge Mode, and
just pick this one edge here, and this one
| | 03:27 | edge here, and let's try extruding them down.
| | 03:31 | Okay, so now I can tweak these vertices,
so that they match up with the shape
| | 03:35 | around this fender guard.
| | 03:36 | All right, let's look at this
from a couple of different views.
| | 03:39 | So, you can see it's starting to take shape.
| | 03:41 | Now, I could continue working on the rest
of the car with these exact same techniques.
| | 03:45 | It's actually probably going to take a
few hours to get this blocked out, so I'm
| | 03:48 | not going to show you every single
step that I'm going to take. But the basic
| | 03:51 | principles of what I've been doing so
far is what should continue to be done to
| | 03:55 | finish off the blockout.
| | 03:57 | So, jump in and start making polygons to
cover the basic shape as best as you can.
| | 04:01 | Go ahead and try to get as much of
the body done as you can by using just
| | 04:04 | Extrude and Insert Edge Loop.
| | 04:06 | Don't worry about any fine
details or little objects for now.
| | 04:09 | Just try to get the overall shape.
| | 04:11 | Even if you're not sure about how to
do a certain area, it's better to just
| | 04:14 | get something in there.
| | 04:15 | Then, if it's not looking right,
you can always delete it, and try it a
| | 04:18 | different way, or tweak it.
| | 04:21 | We'll get into those issues later on.
For now, just try to block out the
| | 04:24 | overall form of the car.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using a photo reference to complement blueprints| 00:00 | The blueprints in the image planes can take
us a long ways towards modelling a vehicle.
| | 00:05 | However, there are times when that's
not just enough detail, or maybe a part of
| | 00:09 | the car can't be clearly
seen in two or more views.
| | 00:12 | Additionally, sometimes blueprints
might not be entirely consistent, like a
| | 00:16 | detail might be slightly off between two views.
| | 00:19 | In times like those, you'll
need to use Photo Reference.
| | 00:22 | Working solely from image planes
can sometimes feel like tracing.
| | 00:26 | When Photo Reference is involved, it
requires more of an artist's eye to see
| | 00:29 | what shapes need to be made.
| | 00:31 | So, let's get into it.
| | 00:32 | All right, we have got this side
panel of the car, and it's starting to look
| | 00:35 | good, but we're going to need a little
bit more help to get the rest of it done.
| | 00:39 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:41 | So, down below about this line right
here, it's kind of hard to see in the
| | 00:45 | blueprint what's going on there.
| | 00:47 | So, in the top view, it kind of tucks
underneath here. In the front view, you
| | 00:52 | really can't see, because this whole
wheel well and the tire is in the way.
| | 00:55 | So, this part down here can only really
be seen in this view. So it's kind of
| | 00:59 | hard to see what's going on.
| | 01:00 | We're going to have to interpret
that shape from Photo Reference.
| | 01:04 | So, let me just start out by
getting some polygons in there.
| | 01:06 | Let me go to Edge Mode.
Select some of these. Okay, cool!
| | 01:11 | So, I'm going to go and hit Extrude.
Then, just go into Move Mode, and scoot these
| | 01:15 | down. And now, let me scale them a
little bit too -- just trying to fit it a
| | 01:19 | little bit better in here.
| | 01:20 | Okay, so how do we know exactly, should
we push this in a little bit more here?
| | 01:25 | It's hard to tell, because in the top
and the front view, you can't really
| | 01:29 | see where this goes.
| | 01:31 | So, let's look at some Photo Reference.
| | 01:33 | So, here's the area in the photo. Let's
look through a couple of different photos
| | 01:36 | and see what we can find.
| | 01:37 | Okay, so there's definitely some
curvature. It seems to slant inwards a little
| | 01:41 | bit, and then curve under.
| | 01:42 | Let me try to find a
couple of other pictures here.
| | 01:45 | Okay, it looks like about
the same thing here as well.
| | 01:47 | It seems to come down straight for a pretty
good long ways, and then it curves even more.
| | 01:52 | So, let's try to replicate that in the model.
| | 01:54 | Now, it's going to be hard to be exact
with this, so we're just going to have to
| | 01:57 | do it the best we can.
| | 01:59 | So, I extruded it down somewhat.
| | 02:01 | Let me hit Spacebar so we
can see this more close up.
| | 02:04 | All right, what I'm going to do is take
this line, and scale it down, so I get a
| | 02:07 | perfect flat bottom on it.
| | 02:09 | And then also, let me do that
from the other views as well.
| | 02:12 | I'm going to scale it in, so it's nice
and even. And, I just want to position it a
| | 02:16 | little bit more. And, let's extrude it
one more time and bring it down, and scoot
| | 02:21 | it under a little bit.
| | 02:22 | Okay, so I think that's going to
approximate the shape that I was seeing in the
| | 02:25 | Photo Reference, maybe just a little
bit more tweaking to line this up better.
| | 02:30 | All right, let's look at another area.
| | 02:32 | This spot right in here, between the hood
and the fender, it's kind of depressed inwards.
| | 02:37 | Let me look at it in the front view.
| | 02:39 | The fender comes up, and then it sinks
down a little bit, and then it pops back up
| | 02:42 | over the hood. And it's kind of hard
to see exactly what's going on there.
| | 02:45 | So, let's look at the Photo Reference again.
| | 02:47 | Okay, so the reflections that we can
see are actually kind of helping us see
| | 02:50 | the depression in here.
| | 02:53 | Okay, so back to our model. I am
just going to go full screen on this.
| | 02:56 | And, I can see that I might need to
tweak some of these shapes based on what I'm
| | 02:59 | seeing in the Photo Reference.
| | 03:01 | Okay, for another area, let's check
out the front top edge of where the door
| | 03:05 | panel is, and then go into my top view.
| | 03:08 | See, we've got the door panel right here,
and it's kind of hard to see what's going on.
| | 03:12 | We've got the windshield kind of
blocking this area. And, let's see. In this
| | 03:16 | view, the door panel kind of rises up
above right here. It's kind of hard to see.
| | 03:21 | And, there's definitely none
of that being seen right here.
| | 03:23 | So, let's look at our Photo Reference again.
| | 03:26 | Okay, that's a good shot of it.
| | 03:28 | Something else that's making it
more complicated is that I think the
| | 03:30 | blueprints are slightly off.
| | 03:32 | So, it's actually causing vertices to
be raised up above right here, when in
| | 03:36 | other views, they look
like they should be correct.
| | 03:38 | So, let me take another glance at that
photo reference. So, it seems like there
| | 03:42 | needs to be a little bit
more of a curve right here.
| | 03:44 | So, this might be a good opportunity
to scoot some vertices around, and get a
| | 03:49 | little bit more of a curve around this area.
| | 03:51 | Okay, so like I mentioned in the last
video, this part of the modelling process
| | 03:55 | is a lot of tweaking.
| | 03:56 | I could probably sit here for several
hours just pushing every vertex around
| | 04:00 | just where it needs to be.
| | 04:01 | So, I'm not going to subject you to that.
Let me skip ahead now at this point. But
| | 04:05 | I just want you to know that modelling
a vehicle is going to require a lot of
| | 04:08 | reference study, both
with photos and blueprints.
| | 04:11 | It's going to take some trial and
error, as you try to find the best way to
| | 04:15 | interpret the small
inconsistencies between photos and blueprints.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a back image plane| 00:00 | Continuing the blockout of the vehicle
pretty much follows the same steps that
| | 00:04 | we've covered already.
| | 00:05 | However, once we start to reach the back
end of the car, we run into a problem.
| | 00:09 | Our viewports are using the front, side, and
top views, but the back view isn't being used.
| | 00:15 | In this video, we will get the reference set
up for the back side, and begin to block it out.
| | 00:20 | Let's look at our front view first.
| | 00:21 | I'm going to hit the Spacebar
as we go full screen on this.
| | 00:24 | So, we can see we're aligning it up with
the front view, but we've also got this
| | 00:28 | back view that isn't being used.
| | 00:30 | Now, this part of the blueprint
contains some information that could really be
| | 00:33 | helpful for modeling.
| | 00:34 | So, we're going to make this
front viewport do some double duty.
| | 00:37 | We're going to have it to show the
front and the back views, depending on which
| | 00:40 | part we're working on at any time.
| | 00:42 | So, if we go on to the View Cube and
click on this arrow right here, and one more
| | 00:46 | time, we'll get to the back side.
| | 00:48 | Now, we haven't set up the
reference yet, so you can see the model is
| | 00:52 | actually right over here.
| | 00:53 | We can see a little bit of it, and we
need to get another copy of this blueprint
| | 00:57 | in for the back side.
| | 00:59 | Let me just click this a couple
more times to get around to the front.
| | 01:02 | Okay, so we're back on the front.
| | 01:04 | One thing I also want to do before I
get too far ahead of myself is I want to
| | 01:07 | be able to show the image planes in
the Perspective view. And, I think, at some
| | 01:10 | point, I turned them off.
| | 01:12 | So, if you click on Show, I want to make
sure that the cameras are visible right now.
| | 01:15 | I think I was hiding them before
because I didn't want these things to get in
| | 01:18 | the way of my modeling.
| | 01:19 | But as you can see, the front view is
actually sitting right here in the middle of the car.
| | 01:23 | I didn't scoot it out of the way, and
that's because I want the front view to
| | 01:28 | only see the part of a
model that's in front of it.
| | 01:31 | So, right now, this image plane is
actually blocking any polygons that would show
| | 01:35 | up beyond this point, like say
in the back beyond this point.
| | 01:44 | So, what we want to do is get the back
image plane just behind this, and that way,
| | 01:45 | when we're looking at the back of
the car, the image plane will block any
| | 01:49 | polygons that are more towards the front.
| | 01:51 | Hopefully, it will be a more
clear once we put it in place. Okay,
| | 01:55 | so we're going to be making the
back blueprint based on the front one.
| | 01:58 | So, let's select this one. And, what I
want to do is look at its attributes --
| | 02:03 | I wrote down its position in X,
Y, and Z -- and also its scale.
| | 02:08 | So, I can plug those numbers in once I
create the back viewport. Just to get me
| | 02:11 | close in the ball park, then,
I'll have to tweak it from there.
| | 02:14 | Let's go into View. And, I want to
create a new image plane. And, let's find our
| | 02:20 | blueprint and open it.
| | 02:22 | Okay, let me zoom out a little bit.
| | 02:24 | So, this didn't come in
close to where we wanted it at all.
| | 02:27 | So, I'm going to type in some of the
numbers. The Width should be 30, Height
| | 02:31 | should be 30, Image Center
should be -9.7, and in the Y-axis 6.5.
[00:02:.27]
Now, if you're working on your own car,
these numbers are going to be completely
| | 02:43 | different, but I already did the math here.
| | 02:46 | So, I know exactly where it should go. Okay,
| | 02:48 | let's look at this from the
back view now. Okay, great.
| | 02:52 | So, we've got the back view. And
now, we can start to see these polygons.
[00:02:5.08]
They are starting to peek around
the back side of the front view.
| | 02:59 | Now, one thing I made sure to do that
you might not be able to see very clearly
[00:03:0.83]
is I placed the back image plane
just barely behind the front one.
| | 03:05 | So, you can see there is just
a little bit of gap here.
| | 03:08 | So, if this back image plane was
actually in front of the front one, then you
| | 03:12 | wouldn't be able to see them through each other.
| | 03:15 | All right, now that we've got that in place, we
can continue to model around to the back side.
| | 03:19 | So, let me see. I want to grab some of
these polygons up here. And, I'm just going
| | 03:24 | to extrude them back a little bit.
And, let's put these into place.
| | 03:31 | All right, it's lining up
pretty well in this view.
| | 03:34 | Let's see if we might need to scoot
them over a little bit in this view.
| | 03:37 | We'll go into Vertex Mode,
and tweak this a little better.
| | 03:39 | Let's try to line that up with
the reference now on the back side.
| | 03:42 | All right, so I could continue
extruding around the back end.
| | 03:45 | As cumbersome as it may be to get the
reference set up correctly, it's really
| | 03:48 | going to make life easier to
model the whole vehicle this way.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blocking out the back end| 00:00 | This video will be a little bit more of
a demo where you can watch how I work.
| | 00:04 | You can see how I make
decisions, and even make mistakes.
| | 00:07 | There might be some trial and error as well.
| | 00:09 | Now, let's get to it.
| | 00:10 | Now, this is where I left off in the
last video, just starting out the back
| | 00:13 | end. And, I can see already that there are
some places where I want to make some changes.
| | 00:18 | So, for example, on the top view, you
can see that I started angling these
| | 00:21 | new polygons out in this direction,
but really the direction of the
| | 00:24 | curvature is going up here.
| | 00:27 | So, I'm going to change this around.
| | 00:28 | Let me go into Vertex Mode,
and just start tweaking this.
| | 00:31 | You kn ow, I kind of want the curvature to
come around the door, and move up around
| | 00:35 | that back side, because I was looking at
my photo reference earlier, and you can
| | 00:39 | see how this curvature comes around here.
| | 00:41 | So, I really want some
polygons following that angle.
| | 00:43 | And then, also, there's this crease
between the trunk and this fender right here.
| | 00:47 | And, it kind of curves around this way.
| | 00:49 | So, I want to make sure I've got some
polygons going in that direction as well.
| | 00:52 | So, it's just a little bit of tweaking.
I don't really have it planned out
| | 00:55 | exactly what I'm going to do.
| | 00:56 | I'm just kind of winging it, and
hopefully it will turn out all right.
| | 00:59 | All right, it looks like I might need
to tweak some of these in this as well.
| | 01:05 | What I think I'm going to do next is select
this edge, and start to extrude it back this way.
| | 01:11 | I just want to rotate that, so it's
nice, and a straight line right there.
| | 01:16 | Okay now, what I'll do is get this edge.
And, I'm going to start to extrude that
| | 01:20 | back, but this time, I want
it to follow along this line.
| | 01:25 | All right, that's starting out okay.
| | 01:27 | And so, once I've got that started, I think
I'll select some of these edges right
| | 01:31 | around here, and start
building out this fender shape.
| | 01:35 | Now, what I might do is select that one
edge, and then double-click this one, and
| | 01:39 | it will select all these in between.
| | 01:40 | Now, I can just extrude them all together.
| | 01:44 | And, let's see. I'll go into Scale Mode.
And, I'll try to get these a little bit
| | 01:48 | more flush with each other.
Definitely a lot of tweaking to do.
| | 01:52 | So, let's see. If I line this one up
with the top of . . . right where the fender
| | 01:55 | starts to meet that wheel well.
| | 01:57 | That should be a good place to line it up with.
| | 01:59 | So, I'm just taking it one vertex at a time. So,
that needs to be tweaked in this view as well.
| | 02:05 | All right, let's see what this looks like.
| | 02:07 | Okay, not too bad. Looks like it's a
little bit off here. I'll pull these up.
| | 02:12 | All right, let's keep extruding back.
| | 02:14 | I'll pick these two edges, extrude, go
back into Move Mode, and let's just pull
| | 02:20 | it back here. And now, it's time to tweak it.
| | 02:24 | So, it looks like we've got a little bit
of a challenge here where the curvature
| | 02:27 | of this starts to come down so far that I don't
want to start pulling edges all the way down.
| | 02:31 | So, I might start to split this again. One
more. And, start extruding from this edge
| | 02:37 | right here. And, bring that down around this side.
| | 02:39 | Now, I'm just going to scale this to
match the shape a little bit better. And, of
| | 02:45 | course, always tweaking, tweaking, tweaking.
| | 02:48 | Okay, so one thing I'm noticing right
now is that I've got these edges going
| | 02:53 | directly across here, which is
actually cutting right through this hump.
| | 02:57 | So, it looks like I need to insert at
least one more, probably two or three more
| | 03:02 | edges down to link this, so I can
get the shape of that hump in there.
| | 03:05 | So, what I'm going to do is Insert
Edge Loop Tool, and I'll just place an
| | 03:09 | edge right in here.
| | 03:11 | And then, it's already selected for me,
once I created it. But I want to unselect
| | 03:15 | some of these, for I'm
only moving up some of them.
| | 03:18 | All right, that should be
close enough for now anyway.
| | 03:21 | Looks like I'm following that shape
pretty closely, maybe a little bit better
| | 03:24 | right here, and I'm just doing a bunch
of tweaking and make sure it lines up
| | 03:27 | with the reference better. Okay,
| | 03:29 | let's go back into Edge Mode,
and extrude it one more time.
| | 03:36 | Let's rotate that around a bit.
| | 03:37 | And, I'm just going to try to scoot that into place.
| | 03:40 | Maybe I'll go into Scale Mode here, and
kind of flatten out that out a little bit.
| | 03:45 | Looks like I just need to
tweak some of these vertices.
| | 03:47 | And, all of these vertices I think need to
be scooted under a little bit. And, let's see.
| | 03:52 | That edge is a little bit harsh.
| | 03:54 | I think we could round it out
with inserting another Edge Loop.
| | 03:58 | And with that inserted, it's already
selected, so I'm just going to scoot it back.
| | 04:02 | Okay, now let's fill in
this little space right here.
| | 04:05 | So, there's one little trick I want to show you.
| | 04:07 | I'm just going to extrude down one of
these edges. And, let's tweak this into position.
| | 04:15 | Now, that leaves a little gap right there.
| | 04:17 | So, one way to fill that is to go and
select this other edge right here, and just
| | 04:21 | extrude this down. And then, what I want
to do is kind of snap these vertices to
| | 04:27 | the corresponding sides on . . . . Let's
see if can zoom in a little closer here.
| | 04:30 | So I want to snap this vertex to this
one, and this one to that one to just
| | 04:34 | kind of fill that in.
| | 04:35 | So, what I want to do is go to a
Vertex Mode. And, let's get a new tool that we
| | 04:39 | haven't used before. And,
that is the Merge Vertex Tool.
| | 04:43 | So, I'm just going to click on this
vertex, and drag over to this one, and it just
| | 04:46 | automatically snaps it together.
| | 04:48 | Same with this one.
| | 04:50 | And, we're still in that Merge Vertex Tool,
so I'm just going to hit W to exit out of it.
| | 04:54 | Okay.
| | 04:55 | So, that sealed that up.
| | 04:57 | We're going to hit Spacebar, so
we can look at our other views.
| | 04:59 | So obviously, there's plenty more to do.
| | 05:01 | You know, you could continue extruding all the
way across the back, and for the trunk
| | 05:04 | area, but it's pretty much
straightforward. The same type of thing we've been
| | 05:08 | doing already so far in this video.
| | 05:09 | So, I will let you handle it from here for now.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finishing the front-end blockout| 00:00 | So, on to finishing the
blockout of the front end.
| | 00:03 | Again, we're going to be using the same
tried-and-true techniques of extrusion
| | 00:07 | and Insert Edge Loop to finish this off.
| | 00:09 | We'll also try out a few other
tools that can make the modeling process
| | 00:12 | move more smoothly.
| | 00:14 | The front end of the car
appears to be quite complex.
| | 00:16 | There's the air intakes, the
headlights, and other shapes, all kind of
| | 00:20 | clustered together.
| | 00:21 | Let's find an approach to this modeling
challenge that simplifies it, and takes
| | 00:25 | it one step at a time.
| | 00:26 | One of the ways that we can tackle
this front end is to ignore some of the
| | 00:30 | smaller details, and just focus
on getting the big shapes created.
| | 00:34 | This will simplify the process, and
then, later, we can get the little vents, and
| | 00:37 | the little details made.
| | 00:38 | Okay, let's switch this to the front view.
| | 00:41 | We're currently looking at the back
end. And, I just want to adjust all my
| | 00:44 | different view ports, so we're looking
more at the front end of the vehicle. Okay.
| | 00:48 | So, one place I know we need more polygons is
right here, right in front of the front fender.
| | 00:53 | So, I'm going to select one of these
edges right here, and just extrude this
| | 00:57 | down to cover this area.
| | 01:01 | Just going to switch right into
Move Mode, and just pull that down.
| | 01:04 | And then, it looks like it
needs a little bit of scaling.
| | 01:06 | Let's see it from the front view.
| | 01:07 | That looks pretty good.
| | 01:09 | Okay, now we can start to wrap this around the front.
| | 01:12 | So, I'm going to pull this edge right
here. I want to extrude that, and pull it
| | 01:16 | down under around the front headlight.
| | 01:18 | So, let's extrude that, go into
Move Mode, and just pull that forward.
| | 01:22 | And, we'll just tweak it in all
of our views, so it lines up nice.
| | 01:25 | All right, I can probably
just extrude that one more time.
| | 01:30 | Okay, we can even do that
one time. Let's try it.
| | 01:36 | Okay, that's pretty good.
| | 01:37 | Now, one thing I notice is
that we've this gap right here.
| | 01:41 | There's an open space that
we should be able to fill.
| | 01:43 | And, I'm going to show you one tool
that I like to use for things like this.
| | 01:46 | It's called the Append to Polygon Tool and
what this is going to do is fill in the gap.
| | 01:50 | So, you click on one edge, and then you
click on another edge, and it builds a sort
| | 01:56 | of bridge right between the two.
| | 01:58 | You just hit Enter to lock that in.
| | 01:59 | Now, all I have to do is tweak a little bit.
| | 02:02 | See, this one vertex could be a little
closer to the headlight. And, it looks like
| | 02:06 | this vertex needs to be scooted forward.
| | 02:08 | Since I can see it's right there on the
edge of that air intake, I think I could
| | 02:11 | scoot this one forward too.
| | 02:12 | All right, back in the Edge Mode, I
think I want to take this edge right here,
| | 02:17 | and keep extruding it across to the middle.
| | 02:19 | Let me just zoom in on this. You
can see it's kind of crooked.
| | 02:21 | So, I'm just going to go into the Scale
Tool, and just scale this until it is flat.
| | 02:25 | Okay, let me zoom out a little bit.
| | 02:27 | So, it's starting to take shape.
| | 02:28 | Now, I could tweak a lot more, and
build in a little bit more of this shape,
| | 02:32 | but what I want to do is skip ahead to one
that's a little bit more developed than this.
| | 02:36 | So, let's open up the next exercise
file in this video frontendblockout2.
| | 02:42 | And, I don't need to worry
about saving this. Okay,
| | 02:44 | let's take a closer look at the front end.
| | 02:46 | So, the basic shape is here,
but it's still pretty rough.
| | 02:49 | So, we're going to use some more
modeling tools to neaten it up a bit.
| | 02:52 | I want to redirect some edges, I think,
just to help some of the topology flow
| | 02:56 | with that curvature a little bit better.
Because I'm looking at this area right
| | 02:59 | here, and it looks a little bit blocky.
| | 03:02 | And, I just want to look at
our photos really quickly.
| | 03:05 | And, notice how it just got this really
nice curve right here from the fender. And, it
| | 03:09 | just curves right underneath.
| | 03:11 | So, I want to capture some of that right in here.
| | 03:15 | Now, let me zoom in. And, I think it might
be a combination of tweaking, but then
| | 03:19 | also, I think what I'm going to need
to do is use the Split Polygon Tool. And,
| | 03:23 | with this, you can click on edges and
vertices, and cut new edges, and then
| | 03:28 | right-click to lock it in.
| | 03:29 | So, I'm going to go back in the Move
Mode, and click on this, so that you can see
| | 03:33 | that we're developing a little
bit more of a curvature around here.
| | 03:35 | Now, there's still a little
bit of that angle right here.
| | 03:38 | So, I'm going to try to get rid of
that by collapsing some of these edges.
| | 03:41 | So, let me zoom in, and go to Edge Mode,
and this button right here is collapsed.
| | 03:46 | So, notice when we click on that, just
kind of collapses that whole edge together,
| | 03:49 | and brings the vertices on either end together.
| | 03:53 | Let's do it one more time.
| | 03:55 | Let me rotate around just
to see what that looks like.
| | 03:57 | Let me go back into Edge Mode, and just
focus in on that, hitting F. Okay, it
| | 04:01 | looks like just some tweaking now.
| | 04:04 | I just want the shape to round that more.
| | 04:05 | Okay, so there's a little
bit more curvature there.
| | 04:08 | So, that's the end of the blockout, and
I want you to understand that blocking
| | 04:11 | out a vehicle isn't about following
specific steps, because every car is going
| | 04:15 | to be different, and even different
people will blockout the same car with a
| | 04:19 | different approach.
| | 04:20 | The main thing to remember is to try to get the
basic shape without creating too much geometry.
| | 04:26 | Even if you have to go and adjust or
redo some parts of the blockout, it's
| | 04:30 | better to get something, or anything
in there, rather than having an empty
| | 04:34 | space to look at.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Modeling Complex CurvatureTweaking the model| 00:00 | Now that we have the blockout of the
body done, it's a good opportunity to give
| | 00:04 | the whole car a check-up.
| | 00:06 | Before we start getting into any fine
details, it's very important to make sure
| | 00:09 | that they're being modeled on an accurate base.
| | 00:12 | This will save us a lot of
time and frustration later on.
| | 00:15 | Now, the tweaking process of vehicle
modeling is really something that is done
| | 00:19 | constantly throughout the modeling process.
| | 00:21 | For the sake of making this course,
I'm kind of trimming out a lot of the
| | 00:25 | tweaking that's done to this car.
| | 00:27 | And, that's because if I were to leave
in all those of the tweaking that it
| | 00:29 | takes to model a car, the videos would go
for days, and it would be very boring to watch.
| | 00:34 | So, for that reason, I'm going to use
this video as an example of the kinds of
| | 00:38 | things that you should be doing all
the time as you model, not just at this
| | 00:42 | point in the process.
| | 00:43 | So, one thing that I do all the time
that's related to tweaking is accounting
| | 00:47 | for discrepancies between reference images.
| | 00:49 | There's probably going to be subtle
variations between different views of the
| | 00:53 | blueprint and the reference photos.
| | 00:55 | As the model or an artist, you're
going to have to make decisions about
| | 00:58 | which direction to go.
| | 01:00 | So, let's look at a particular part of this car.
| | 01:02 | I'm going to zoom in on the top of
the hood here, and our front view.
| | 01:07 | And, I'm going to go into Vertex Mode.
| | 01:09 | And I'm just going select this
vertex that's on the top of the hood.
| | 01:12 | And, let's see where it is on the side view.
| | 01:14 | So, in the side view, this vertex is a
little higher up on the model than it
| | 01:17 | is in the front view.
| | 01:18 | If we move it down on the side view, then
it drops a little too low in the front view.
| | 01:23 | After examining reference, you can
try to strike a middle ground, or you can
| | 01:26 | focus on getting it right for one
reference, and ignoring how it looks in other views.
| | 01:30 | In the end, what often matters is that
the model looks good, and is believable,
| | 01:35 | regardless of which specific
piece of reference you use.
| | 01:37 | Something else you want to do all the
time is just to make sure that all the
| | 01:40 | shapes are accurate.
| | 01:42 | So, I'm going to go into that
Perspective View. And, let's just zoom in on this
| | 01:45 | kind of area right here
on the middle of the car.
| | 01:47 | So, you can see it's kind of flat
right along here. And, let's compare this to
| | 01:51 | the photo reference.
| | 01:52 | Okay, so we can see that
there's a lot of nice curvature here.
| | 01:55 | And, in our model, it's kind of flat.
| | 01:57 | So, what I'm going to do is just select some of
these vertices, and tweak them out a little bit.
| | 02:02 | Okay, so that's simulating
the curvature a bit better.
| | 02:05 | Looking at a lot of different photos can
give you a sense of the shapes that you
| | 02:09 | just can't get from blueprints alone.
| | 02:12 | Something else I like to do is make
sure that all of my edges are following the
| | 02:15 | major seams, creases, and curves.
| | 02:18 | Now, let's look in our blueprint views again.
| | 02:20 | I'm going to zoom out a little bit.
| | 02:21 | And one thing I want to make sure of,
I want to make sure that that my
edges are following the major seams.
| | 02:27 | So, for example, right here I can see on
the trunk that these vertices and edges
| | 02:32 | could be lined up a little bit better.
Because, eventually, what I'm going to need
| | 02:36 | to do is separate the polygons for
the trunk from the polygons of the body.
| | 02:40 | So, if I get my edges right on those
seams, it's going to be a lot easier to
| | 02:44 | cut those shapes out.
| | 02:45 | All right, let's look at another spot. Okay,
| | 02:47 | here's one area. We can see that the black
line right here, that's for the car door.
| | 02:52 | So, what I want to do is tweak these
edges, so that they line up with that door
| | 02:56 | better. And, let's look at
the photo reference too.
| | 03:00 | I think there's a photo in here
that I can see that angle really well.
| | 03:03 | Yeah, that one is not too bad.
| | 03:05 | You can kind of see that angle of the car door.
| | 03:07 | You just want to make sure that
those things are lining up well as well.
| | 03:10 | So, making sure that you got your
edges following these kinds of things is
| | 03:13 | especially important to do before you
get any further in the modeling process.
| | 03:16 | Because once you start breaking off
different body panels, it's going to be
| | 03:20 | a lot more work to fix any problems
that weren't addressed at this stage.
| | 03:24 | Another part of tweaking is making
sure that all of your geometry is even.
| | 03:28 | And so by that, I mean looking at
the spacing between the various edges.
| | 03:33 | So, you can see here that you got two
edges that are kind of close together, and
| | 03:36 | then there's this one that's farther apart,
and there's not really any reason for that.
| | 03:40 | It is okay to put edges closely
together -- let's say, in this position, for
| | 03:43 | example -- because we're trying
to hold a nice curve right there.
| | 03:46 | But right here, there's really nothing going on.
| | 03:49 | So, what we should do is try to tweak
these, so that they're spaced out more evenly.
| | 03:53 | Okay.
| | 03:54 | So, there's clearly a lot more tweaking
that could be done to this car, but that
| | 03:56 | might take hours to watch.
| | 03:59 | So, we're going to wrap it up here.
| | 04:00 | As far as time spent on a model goes,
tweaking is really the most common
| | 04:04 | thing you'll be doing.
| | 04:06 | A car involves a lot of pieces
that have to fit together in harmony.
| | 04:09 | To get it all to look right,
you're going to have to spend many hours
| | 04:11 | tinkering with the vertices.
| | 04:14 | I really want to drive this point home,
because a lot of beginners don't realize
| | 04:17 | how much tweaking work must go into a model.
| | 04:20 | There are a lot of modeling tutorials
out there that show you how to use the
| | 04:23 | tools, and how to make the shapes, but
they don't always go into the long hours
| | 04:27 | of refinement that must be done.
| | 04:29 | So, this can result in
unrealistic expectations and frustration,
| | 04:33 | when a beginner expects their models
to look good after following just a few
| | 04:36 | steps outlined in a tutorial. The fact
is that even the experts sit for hours
| | 04:41 | massaging every polygon to get good results.
| | 04:43 | So, I can't stress enough that the
information in this one video should be
| | 04:47 | applied every step of the way, not
just at this one point in the process.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Smooth Mesh Preview| 00:00 | Now, this car we're working
on is very smooth and curvy.
| | 00:03 | However, we're modeling with polygons,
which are inherently blocky and angular.
| | 00:08 | In the old days of modeling, and I mean
in the '90s, we used to have to model in
| | 00:12 | so many polygons. In order to
approximate smooth surfaces, the models had to
| | 00:16 | be very dense and difficult to work with.
| | 00:18 | Now, we can simply use Smooth Preview to
convert a low polygon mesh into a smooth one.
| | 00:23 | Let's see how it works.
| | 00:25 | Smooth Preview is controlled with
the one, two, and three keys.
| | 00:29 | So, you want to have a model selected.
And, let's hit 3 to go into Smooth Mode.
| | 00:33 | Now, I'm just going to deselect the
model, so that we don't have that wire frame
| | 00:36 | in the way. All right, not looking too bad.
| | 00:39 | So, what this is doing is it
subdivides the model into smaller polygons.
| | 00:43 | For the most part, that creates the
illusion of a perfectly smooth surface.
| | 00:47 | Now, you can still work with the
polygons of the original model, and it will
| | 00:51 | automatically update the subdivided version.
| | 00:53 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:54 | I am going to zoom in a little bit, and
go to Vertex Mode, and here you can just
| | 00:58 | select vertices, and you can
move them around just like normal.
| | 01:02 | You could do anything really just like
normal. You could extrude or insert Edge
| | 01:05 | Loops, and it's going to update that
subdivision surface automatically.
| | 01:08 | I'm just going to hit Z to undo that.
| | 01:11 | Now, hit 1 to switch back.
| | 01:13 | So, you can just hit 1 and 3 as much as you
want to toggle between Smooth and Unsmooth Mode.
| | 01:18 | Okay, now let's try hitting 2.
| | 01:20 | In this mode, you can see both the
original and the subdivided versions.
| | 01:24 | I find this mode to be a little bit
visually cluttered, so I don't use it, but if it
| | 01:29 | works for you, go for it.
| | 01:30 | Smooth Preview is really great and
all, but there are a few things to
| | 01:34 | consider when using it.
| | 01:35 | Let's go into our front view. And, I
just want to zoom in on the headlight.
| | 01:39 | Let's go to Regular Mode, Unsmooth
Mode. And, I'm just going to make a quick
| | 01:42 | little adjustment here before we go on.
| | 01:44 | I just want to tweak some of these edges, so
that they line up with the reference better.
| | 01:48 | So, I just double-clicked on an edge
and it selected the entire Edge Loop.
| | 01:52 | Okay, for the most part, these edges
are lining up with the reference. Now,
| | 01:54 | I'm going to hit 3.
| | 01:56 | Notice that the shape changes slightly.
| | 01:59 | Usually it shrinks a little
bit when you turn on Smooth Mode.
| | 02:02 | The amount of shrinkage depends on
the angle between the connecting edges.
| | 02:06 | The greater the angle, the more the
shape shrinks and rounds out. The less of an
| | 02:09 | angle, the less change that
will occur when it smooths.
| | 02:13 | This is important, because we're trying
to use the reference to create precise
| | 02:17 | and accurate shapes.
| | 02:18 | If the shape changes significantly
when you smooth it, there are a few things
| | 02:22 | you can do to deal with that.
| | 02:23 | So, let's look at this one vertex.
| | 02:25 | Right up here, you can see that
there's kind of a significant angle
| | 02:29 | between these two edges.
| | 02:30 | So, when I smooth it, that vertex moves a lot.
| | 02:33 | So, something that you can do to avoid
that problem is to Insert More Edge Loops.
| | 02:37 | I'll put one here, and one here. And then,
I'll just go into Vertex Mode and tweak
| | 02:41 | these, until they line up a little bit better.
| | 02:43 | So now, with more vertices, we can match
that curve more closely without having
| | 02:47 | quite so much of an angle between the edges.
| | 02:50 | And, let's see what happens when we smooth it.
| | 02:52 | So, there is much less of a change now.
| | 02:54 | Now, the thing to watch out for here is
that when we inserted more Edge Loops, it
| | 02:58 | created more edges that go down the
length of the vehicle. And, this might create
| | 03:02 | unnecessary density.
| | 03:03 | And, it could make things
more difficult to work with.
| | 03:05 | And, you'd also to have go in and tweak
those vertices, so that they made a nice
| | 03:09 | smooth curve as well. Because, notice
what happens if we go back into Unsmooth
| | 03:12 | Mode, and zoom in a little bit more closely.
| | 03:15 | You can see that it created flat spots.
| | 03:17 | So, it's just going to require some more
tweaking. You can definitely work this way.
| | 03:21 | I'm just going to hit Z
a few times to undo that.
| | 03:23 | Another thing that you can try is to tweak
the existing vertices while in a Smooth Mode.
| | 03:27 | So, let's go back into our front view.
| | 03:29 | I'm going to turn on Smooth Mode. I
must go into Vertex Mode. And, I'm just going
| | 03:33 | to tweak vertices while in a Smooth
Mode, so we can get our surface lining up
| | 03:38 | with that reference.
| | 03:39 | Now, let's go out of Smooth Mode.
| | 03:41 | So, you can it when we're not in Smooth
Mode, the original vertices no longer
| | 03:44 | line up with the reference, and that's okay.
| | 03:47 | In the end, we're going
to leave the model smooth.
| | 03:49 | So, you should probably start lining
things up with the position that vertices
| | 03:52 | are going to be in Smooth Mode.
| | 03:55 | But, I usually only start doing this a
little bit further into the model like
| | 03:58 | with the point where we are right now.
| | 04:00 | I wouldn't start blocking out the
model in Smooth Mode. That's because when
| | 04:03 | you're first starting out, there's
still going to be a lot of changes. And,
| | 04:06 | working in Smooth Mode, you'll just
be working against yourself if you're
| | 04:09 | trying to line things up, and the model keeps
changing between Smooth Mode and Unsmooth Mode.
| | 04:13 | One last thing to note on a Smooth
Preview is that if an object is parented to
| | 04:18 | another object, it will
inherit the parent's Smooth Mode.
| | 04:21 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 04:22 | I'm going to go back out
to our Perspective View.
| | 04:24 | Let's go full screen here, and let's go
out of Vertex Mode, and let's turn off
| | 04:29 | Smooth Preview. And, I'm just going to
create a cube. Doesn't have to be pretty. Okay,
| | 04:34 | so let's make this cube a child of the vehicle.
| | 04:36 | So, I'm just going to hold down Shift, and
select the vehicle as well, and hit P on
| | 04:40 | the keyboard for Parent.
| | 04:42 | Now, I can move the cube
independently, but if I move the vehicle, the cube
| | 04:46 | goes along for the ride.
| | 04:48 | And, it also inherits the Smooth Mode.
| | 04:50 | So, if I hit 3 on the keyboard, you can
see that cube gets smoothed out as well.
| | 04:54 | Now, there are some instances where you
want to parent something, but you don't
| | 04:57 | want it to inherit the smoothing.
| | 04:59 | So to do that, let's select the cube. And,
let's make sure we've got our Attribute
| | 05:03 | Editor tab open. And, what I
want to do is open up Smooth Mesh.
| | 05:08 | Now, let's come down to Subdivision Levels.
| | 05:11 | Let's just bring this down to zero.
| | 05:13 | So now, this model will not smooth.
| | 05:15 | So, I'm hitting 3 on the keyboard, and
nothing happens, because the Preview
| | 05:19 | Subdivision Level is set to zero.
| | 05:20 | Now, you could set this to anything
you want. To one, if you only want just a
| | 05:24 | little bit of smoothing.
| | 05:25 | Two is a standard that works pretty well.
| | 05:27 | If we zoom in on the cube, you can see
that it's still not totally smooth, so you
| | 05:31 | might even want to crank
that up a little bit higher.
| | 05:34 | For the most part, I just
usually leave it at two.
| | 05:37 | So, after a model has been
developed to a certain point, I like to use
| | 05:40 | Smooth Preview a lot.
| | 05:42 | This is because with Smooth Preview on,
you get a more accurate sense of what
| | 05:45 | the surfaces will eventually
look like when the car is finished.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making sharp creases| 00:00 | So far, we have the important
shapes created, but we're still missing
| | 00:03 | sharp creases and edges.
| | 00:05 | Notice how in the photos, the car has
some nice, sharp edges in certain places,
| | 00:09 | but our model is still
kind of soft and undefined.
| | 00:13 | In this video, I'm going to show a
few techniques for making holding edges.
| | 00:16 | Those are special Edge
Loops that create creases.
| | 00:19 | Let's see how to do it.
| | 00:20 | All right, so let's work on the front
fender flare first. It's this area right here.
| | 00:25 | All right, let's look at our photos.
| | 00:27 | You can see here that there's a little bit
of a tighter crease running right along here.
| | 00:32 | So, there are several different tools
and techniques that can make what we want.
| | 00:36 | First, let's see how to
do it with the Bevel tool.
| | 00:38 | I'm going to go back to the
model. And, let's go into Edge Mode.
| | 00:42 | And, what I want to do is select all of the
edges that are associated with that crease.
| | 00:47 | Now, let's go to Edit Mesh, and
let's find the Bevel tool. Here it is.
| | 00:51 | And, make sure you click
the Options button as well.
| | 00:53 | Okay, so I want this Bevel to be pretty
tight. So, I want to bring this way down.
| | 00:58 | All right, let's click Apply.
| | 00:59 | And, I'm going to close this window.
| | 01:01 | So, basically that split that Edge Loop into two.
| | 01:04 | And, when you've got two Edge Loops close
together, the result is that they make a
| | 01:07 | crease when you smooth the mesh.
| | 01:09 | So, I'm going to go out of Edge Mode.
| | 01:11 | So, I'm just going to rotate around,
so we can see what this looks like.
| | 01:14 | All right, it's not too bad.
| | 01:15 | There's some pinching to clean up, and a
few other little weird things, but it's
| | 01:19 | definitely going in the right direction.
| | 01:21 | Let's try to adjust the spacing.
| | 01:23 | So, I'm going to click on the model. And,
in our Attribute Editor, we can actually
| | 01:26 | control that Bevel after we made it.
| | 01:29 | Let's find our Bevel Mode here by
clicking on this stuff. Here it is. Poly Bevel.
| | 01:34 | And, we can change the Offset, for example.
So, we can make that a little bit wider,
| | 01:38 | a little bit softer to crease,
or we could even make it tighter.
| | 01:40 | So, you just want to kind of
dial that until it looks good.
| | 01:43 | Now, let's address the pinching that happened.
| | 01:46 | So, if we deselect the model, we can see
it a little bit more clearly, just kind
| | 01:49 | of a pinch here, and a pinch here.
| | 01:51 | And, this happens when we try to bevel
edges where there are more than four edges.
| | 01:56 | So, originally, before we bevelled, there was
actually five edges coming into this vertex.
| | 02:00 | So, that creates something a little bit weird.
| | 02:02 | So, I'm actually going to go out of
Smooth Mode. And, you can see that it's making
| | 02:06 | kind of a triangle here, and we don't want that.
| | 02:08 | So, I'm going to go into Edge Mode, and
click that edge, and go to Collapse. This
| | 02:14 | button right here. And, we'll do it
one more time over here. Collapse.
| | 02:18 | And also, we didn't select all the edges all
the way around. We just kind of ended here.
| | 02:23 | So, there's also something kind
of weird happening here as well.
| | 02:25 | I want to pick this edge. And,
let's Collapse this one too.
| | 02:28 | All right, so I'm going to go out of Edge
Mode, and turn Smooth Preview back on, and
| | 02:32 | now we can deselect the model.
| | 02:34 | All right, it's looking much cleaner.
| | 02:36 | So, that's one technique for making
holding edges with the Bevel tool.
| | 02:40 | Now, let's try it with the Insert Edge Loop Tool.
| | 02:43 | So, let's actually undo all the work
that we did on this, and try it with a
| | 02:46 | different technique.
| | 02:47 | So, go up to Edit Mesh, and
get your Insert Edge Loop Tool.
| | 02:51 | Now, you want to be careful which side
of the Edge Loop that you place this.
| | 02:55 | Now, if you place it on the
top side, watch what happens.
| | 02:58 | That Edge Loop goes off in the wrong direction.
| | 03:01 | So, I'm going to undo that. And,
let's put it on the underside here.
| | 03:04 | And so, I'm just clicking and dragging,
and you can get a little preview of where
| | 03:07 | that edge is going to go.
| | 03:09 | So, let's make it pretty close.
| | 03:11 | Okay, you can see already
that it's already tightened up.
| | 03:13 | Okay, so I'm going to go out of Insert
Edge Loop Mode, and let's just go into
| | 03:16 | Object Mode and deselect everything.
| | 03:18 | So, you can see that it also looks
pretty nice. But one issue that happens is
| | 03:22 | that when we inserted that Edge Loop, it kind of
continued down beyond where we wanted it to go.
| | 03:27 | So, this isn't too hard to clean up.
| | 03:29 | I'm just going to go out of Smooth
Preview Mode, and just zoom in here, and let's
| | 03:33 | delete some of these edges that we don't want.
| | 03:36 | I'm going to hit Delete. And, actually
just one last thing we have to watch out
| | 03:38 | for is that when you delete those edges,
they sometimes leave vertices behind.
| | 03:42 | So, you can also go in and delete those as well.
| | 03:45 | And, something else I'm going to do is
just space out where this Edge Loop ends,
| | 03:49 | just so it doesn't end quite so abruptly.
| | 03:52 | Okay, let's see how the smoothes.
| | 03:54 | All right, looking great.
| | 03:55 | Now, we're going to try one last technique.
| | 03:57 | And this time, it's with
the Interactive Split Tool.
| | 04:00 | This tool lets us cut new edges exactly
where we want them. And, I'm going to do
| | 04:04 | this on the rear fender flare.
| | 04:05 | Let's scoot back here, and let's look in the
photo, and see what this should look like.
| | 04:09 | Okay.
| | 04:10 | So, you can see here is a little bit
of a crease that we need to get into our
| | 04:12 | model. And, actually there's one other
thing I want to look at in reference.
| | 04:16 | Yeah, I think this is a good photo.
| | 04:18 | You can kind of see that that crease
is strong right here in the middle, but
| | 04:21 | as it comes around here, and as it comes
around the backside, it's not quite so strong.
| | 04:25 | So, we can use the Interactive Split
Tool to create that variation and strength.
| | 04:29 | Okay, so let's select our model, and I'm going
to turn on the Interactive Split Tool.
| | 04:35 | And actually, let's turn off
Smoot Preview for right now.
| | 04:37 | And so, what I want to do is get some
new edges coming right around here. And, I
| | 04:42 | want them to be a little bit more
spaced apart, like right here, and then
| | 04:46 | actually get it closer.
| | 04:48 | Now, one problem I'm running into is that
I was trying to snap these vertices, and
| | 04:51 | like snap to the middle of the edges.
| | 04:52 | So, let's undo that, and let's
play with some of the settings.
| | 04:56 | So, let's turn on our tools.
| | 04:58 | Okay, so our Snap Settings.
The Magnet tolerance is too high.
| | 05:02 | So, let's bring this way down.
| | 05:04 | Okay, let's try it again.
| | 05:05 | There. Now, we can move this along
much smoother increments.
| | 05:10 | So, what I want to do is just get a
little bit closer to this edge as I go.
| | 05:14 | And now, I am going to space a little
bit farther apart, because I want that
| | 05:17 | crease to be less strong, the
farther away I get from the middle.
| | 05:20 | All right, so just right-click to
lock that in, and let's go out of the
| | 05:25 | Interactive Split Tool.
| | 05:26 | I'll just hit W on the keyboard to go on the
Move Mode. And, let's turn on Smooth Preview.
| | 05:30 | Okay, so you can see we've got a crease
right here. And, it jut kind of fades
| | 05:34 | off as it goes around the sides.
| | 05:35 | So, these are the three techniques that I
use most of the time for making holding edges.
| | 05:40 | Which one you should use
| | 05:42 | depends on the situation, and
also, just your preference.
| | 05:45 | Now, with holding edges in place, the
model has a lot more definition, and it
| | 05:48 | looks a lot more solid.
| | 05:50 | I use holding edges all the
time to define sharp corners.
| | 05:53 | You can even use the three
edges for an extra sharp crease.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Refining the Body ShapesCutting out the hood, door, and trunk| 00:00 | Up until this point, we've been making the
entire body of the car out of one solid mesh.
| | 00:05 | Even though the doors, hood, and trunk
are separate pieces in reality, it makes
| | 00:10 | sense to start out with them together.
| | 00:12 | This is because the curvature of the
body is the same across those seams.
| | 00:15 | Now that the body has been modeled, and
we know that there are no major changes
| | 00:19 | that need to be made to it, we
can break apart these pieces.
| | 00:22 | Let's see how it's done.
| | 00:24 | So, looking at our reference, notice
that the panels are basically rectangle
| | 00:28 | shapes with rounded corners.
| | 00:29 | When we model the body of the car,
we placed the edges in specific places
| | 00:33 | relative to these panels, so
that they'll be easier to cut out.
| | 00:37 | So, this trunk, for example. It's
basically a rectangle with rounded corners. And,
| | 00:42 | if we go into our model around the
back side, you can see that there is edges
| | 00:46 | that follow the shape of that rectangle.
| | 00:48 | Now, we don't have the rounded
corners yet, but we'll get to that.
| | 00:51 | Okay, so let's start with the hood.
| | 00:53 | I want to go into the top
view, and go into Face Mode.
| | 00:57 | I'm just going to select all of
these faces where the hood should be.
| | 01:00 | Now, let's break them off by going
to Mesh and Extract with Options.
| | 01:05 | Now, there's one setting I want to turn
off here. If we leave this checked, then
| | 01:09 | it's going to separate those
faces into a separate object.
| | 01:12 | If I turn it off, it's going to break
them off, but leave them part of the same
| | 01:15 | object, and that's what I want.
| | 01:17 | So, I'm going to hit Extract.
| | 01:19 | Okay, let's go into our Perspective view,
just to make sure what happened here.
| | 01:22 | So, when we went to into Extract
Mode, it actually gave us this little
| | 01:26 | controller where we could pull it
out, but we don't want to do that.
| | 01:28 | So, I'm just going to hit the Z to undo that.
| | 01:30 | Now, looks like a something else. I'm
going to hit 3 to go in the Smooth Preview.
| | 01:33 | Zoom in a little bit closer.
| | 01:36 | So, something interesting that happened
is that the edges of the body part of
| | 01:40 | the car got rounded out, but the
edges on the hood did not. And, that's
| | 01:44 | because Smooth Preview works on
vertices that have at least three edges
| | 01:48 | connecting to them.
| | 01:49 | So, on the body, we've got this vertex
right here, and there is one, two, three,
| | 01:55 | four edges coming out of it. But on the
hood side, this vertex right here only
| | 01:59 | has two, so it's not going to round out yet.
| | 02:02 | We don't really have to worry about it,
because once we add thickness to the
| | 02:05 | hood, it's going to give it
enough edges to round out.
| | 02:07 | So, I just wanted to point that out,
so it wouldn't be confusing to you.
| | 02:11 | Okay, so now let's make a
bevelled seam around the panels.
| | 02:14 | Let me go into Edge Mode here. And, I'm
just going to select all of these edges.
| | 02:19 | Actually, it will be easier if I go out
of Smooth Preview Mode. I'm going to go
| | 02:22 | into the top view too.
| | 02:24 | I'm going to select all of these edges,
just one at a time, that are part of this seam.
| | 02:29 | Now, I don't want to do the ones
along the middle here, because that would
| | 02:32 | actually create a seam right down the
middle of the hood, and that's not what we want.
| | 02:35 | All right, let's go back to Perspective view.
| | 02:39 | And, what we're going to do is,
extrude those edges downwards.
| | 02:41 | Let me just get a better angle on this,
so we can see it better. I'm going to
| | 02:44 | hit Extrude, and then I'm just going to grab
this blue handle, and pull them down a little bit.
| | 02:48 | Okay, so let's hit 3 to go into Smooth Mode now.
| | 02:51 | And I'm just going to go out of Edge
Mode, deselect everything, and let's just
| | 02:55 | take a look at what we have.
| | 02:57 | All right, not too bad.
| | 02:59 | Now, let's compare this to the photo reference.
| | 03:02 | Okay, so you can see that this is a
nice, pretty, tight bevel on that edge. And,
| | 03:06 | our model is a little bit soft, so we need
to add some holding edges to tighten that up.
| | 03:10 | So, let's go out of Smooth Preview Mode
here. And, what I want to do is just zoom
| | 03:14 | in on this new edge that I
created, with these new faces.
| | 03:19 | And, let's go into Edit Mesh and
get the Insert Edge Loop Tool.
| | 03:22 | So, I'm just going to make one on
this side, and then one on the other side.
| | 03:26 | All right, and back in the Smooth Mode,
you can see, because we added those extra
| | 03:30 | edges, that corner is a lot tighter now.
| | 03:34 | Let's compare it to the
photo. All right, much better.
| | 03:37 | Okay, go ahead and do the same thing for the
trunk. It's just like what we did for the hood.
| | 03:41 | Now, I'm going to skip ahead, and go to the door.
| | 03:44 | The door is going to be a little
different, because we're going to be able to see
| | 03:47 | the inside of the door, as well as the outside.
| | 03:49 | With the hood, we're only
going to see the outside of it.
[00:03:5.72]
So for that reason, we need to do something
a little bit more presentable with the door.
| | 03:56 | Okay, so let me zoom out, and
let's go into our side view.
| | 04:01 | I'm going to go into Face Mode, and
let's just select all of these faces where
| | 04:04 | the door should be. And, it looks like I might
need to select some of the top view as well.
| | 04:12 | And, let's look in the Perspective
view just to make sure I got all of them.
| | 04:15 | Okay, looks like I got them.
| | 04:17 | Okay, now let's go up to Mesh and
Extract with Options. And this time, I do want
| | 04:21 | to separate it into a separate object.
| | 04:23 | Okay, let's deselect everything,
and now select just the door.
| | 04:27 | And, it looks like I'm in Face Mode
still, so let's go into Object Mode.
| | 04:30 | Select the door, and let's
extrude the whole thing.
| | 04:34 | I'm just going to move my view,
so I can see this more clearly.
| | 04:37 | Now, when we grab on the blue handle,
you can see we're extruding the entire
| | 04:40 | shape. Actually, you could go out the
wrong way as well, just to see what that
| | 04:43 | looks like, but we want to go inwards, a
certain amount. About that far looks good.
| | 04:48 | Okay, let's zoom in a little bit and
I'm going to turn on Smooth Preview.
| | 04:53 | So, it's rounding out pretty soft. I
want to make it a little bit sharper.
| | 04:55 | So, let's go back in Object Mode and
let's get the Insert Edge Loop Tool, and
| | 05:00 | let's just add some
holding edges to keep it tighter.
| | 05:04 | Now, if we go into Object Mode again, and
turn on Smooth Preview, you can see we
| | 05:07 | get a much tighter edge on that.
| | 05:10 | Okay, so now we need to get the edges
on the body of the car to match up with
| | 05:14 | the door that we made.
| | 05:15 | So, what I'm going to do is go into Edge
Mode. I'm just going to double-click one
| | 05:19 | of these border edges. It actually
selects everything around the whole car. So,
| | 05:22 | I'm just going to hold down Ctrl, and
deselect everything that I don't need.
| | 05:26 | So, I want to have all the edges
selected from the center of the inside of
| | 05:29 | the car, all the way around the door, and then
around back to the just behind the driver seat.
| | 05:34 | Go ahead and extrude that; grab
the blue handle; pull it inwards.
| | 05:38 | All right, that's pretty good. And now,
I'm just going to exit the Extrusion Mode,
| | 05:43 | and let's go add a holding
edge, just like we did before.
| | 05:46 | Insert Edge Loop Tool, and
let's place it in right there.
| | 05:49 | Okay, so I hit W to go in the Move Mode,
and I'm just going to do that to get out
| | 05:53 | of the Insert Edge Loop Tool, and turn
on Smooth Preview for this. And, I just
| | 05:57 | want to look at it all over,
just to make sure it looks good.
| | 06:00 | Okay, so that's the basics of cutting
out the door and the hood. You'll notice
| | 06:03 | there is a little bit of a disconnect here.
| | 06:05 | We'll talk about cleaning
that up in the next video.
| | 06:08 | So let's zoom out and see the whole thing.
| | 06:10 | Okay, the car is really starting
to take some shape, now that we're
| | 06:13 | separating different panels.
| | 06:14 | Doing it this way, where we get the
overall shape right, and then break out the
| | 06:19 | panels, really helps us maintain a
smooth curvature across the separate pieces.
| | 06:23 | You might still have to do some
tweaking of the body shape after
| | 06:26 | separating different panels.
| | 06:27 | So if that happens, you'll just have
to be very careful that the overall
| | 06:30 | curvature remains the same
from one panel to the next.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting the separate panels| 00:00 | Once the hood and other panels are
broken off, there's still some work to be
| | 00:04 | done to make them look just right.
| | 00:06 | We need to tweak them, and size them,
so that the gaps and overlaps are good.
| | 00:10 | There's also a few odds
and ends to cover as well.
| | 00:12 | So, let's get down to it.
| | 00:14 | Now that the pieces are separate,
you can check to see if it's lining up
| | 00:17 | with the blueprint.
| | 00:18 | Let's check it in the top view.
| | 00:20 | I'm just going to zoom in here.
| | 00:22 | So, you can see that we've got the hood
and the blueprint right here, but after
| | 00:26 | we separated it, the edge kind
of shifted over a little bit.
| | 00:29 | So, it's a little bit off;
we need to adjust that.
| | 00:32 | So, what I want to do is go into Vertex Mode,
and pick these vertices, and just tweak them.
| | 00:37 | Now, one thing you might notice is that
when we're in Smooth Preview Mode, the
| | 00:40 | edges kind of spread apart a little bit.
| | 00:42 | So, if I go into Regular Mode, all the
vertices snapped back to where they were originally.
| | 00:48 | So, that will make it a
little bit easier to select.
| | 00:50 | So, for example, we need to select
these vertices here. Let me deselect that
| | 00:54 | one, and then go back into Smooth
Preview Mode. You can see that they spread
| | 00:58 | out. And, there's actually a lot more visible
right here, just because they are spreading out.
| | 01:02 | So, now that we've got them selected,
we can just tweak them until this curve
| | 01:05 | lines up better with the blueprint.
| | 01:07 | It was looking better here. It looks
like I pushed it a little too far with
| | 01:11 | these other ones. And, I'll
just tweak these a little bit.
| | 01:14 | You can also just kind of drag a
selection over it, and that's okay for now,
| | 01:18 | but sometimes you can accidentally select
vertices that are on, say, the back side of a vehicle.
| | 01:22 | So, you want to be
careful when you're doing that.
| | 01:25 | We'll just tweak this into place. Looks
like I could tweak these a little bit.
| | 01:28 | Okay, pretty close.
| | 01:30 | Let's go into our Perspective view.
| | 01:32 | I'm just going to get out of Vertex
Mode, and maximize our Perspective view, so
| | 01:36 | we can see something.
| | 01:37 | So, notice how there's not a lot of
gap between the hood and the body.
| | 01:42 | And, when we look at our photo reference,
you can see that there is a little bit
| | 01:46 | more of a gap there. So let's fix that.
| | 01:48 | Now, right now, the body and the
hood are still the same object.
| | 01:51 | They're just kind of split off into
separate pieces of the same object.
| | 01:55 | So, I'm going to go into Mesh and
Separate to truly make them separate objects.
| | 02:00 | Now, when you separate or combine meshes,
it turns off their Smooth Preview, so
| | 02:04 | just hit 3 to turn that back on.
| | 02:06 | All right, let's select the
hood, and we want to shrink it.
| | 02:09 | So, I'm going to zoom out a
little bit, and go into Scale Mode.
| | 02:12 | So, if we shrink it right now, you'll
notice it shrinks away from where it should be.
| | 02:16 | So, what we need to do is move the pivot point
of the scale, so it's up here with the hood.
| | 02:22 | So, what I'm going to do is hold down D.
When you hold down D, you can move the pivot.
| | 02:26 | So, let's move the pivot, so it's
right here in the middle of the hood.
| | 02:30 | I'm just going to rotate around to
see this from another view, just to make
| | 02:32 | sure it's all good. Okay, good.
| | 02:34 | So now, I just want to shrink the hood a
little bit, so that I get a little bit of
| | 02:38 | a gap between the body and the hood.
| | 02:40 | And, let's compare that to the photo.
| | 02:43 | So, I think that's pretty close. Great!
| | 02:46 | So, one thing you might be noticing
is that you can see a little bit of
| | 02:48 | light between the two.
| | 02:50 | And of course, in the photo, you're not
going to be able to see through to the ground.
| | 02:54 | So, we need to build a little
bit of a loop around the body.
| | 02:57 | We'll select the body, and I want to go
into Edge Mode, and let's go around to
| | 03:01 | where we extrude it below.
| | 03:03 | Now, what I want to do is select
all these edges around the hood.
| | 03:06 | So, first I'm going to start up by just
selecting this one here, and there's a
| | 03:10 | quick way to select all the ones that I want.
| | 03:13 | I want to come around to the end of the
selection that I want, hold down Shift
| | 03:16 | and double-click the selection that connects the two.
| | 03:19 | Now, what I can do is extrude them.
| | 03:22 | So, this is going to create another row
of polygons that just kind of tucks in
| | 03:26 | underneath the hood.
| | 03:27 | Let me zoom out just to make sure that
looks good everywhere. All right, great.
| | 03:30 | So, I'm going to exit Edge Mode and
just to make sure this looks good. Great!
| | 03:35 | So, that loop that we made, it goes
underneath the hood, and it keeps us from being
| | 03:38 | able to see through the car.
| | 03:40 | Okay, one last thing to look at.
| | 03:41 | Here on the door, you can see that the
door and the body aren't quite lining up
| | 03:46 | the way they should.
| | 03:47 | Let me look at a photo, so we
can see what that should look like.
| | 03:50 | Okay, so it's this point right here, and
you can see in our model that it's kind
| | 03:54 | of rounding out when it should be a
little bit more of a corner there.
| | 03:57 | So, what we can do with
this is, I want to select it.
| | 04:01 | I want to turn off Smooth Preview, and
let's just get the Interactive Split Tool.
| | 04:05 | And, what I am going to do with this is
create another little extra edge right
| | 04:08 | here. I am just going to click along
here, right-click to lock it in, and let's
| | 04:13 | turn on Smooth Preview.
| | 04:14 | And actually, I'm still in the Spit Tool,
so I'm going to hit W to go out of that.
| | 04:18 | Let me just click one more time to deselect
that, so we don't have those edges in the way.
| | 04:22 | All right, looking pretty good.
| | 04:24 | So, if I hit Z a few times to undo that,
you can kind of see what that extra edge
| | 04:27 | is doing. It's just tightening up that corner.
| | 04:30 | We'll go ahead and do the same thing
on this corner right here, and then also
| | 04:34 | the same thing for the
trunk that we did for the hood.
| | 04:36 | And, we'll pick it up at
that point in the next video.
| | 04:39 | So, it's this type of precision
that's required when modeling a car.
| | 04:43 | A lot of pieces have to fit together tightly.
| | 04:45 | By making each panel this way, we
can maintain a high degree of accuracy.
| | 04:50 | It may seem like a lot of work,
but if there's anything off about it,
| | 04:53 | people will notice.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Forming the hood air intake| 00:00 | The hood air intake is a good example
of an object that conforms closely to
| | 00:05 | the surface of another.
| | 00:06 | Objects like this can be complicated,
because you have to make sure that the two
| | 00:09 | pieces stay stuck together.
| | 00:11 | Now, this is a relatively easy case,
since the hood is a fairly simple object
| | 00:15 | with a smooth, graceful curve.
| | 00:17 | So, let's see how it's done.
| | 00:19 | Okay, so let's start by
examining the blueprints and the photos.
| | 00:22 | I'm going to zoom in on the hood intake
here in the front view, and the top view,
| | 00:28 | and the side view. All right, and let's
look at it in our photos as well.
| | 00:32 | Okay, so I'm going to flip back
and forth, and see if we can find any
| | 00:35 | differences between the two. Not too much.
| | 00:37 | It seems like there might be a little
bit more of a corner on this one, and I
| | 00:41 | think this one slopes back a little bit
more gracefully; just something to keep
| | 00:44 | in mind while we're working.
| | 00:47 | Okay, so let's start
building this by making a new plane.
| | 00:49 | I'm going to go into the top
view; click on that button.
| | 00:52 | And I'm just going to click and drag just
to size that out. And, let's go into Vertex
| | 00:56 | Mode, and I just want to edit these, so
that it's matching up with the reference.
| | 01:00 | Now, I want to get these vertices
snapped exactly to the center, so I'm going to
| | 01:04 | hold down X, and then click
and drag on the red axis.
| | 01:07 | So, that's going to snap it exactly to
the gridlines. Same thing with this one.
| | 01:11 | Just holding down X, and clicking and dragging.
| | 01:14 | Now, let's look at the photo a little bit.
| | 01:16 | The hood intake is made
up of basically two parts:
| | 01:18 | the raised part right here, and then there's
kind of a flat spot that hooks onto the hood.
| | 01:24 | So, I want to make this raised part
first, and then we'll do this flat spot later.
| | 01:28 | So actually, let's scoot some of these
vertices, so that they're more aligned
| | 01:31 | with the shape of the raised up part.
| | 01:34 | It's just my preference.
| | 01:35 | You could actually make it the other way around.
| | 01:37 | Okay, so let's look at
this in the Perspective view.
| | 01:39 | Now, when I created a new plane, it made it on
the grid, so we actually need to raise this up.
| | 01:43 | I'm going to go in the Move Mode and lift it up.
| | 01:46 | And now, I'm just going to make a few
tweaks, so that the angle matches the hood.
| | 01:49 | I'm just going to go under Vertex Mode,
and move some of these vertices down,
| | 01:53 | just so they sit right on the hood.
| | 01:55 | Okay, it doesn't have to be totally perfect.
| | 01:58 | So now, let's get that edge around it.
| | 01:59 | So, what I'm going to do is go into
Edge Mode, and I'm just going to pick these
| | 02:03 | two edges, and extrude them.
| | 02:05 | I'm just going to go in the Move Mode,
and just kind of move these away from
| | 02:09 | the original piece a little bit, and
now we can just tweak the shape of this.
| | 02:12 | So, we've got some extra vertices up here.
Let's line this up in the top view. And,
| | 02:17 | we're going to hold down X to snap.
| | 02:19 | I just want to get this spaced
around a little bit better. Okay, good.
| | 02:23 | Now, let's take a look at
this in Perspective View.
| | 02:25 | Now that we've got a place to put in
the raised-up portion, and then we've also
| | 02:29 | got these polygons for the flat portion,
what I'm going to do is go into Face
| | 02:32 | Mode, select this face, and
let's just extrude this up.
| | 02:35 | So, you might notice what happens is
it creates some faces that we don't want
| | 02:39 | right here, and here so I'm
just going to delete those.
| | 02:42 | And let's turn on Smooth
Preview, and see what we get.
| | 02:44 | Okay, so it's staring to look close.
Just a little bit more tweaking to be done.
| | 02:48 | One thing is that I don't want it to
round out quite so much right there.
| | 02:52 | You can see in our top view, it's
pretty straight and then it starts
| | 02:55 | curving right about here.
| | 02:57 | So, what I want to do is put in a
holding edge that defines the point where this
| | 03:01 | should start curving.
| | 03:04 | So, let's go to Edit Mesh, insert Edge
Loop Tool, and let's put in a holding
| | 03:08 | edge right about here.
| | 03:09 | Now when it smoothes, you can see it stays
pretty straight, and then it starts to round out.
| | 03:14 | All right, so we'll lock that
in. And, let's go to Object Mode.
| | 03:17 | And, let's see. One other thing I want to
look at is how sharp this angle is.
| | 03:21 | So, in our photo, we can see that
that's a pretty sharp crease right there.
| | 03:25 | So, I'm going to insert an Edge
Loop right along this edge right here.
| | 03:30 | So now, when I smooth it, I get a sharper crease.
| | 03:33 | All right, let's zoom out. And, one thing
I want to do just like always is put the
| | 03:38 | blinn material on it.
| | 03:39 | So, I'm just holding down the right mouse
button, Assign Existing Material, and Blinn.
| | 03:43 | It looks like it just needs
a little bit more tweaking.
| | 03:45 | It's kind of poking through the hood
right there, so I'm just going to insert
| | 03:48 | another Edge Loop, and
then raise that Edge Loop up.
| | 03:51 | Go into Move Mode and lift it, so
it's not poking through the hood.
| | 03:55 | Okay, so there's probably a lot more
tweaking that could be done to it, but
| | 03:58 | now that we've got the basic shape,
I just want to demonstrate how we can
| | 04:01 | give it some thickness.
| | 04:03 | So, you see here in our photo, there's
definitely like half a centimeter or so
| | 04:05 | of thickness there.
| | 04:07 | So, I'm just going to select the whole
thing, and let's go to Extrude. And, what I
| | 04:12 | want to do is . . . Actually, let's go out of
Smooth Mode just so I can see how much
| | 04:15 | thickness it's making.
| | 04:16 | Okay, that's good and so you can see
when I turn on Smooth Mode, it's actually
| | 04:20 | smoothing out places that it shouldn't,
and that's because I don't really want
| | 04:23 | to have faces here on the inside,
because when I mirror this over later, I don't
| | 04:27 | want to have a face in the middle of that.
| | 04:29 | So, I'll just select these and delete them.
| | 04:32 | One little straggler over there, okay
great, so let's go back into Smooth and
| | 04:36 | take a look at that.
| | 04:39 | Okay, so that's basically it.
| | 04:40 | There are probably a few more tweaks
that I could make, but let's move ahead now.
| | 04:42 | Now, there's nothing too fancy about
the hood intake, but it's this type of
| | 04:45 | modeling that you'll be doing
a lot of when making vehicles.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Mirroring a model| 00:00 | So far, we've made the car in just one half.
| | 00:03 | Of course, it's because this
car, like most, is symmetrical.
| | 00:06 | I can save time by not worrying
about the other half for a while.
| | 00:10 | Eventually, however, I'm going to
want to see how the car looks as a whole.
| | 00:14 | For this, we can use various tools in Maya
to mirror or flip this half to the other side.
| | 00:19 | Let's see how to do it.
| | 00:21 | Before you can mirror an object,
there's a few things that you want to make
| | 00:25 | sure are in place first.
| | 00:26 | You'll need to make sure that the pivot
point of the object is at the center of the grid.
| | 00:30 | So, let's select the car here, and I'm
going to hit Spacebar, so we can see it
| | 00:34 | better, and I want to hit W to go on a Move Mode.
| | 00:37 | And, let's just rotate around a little
bit, and let's actually turn the grid on,
| | 00:41 | so we can see that. Okay, good.
| | 00:44 | So, the pivot point is
right in the middle of the grid.
| | 00:46 | Make sure it's the same
for all the other objects.
| | 00:48 | Okay, so our hood intake, it actually
got moved off at the center line a little
| | 00:52 | bit. So, we can just fix that really
quickly by holding down D to go into Edit
| | 00:57 | Pivot Mode, and then also hold
down X, so we can snap to the grid.
| | 01:01 | Now, if I slide this, it
should snap right to the middle.
| | 01:05 | Now, we need to make sure that all of
the edges of the object that are at the
| | 01:08 | center line are actually
snapped to the center line.
| | 01:11 | A lot of times, you think that they are,
but vertices and edges can accidently
| | 01:15 | get nudged around as you work,
and these edges might not be exact.
| | 01:18 | So, let's look at the
hood air intake for example.
| | 01:21 | I'm going to zoom in close on this,
and I just want to select all the edges
| | 01:25 | around the inner side, and I'm going to
go into Scale Mode, and I just want to
| | 01:29 | grab on the red axis.
| | 01:31 | And, you notice how when I scale, they
are kind of scrunching together a little
| | 01:34 | bit. That's because they weren't
actually totally flush with the center line.
| | 01:37 | I'll just bring it to the center, and then
actually one more time just to make sure.
| | 01:42 | Now, let's go to the top view.
| | 01:43 | All right, so I want to zoom in close
on the top view, and they might not be
| | 01:48 | exactly on that center line, so what I
want to do is just hold down X, and grab on
| | 01:54 | this axis, just to make sure
it's snapped exactly. That's it!
| | 01:57 | That's all the prep work that needs to be done.
| | 01:59 | Time to move on to the actual mirroring.
| | 02:01 | Let's go back to Perspective View, and
I'm going to get it out of Edge Mode, and
| | 02:04 | just select the whole object.
| | 02:07 | I need to make another copy,
so hit Ctrl+D to duplicate.
| | 02:09 | Now, we have two copies in the same place.
| | 02:12 | To flip one of the copies over, go
into Scale Mode, and drag that axis over.
| | 02:17 | Now, it's not going to be exact quite yet.
| | 02:20 | I need to go into the Channel Box, and
here we can see it's Translate, Rotate
| | 02:25 | and Scale. And, you can see that this
scale is kind of hard to get exactly on one.
| | 02:29 | And, by sheer coincidence, I actually did have
it on one before, but usually it's not going to.
| | 02:34 | So, what you want to do is
come in here, and just type in -1.
| | 02:37 | Okay, so now we need to select both halves.
| | 02:40 | So, I'm going to Shift+Click the other
one, and let's make them the same objects.
| | 02:43 | So, go to Mesh Combine.
| | 02:45 | Now, they're part of the same piece,
but they're not totally connected yet.
| | 02:49 | So, let's zoom in here.
| | 02:50 | I just want to demonstrate.
| | 02:51 | I'm going to go in the
Vertex Mode, and click this vertex.
| | 02:53 | Now, let's see what happens when we move it.
| | 02:56 | So, it's not actually merged with the
other vertex, so hit Z to undo that.
| | 03:00 | What we want to do is
merge all these vertices.
| | 03:03 | So, I'm just going to select all of them
or if you wanted to be fancy, you could
| | 03:06 | just come in here, and select just the
ones in the middle, and let's go up to Edit
| | 03:11 | Mesh>Merge with Options.
| | 03:13 | Now, we want to change the
Threshold. I like to set this to 0.001.
| | 03:18 | We only want vertices to merge if
they're right on top of each other. And, what
| | 03:22 | can happen sometimes -- let me zoom in
here -- is that sometimes vertices that
| | 03:26 | you don't want to merge -- like this one and
this one -- will be within the tolerance of 0.01.
| | 03:32 | So, by setting it to 0.001, I can
make sure that we're not merging any
| | 03:36 | unnecessary vertices.
| | 03:37 | All right, so go ahead and click Merge.
| | 03:39 | Now, let me just show you what it
looks like if you accidentally have that
| | 03:42 | tolerance set too high.
| | 03:43 | I'm going to go into the Channel Box
and we've got the options here for that
| | 03:46 | MergeVert that we just made.
| | 03:48 | Let's see what happens if we set it
to a higher number. Okay, there we go.
| | 03:52 | So, if that tolerance is too high,
you'll get really weird things happening.
| | 03:56 | So, let's just make sure that
we've got enough tolerance in there.
| | 03:59 | Okay, so let's make sure this worked correctly.
| | 04:01 | I'm just going to click on one
of these vertices and move it.
| | 04:05 | And yep, the whole surface
is moving as a whole now.
| | 04:07 | I'm going to hit Z to undo that.
| | 04:09 | Now, feel free to do the same
thing for the rest of the car.
| | 04:12 | However, chances are that you'll
have to delete the new half anyway.
| | 04:16 | I always find things to tweak and
things to change after mirroring.
| | 04:20 | Although you can do something
symmetrically in Maya, if you use any tools that
| | 04:24 | change the number of edges or
vertices, those things won't get mirrored
| | 04:28 | automatically, which means that if
you realize that you need to change
| | 04:31 | something, you'll have to delete the
polygons on the new half, and then make the
| | 04:35 | change, and then re-mirror everything.
| | 04:37 | So for that reason, I usually don't
mirror unless I know that I'm totally done
| | 04:41 | with the part or that I really need
to see what it will look like mirrored.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making vent holes| 00:00 | One very common feature
in vehicles is vent holes.
| | 00:04 | In order to simplify the modeling of the car
body, we've kind of avoided them up until now.
| | 00:09 | In fact, we've created the
arrangement of polygons in such a way that it
| | 00:12 | worked well for making a body, but
there is often not any clear polygon
| | 00:16 | definition for the holes.
| | 00:18 | We'll have to do a little bit of wrangling
to put the vents in. So, let's see how.
| | 00:22 | Let's do the side vent first.
| | 00:24 | I think it'll be easier.
| | 00:25 | So, I'm just going to zoom into the side view
here, and we need to get a hole in this shape.
| | 00:30 | As you can see, there aren't currently any
edges defining the outline of the vent hole.
| | 00:35 | Now, it probably would have been a good
idea to make my Edge Loops fit the shape
| | 00:39 | of the vent as I was making them, but
sometimes you can't think ahead in every
| | 00:42 | instance, so let's work with what we've got.
| | 00:45 | Now, we could go in with the Insert
Edge Loop Tool, and create an edge up here,
| | 00:49 | and on the bottom, and on the right, on the left,
but let's try it a different way at this time.
| | 00:54 | I'm going to try a technique that
creates more polygons right in this area
| | 00:58 | without creating any extra edges
that go off in other directions.
| | 01:01 | Now, I want to go into Face Mode, and just
pick these faces that are right here in
| | 01:05 | the general area of the vent.
| | 01:07 | Now, I'll just extrude them, and I want
to switch into Scale Mode, so I can scale
| | 01:12 | these in, and I also want to
turn off the Smooth Preview.
| | 01:16 | Let's see what this looks
like in the Perspective View.
| | 01:18 | Okay, getting a little closer, we
can go ahead and delete these faces.
| | 01:22 | Now, what I want to do is just tweak
these vertices, so that they line up with
| | 01:25 | the blueprint better.
| | 01:27 | I'm just going to go into Vertex Mode,
and just start tweaking these around.
| | 01:31 | Okay, now let's see what this looks
like with Smooth Preview turned on.
| | 01:34 | So, it looks like it rounds
out a little bit too much.
| | 01:37 | Let's see it in the Perspective View.
| | 01:38 | And now, let's also compare
this with the photo reference.
| | 01:41 | So, we can see in the photo, it's fairly
straight, and then it only starts curving
| | 01:45 | right about this point, then it curves
up here, and then straight again.
| | 01:49 | And on our model, it never
really ever gets totally straight;
| | 01:52 | it's always kind of curvy.
| | 01:54 | So, what we're going to do is kind
of relate it to the holding edges.
| | 01:58 | Remember, when we turn on Smooth Preview,
and we move edges closer together, they
| | 02:01 | create a pinch or a crease.
| | 02:03 | So, we can kind of do a similar
thing with the vertices here.
| | 02:06 | I'm want to go into our side view, and we
can start doing things to kind of bring
| | 02:11 | vertices closer together.
| | 02:13 | So, I want to position a lot of our
vertices closer to the corners, and this is
| | 02:17 | definitely going to take some back
and forth tweaking, but as we get these
| | 02:21 | vertices closer to each other in the
corners, we're going to get a tighter
| | 02:24 | crease here where that
curve won't be quite so round.
| | 02:27 | Okay, let's see what it
looks like in Perspective View.
| | 02:30 | And something else I want to do is get
out of Vertex Mode, and just to look at
| | 02:34 | this from a couple of different angles, just to
make sure there's not anything weird happening.
| | 02:37 | Actually, I'm going to select this
polygon, and hit F to zoom in on it, just so my
| | 02:41 | rotations happen closer to
the point of interest here.
| | 02:43 | All right, it's pretty close. You can
see there's a little of a weird dent or a
| | 02:47 | pinch there, so let's see
how we can clean that up.
| | 02:50 | So, it looks like one of these vertices
is kind of pushed in farther, so I'm just
| | 02:52 | going to pull it out.
| | 02:54 | Let's see it from the other side. And,
I want to pull this one forward a bit.
| | 02:58 | Okay, it's pretty close.
| | 02:59 | There is probably some more
tweaking that I could do, but I think we can
| | 03:02 | continue on from this point.
| | 03:04 | We need to extrude some thickness in here.
| | 03:05 | Now, I want to take a look at another
reference photo just to get a sense of
| | 03:09 | how thick I need to make it.
| | 03:10 | All right, so back in Maya.
| | 03:12 | I'm just going to select
all these edges around here.
| | 03:14 | I just double-click, and I select
all of that loop, and let's go and click
| | 03:18 | on the Extrude, and I'm just
going to push it down a little bit.
| | 03:21 | Let's see. Let me turn off the Smooth
Preview just to get a better sense of that.
| | 03:24 | Okay, and I want to extrude one more time.
| | 03:27 | You can either click up here, or you can hit
G on the keyboard to repeat the last action.
| | 03:31 | Okay, one last thing I want to do is get
that corner to be a little bit more sharp.
| | 03:36 | So, if I turned on the Smooth Preview,
you can see it's really rounding out, and
| | 03:39 | in our photo, you can see that there's a
little bit more of a sharp crease bevel on there.
| | 03:43 | So, let's turn off Smooth Preview, get the
Insert Edge Loop Tool, and I'll throw in
| | 03:50 | a couple of edge loops here.
| | 03:52 | There, we go. Much tighter.
| | 03:54 | Now, to work on the front vents. Let me
just come around here to look at the front end.
| | 03:57 | Now, let's see what it
looks like when it's smooth.
| | 03:58 | Now, let's look at a
photo reference to the front.
| | 04:02 | Okay, so we've got this vent hole right here,
and let's see where that is on our blueprint.
| | 04:07 | Okay, so here's another case where
there's really no edge loops following where
| | 04:12 | we should put the shape of the vent.
| | 04:13 | Let's tackle this one in a different
way . . . with a combination of adding new edges
| | 04:18 | and good old-fashioned tweaking.
| | 04:20 | First, I want to insert an edge loop in
here, so Insert Edge Loop Tool. And, let's
| | 04:24 | create enough polygons to sort of
define the right side of this vent.
| | 04:28 | So, I put a loop in, and I'm just
going to go into Vertex Mode, and just
| | 04:34 | start tweaking this.
| | 04:34 | Let's turn off Smooth Preview as well.
| | 04:36 | So, I'm just going to make a box over the
general shape of this. And, while I am at
| | 04:40 | it, I might as well tweak the shape
of the vertices around this head light.
| | 04:43 | I just want to space them out a little
bit more. Since I added that extra edge
| | 04:45 | loop thing, we're getting
kind of crowded in there.
| | 04:49 | Okay, so back to the vent.
| | 04:51 | Let me go into Perspective View, and
let's grab this polygon that's kind of in a
| | 04:57 | square shape now, or rectangle, and we'll
just extrude it inwards, and hit Delete.
| | 05:00 | Okay, let's see how this looks when it smooths,
but let's compare that with the front view.
| | 05:04 | So, it's not too bad.
| | 05:06 | It's a little bit oval-shaped.
| | 05:08 | I think it needs to be straighter on the
sides, and then just curved at the top and bottom.
| | 05:13 | So one way to fix that is to
throw in some more edge loops.
| | 05:16 | So, let's come in at the Perspective
View, and we'll go to Edit Mesh, Insert Edge
| | 05:21 | Loop Tool, and I'll put one in here, and one in here.
| | 05:24 | And, you can see already the side is
going to straightening out more.
| | 05:27 | Okay, it's getting closer.
| | 05:29 | Let's look at the photo really quick.
| | 05:31 | Okay, so it looks like I want a little
bit of a sharper crease on that, so I'm
| | 05:34 | going to do the same thing I
did before on the side vent.
| | 05:37 | I'm just going to hit G to go right
back into my Insert Edge Loop Tool. Now, I'm
| | 05:41 | going to hit 1 to turn off the Smooth
Preview just for a moment. Just get a
| | 05:44 | couple of more edge loops in here.
| | 05:47 | And then, finally, I just want to tweak
things a little bit. It just kind of
| | 05:50 | scrunches up a little bit there.
| | 05:54 | So, I want to reposition some of these
vertices, just to take the pressure off of
| | 05:56 | the shapes right here.
| | 05:57 | From here, it's just going to be a bunch
of tweaking to clean up the surrounding
| | 06:00 | area, and to get the vent shape neat and smooth.
| | 06:03 | I'll let you handle that on your own.
| | 06:05 | Modeling vent holes is an
important part of most vehicle models.
| | 06:08 | They're a nice detail, because they
help add solidity and believability to
| | 06:12 | the look of the car.
| | 06:14 | It's always nice if you can plan your
polygon edges, so that they fit the holes
| | 06:18 | before you cut them in, but if not, you
can follow the tips shown in this video.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
6. Modeling the WheelsMaking one section of tire tread| 00:00 | So, now that most of the body is done,
we're shifting gears to the wheels now.
| | 00:04 | Now, the wheels are going to give
us a lot of new modeling challenges.
| | 00:07 | They're very complex in some ways, but
they're also made up of a lot of repeating shapes.
| | 00:12 | So, it is with tire tread.
| | 00:13 | Instead of trying to model all that
tread at once, let's break it down into a
| | 00:17 | segment, and then figure out
how to create the rest of it.
| | 00:20 | We're going to start with a fresh Maya scene to
make this wheel, and this is for a few reasons.
| | 00:25 | It will be easier to work on it
without the car in the way. And also, we're
| | 00:29 | going to use scene referencing later
to bring multiple copies of the wheel
| | 00:32 | into the scene with the car.
| | 00:34 | So, here's a reference image
of what I'm going for right now.
| | 00:37 | What I want to make first
is a single strip of tread.
| | 00:40 | So, what I'm going to go for is modeling
something that's maybe one inch tall, and
| | 00:45 | roughly nine inches wide, and then it
will just repeat all the way around.
| | 00:49 | Of course, every tire tread pattern is
different, so this exact technique may
| | 00:53 | have to be modified on a case-by-case basis.
| | 00:56 | So, first thing, let's make a plane
that will match that strip of tread.
| | 00:59 | So, I'm going to just click on New Plane,
and what I want to do is hold down X, so
| | 01:04 | that it snaps exactly.
| | 01:05 | So, I want it to be one unit tall, and
nine wide, so two, three, four, five,
| | 01:11 | six, eight, nine, there.
| | 01:14 | Now, I want this polygon object to be
split into nine segments, so I'm going to
| | 01:18 | go into its Channel Box, or its
Attribute Editor, and change the poly plane one
| | 01:22 | settings to have nine width subdivisions.
| | 01:27 | So basically, there's a
subdivision per chunk of tire tread.
| | 01:30 | So one here, one here, one here, and so forth.
| | 01:33 | Now, if we look at the photo reference,
you can see that there's a little gap
| | 01:37 | between each one of these chunks, so let's
give ourselves some geometry for that gap.
| | 01:41 | What I'm going to do is select Edges,
and with these selected, what I'm going
| | 01:46 | to do is go to Edit Mesh, and Bevel. And,
let's try increasing that Bevel a little bit.
| | 01:51 | I'm going to do 0.1. So, that seems about
the right proportions, and I also want to
| | 01:56 | have a little bit more space on the end.
| | 01:57 | So, I'm just going to select the edge
on the end, and go to Extrude, and just
| | 02:02 | extrude that out a little bit.
Same thing on the other side.
| | 02:04 | I can just hit G to repeat the last action.
| | 02:07 | All right, so I'm going to exit out of that
mode. And, let's look at the reference again.
| | 02:10 | So, these chunks are going in a zigzag
pattern. So, I'm going to need some more
| | 02:14 | edges running horizontally
in order to get that shape.
| | 02:18 | So, let's go to Edit Mesh, and Insert
Edge Loop Tool, and I want to put two edges
| | 02:23 | roughly in the middle, and
then one close to the top.
| | 02:25 | Now, I'm going to go into Move Mode,
and switch to vertices, and now let's
| | 02:30 | just select these vertices across in the
middle, and just scoot them over a little bit.
| | 02:35 | That' how we're going to get a zigzag.
| | 02:37 | Okay, let's look at that reference again.
| | 02:39 | So, I'm going to zoom in. And, notice
how at the corner of each one of these
| | 02:42 | zigzags, there's a little extra notch.
| | 02:44 | But let's add some geometry to get that notch.
| | 02:47 | And, the way I'm going to do this is I'm
going to go into Object Mode, make sure
| | 02:51 | I've got this selected now in Object
Mode, and let's go to Edit Mesh, and pick
| | 02:55 | the Cut Faces Tool.
| | 02:57 | So, the way this tool works is you just
click and drag, and it makes a line, and
| | 03:02 | that line is going to cut a
new edge wherever you let it go.
| | 03:06 | So, let's just undo that, and I want to
look at this from a perfect Top View just
| | 03:10 | so that line is absolutely straight.
| | 03:13 | Okay, so now I'm going to click and
drag with the Cut Faces Tool. And, I want
| | 03:18 | it to be perfectly straight, so I
want to hold down Shift, and we'll just do
| | 03:21 | this a couple more times.
| | 03:22 | Actually, one time for each chunk.
| | 03:25 | Okay, so I want to hit W to go in to Move
Mode, just so we exit the Cut Faces Tool.
| | 03:29 | Now, it's time to extrude
the thickness of those chunks.
| | 03:32 | So, I'm going to go into Face
Mode, and let's select some faces.
| | 03:37 | Actually, let me hit Q to go into Select
Mode, so that the controller isn't in the way.
| | 03:41 | So, I'm just selecting the faces that
are going to be extruded to have thickness.
| | 03:46 | So, you notice I'm skipping over this
one, because, as you can see, that's where
| | 03:50 | that little gap is. And actually, I
should have deselected that one as well.
| | 03:53 | Okay, so I think that looks right.
| | 03:55 | I will just go into Move Mode, and let's
look at this from the side view, and hit
| | 04:00 | Extrude. And, I'll just pull these up.
| | 04:02 | Okay, looking good.
| | 04:03 | Let's get out of Face Mode.
| | 04:05 | Now, let's visualize what
this is eventually going to do.
| | 04:08 | In the next video, we're going to
duplicate the strip and have them
| | 04:11 | all connected together.
| | 04:12 | So, I need to make sure that the top
edge can merge with the bottom edge.
| | 04:16 | So, for example, this area is going to be
merging with the duplicate in this area.
| | 04:22 | And so, we can't have
faces overlapping each other.
| | 04:25 | So, we want to go through and delete all
of the faces like this. Okay, looks good.
| | 04:30 | I want to hit Delete.
| | 04:31 | Finally, let's simplify
the geometry a little bit.
| | 04:34 | Remember, this might not seem like a
lot of polygons, but when it's duplicated
| | 04:38 | all the way around for a tire, and
then duplicated three more times for each
| | 04:42 | tire, that's going to be a lot of polygons.
| | 04:44 | In order to keep it from bogging down
your computer, you'll want to remove any
| | 04:48 | unnecessary polygons at this point.
| | 04:50 | So, we can come in here, and select some
of these edges, and collapse them. And, I
| | 04:56 | can actually delete that one in
there. And, let's do the same thing on the
| | 05:00 | side. Collapse. And, delete that one.
| | 05:03 | Okay, so I think that is about
as efficient as we can make it.
| | 05:07 | So, the steps followed here are for
making this exact the tire tread.
| | 05:10 | Of course, if you're making a
different pattern, it may take some trial and
| | 05:14 | error before it all comes together.
| | 05:15 | I had to remake this tire about five
times in making this course in order to get
| | 05:20 | the procedure just right.
| | 05:21 | So, give yourselves some
time to experiment with it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Duplicating the tire tread| 00:00 | Now that we have a single section of
tread, we need to duplicate it so that we
| | 00:04 | have a whole tire's worth of tread.
| | 00:06 | This is going to be a fun, little video
with some modeling tricks that come in
| | 00:09 | handy in all kinds of
situations, not just when making tires.
| | 00:13 | So, let's get this duplicated.
| | 00:14 | I want to hit W, and make sure I'm in
Move Mode, and I just need to confirm which
| | 00:19 | direction it needs to be duplicated in.
| | 00:21 | So, we've got the blue arrow going in the
direction that we need to duplicate, and
| | 00:26 | the blue arrow is the Z-axis.
| | 00:28 | So, let's go into Edit>Duplicate
Special with Options, and there are just a few
| | 00:34 | settings to worry about here.
| | 00:35 | For one, let's make instances instead of copies.
| | 00:38 | When it's set to Instance, we can edit
any single copy of the tread, and it will
| | 00:43 | update all the others at the same time.
| | 00:45 | If you set it to Copy, then they'll all be
independent. If you make a change to one
| | 00:49 | of them, it won't change all the others.
| | 00:51 | In the Translate Section, we want to
move it on the Z-axis, so X, Y and Z is the
| | 00:56 | last one, and let's put -1 in here.
| | 00:59 | Remember, we made the segment one
unit taller for a reason, so that we could
| | 01:03 | precisely know how to move each
one of the duplicates exactly one unit.
| | 01:08 | Now, for the number of copies.
Let's look at the photo.
| | 01:11 | So, you could go ahead, and count this out.
What I usually do is just count from
| | 01:15 | about halfway up the tire, and then up
to the top, and then multiply by four.
| | 01:19 | Now, I've counted out already that there are
about 20 segments from the top to halfway down.
| | 01:24 | So, a total of about 80 should do it.
| | 01:26 | Back in Maya, let's type in 79, because
it's not counting the original -- so, 79
| | 01:33 | plus the original makes 80, --
and click Duplicate Special.
| | 01:36 | All right, let's zoom out and see what we have.
| | 01:38 | All right, that's a lot of tread.
| | 01:39 | So, let me just show you
what I mean by instances.
| | 01:43 | Let's zoom in here, and click one of
these, and go to Edit Vertex, and just pick
| | 01:48 | any old vertex here.
| | 01:49 | Notice any change you make affects all of them.
| | 01:51 | So, I'm going to hit Z to undo that.
| | 01:53 | So, actually there is one,
little change I want to make.
| | 01:56 | I want the fall-off to happen a
little bit more gradually here.
| | 01:59 | So, let's look at the photo.
| | 02:01 | So, you'll notice that here on the tire,
which just kind of goes from this chunk,
| | 02:06 | and it just kind of smoothly goes down
here. And, what I have is a kind of a rough
| | 02:11 | fall-off, kind of a cliff that falls off.
| | 02:13 | So, what I'm going to do is just edit
this a little bit, just to make it a
| | 02:15 | little bit more gradual and subtle.
| | 02:20 | And, let's do the same thing on
the other side. Okay, excellent.
| | 02:24 | Now, let's combine them all into one object.
| | 02:26 | I'm going to drag a selection over
all of them, and then go to Mesh Combine.
| | 02:31 | Okay, we're almost there.
| | 02:33 | Now, it's all one object, but the
vertices between strips are still unmerged.
| | 02:37 | So, let's go into Vertex Mode, and
select all of these vertices, and we'll go to
| | 02:42 | Edit Mesh, Merge with Options, and the
threshold is good -- it's nice and low, -- so
| | 02:47 | go ahead and click Merge.
| | 02:48 | All right, let's make sure this worked.
| | 02:50 | Yep, looks good, looks like
they're all merged together.
| | 02:53 | So, the skills used in this video are
some of the most common that you'll use for
| | 02:57 | all kinds of modeling tasks.
| | 02:59 | Duplicate Special with Instances and
Multiple Copies is a very powerful tool for
| | 03:03 | making many copies from a single object.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Bending the tread into a circle| 00:00 | Now we've got a long, flat piece of tread
that needs to be rolled up into a cylinder.
| | 00:05 | Maya's Deformation tools are
going to help us get that done.
| | 00:08 | Let's see how it works.
| | 00:09 | So, in this movie, we're going to be
using some features of Maya that aren't
| | 00:12 | found in the Polygon's Menu Set.
| | 00:14 | Now, we could go change our Menu Set,
but that might be too many clicks.
| | 00:18 | I like to work faster.
| | 00:19 | So, what I'm going to do is click on
our tread, and I'm going to hold down the
| | 00:23 | Spacebar to bring up the Hotbox.
| | 00:25 | From here, we can reach any menu in Maya.
| | 00:27 | So, the feature I want to use is
actually found in the Animate Menu Set.
| | 00:31 | So, in here, I'm going to click on Create
Deformers, and hold down the mouse button.
| | 00:36 | I'll go up to Nonlinear, and then select Bend.
| | 00:39 | Now, by default, the Bend
isn't set to bend at all.
| | 00:42 | We just have a straight line here.
| | 00:43 | So, let's go to its
attributes, and increase the curvature.
| | 00:47 | So, in the Attribute Editor, let's go
and click on the bend1 tab, and we just
| | 00:51 | need to change the Curvature here.
| | 00:53 | And, what we want is a perfect circle.
| | 00:55 | So, we could eyeball it, but
that's not going to be close enough.
| | 00:58 | What we need to do is type in a value
that will give us a perfect circle, and
| | 01:03 | that value is actually, coincidently enough, Pi.
| | 01:05 | So, I'm going to type in -3.14159.
| | 01:11 | Now, Pi is infinite, but this is close enough.
| | 01:13 | You'll notice that Maya
rounded it up a little bit.
| | 01:16 | Maya actually still remembers the
full number that I typed in, but it's only
| | 01:19 | displaying a rounded value.
| | 01:22 | Okay, so we've made a curve, but
it's still not bending the tread at all.
| | 01:25 | What we need to do is rotate the
manipulator, so that it bends in the correct direction.
| | 01:29 | So, let's come in here, and I'm going
to go into my Rotate Tool, and let's just
| | 01:33 | rotate this in one direction here.
And, I want to make sure it's rotating
| | 01:38 | exactly 90 degrees.
| | 01:39 | So, in the Channel Box, let's just come
in here, and type in 90, and then let's
| | 01:44 | rotate it another direction on this
way. And, I also want to make sure this is
| | 01:49 | exactly 90 degrees, or
actually zero, in this case. Great!
| | 01:52 | Now, we can start to wrap this up.
| | 01:54 | Let's select the tire tread, and
I'm going to delete its history.
| | 01:58 | So, go into Edit>Delete by Type>History.
| | 02:01 | So, what that does is it
clears out the Bend Deformer.
| | 02:04 | It clears out all the merging and
duplicating that we had done in the past, and
| | 02:08 | just locks all that stuff in.
| | 02:10 | So, all we have left is the model in this shape.
| | 02:13 | The last thing we need to do is to
merge up both ends of the strip of tread.
| | 02:17 | So, down here at the very bottom is
where the two halves came together, and we
| | 02:21 | just need to make sure that they're merged up.
| | 02:24 | So, let's go into Vertex Mode,
and just select all of these.
| | 02:27 | Go to Edit Mesh and Merge. Okay, great.
| | 02:30 | We can get out of Vertex Mode now.
| | 02:33 | All right, let's zoom out to see
what we get. Okay, not too bad.
| | 02:35 | Let's look at the photo reference to compare.
| | 02:37 | So, the next thing we need to
do is get the walls of the tire.
| | 02:41 | So, for that, what I'm going to do is
select our object, and go into Edge Mode, and
| | 02:45 | I'm just going to double click that
border edge, and then hold down Shift and
| | 02:48 | double-click the border edge on the other side.
| | 02:51 | Now, I can just extrude these inwards.
| | 02:53 | So, I just hit Extrude, and I'm just
going to switch right into scale, and
| | 02:57 | just scale these inwards.
| | 02:58 | And actually, it's scaling in the wrong
direction. Let me just scale it this way a little bit.
| | 03:03 | All right, not too bad.
| | 03:04 | Yeah, that looks about right.
| | 03:05 | Now, I need to model in the curvature,
because there's a lot of bend to this wall.
| | 03:09 | So, one way I can do it is to come in
here, and select one of these edges, and then
| | 03:14 | what I can do is hold down Ctrl, and then
hold down the Right Mouse button, go to
| | 03:18 | Edge Ring Utilities, and
then Edge Ring and Split.
| | 03:21 | So, that just creates a new edge
loop all the way around that edge ring.
| | 03:25 | Let's do the same thing on the other side.
| | 03:27 | I'm going to click that, and then
just hit G to repeat the last action.
| | 03:30 | All right, so now I'm going to hold
down Shift and double-click this. And now, we
| | 03:33 | can just scale both of
these out at the same time.
| | 03:36 | All right, not too bad.
| | 03:38 | Now, we just need to repeat this a couple times.
| | 03:39 | I'm going to hit G here, G on
that one, and that one, and that one.
| | 03:44 | Now, I can just select all of these by
holding down Shift and double-clicking, and
| | 03:47 | let's scale this again.
| | 03:49 | So now, we're getting a little
bit of curvature around here.
| | 03:51 | We could even go ahead and do it a
couple more times as well, just to get out any
| | 03:55 | of those harsh angles, but I'll let you do that.
| | 03:58 | There's just one more step I want to do
in this movie, and that is to center the
| | 04:01 | wheel with the grid.
| | 04:04 | So, let's get out of Edge Mode, and what I
want to do is center the pivot in the wheel.
| | 04:08 | So, right now the pivot is over here on
the grid, but the wheel is way off the grid.
| | 04:13 | So, what I'm going to do is go to
Modify>Center Pivot, and now I can go into
| | 04:18 | Move Mode, and move this closer to the grid,
and actually hold down X to snap it to the grid.
| | 04:23 | So, let me zoom in a little bit, hold
down X, and now snap it to the grid.
| | 04:27 | So, we know the wheel is now
perfectly in the center of the grid.
| | 04:30 | And there you have it, a finished tire.
| | 04:32 | I use the Bend Deformer a lot
whenever I need a very precise curve.
| | 04:36 | We also went over a few other tools
I use a lot such as Split Edge Ring.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Beveling the edges of tread detail| 00:00 | So, we've basically got the tire shape
done, and the tread looks pretty good.
| | 00:04 | However, it's looking a little hard-edged.
| | 00:06 | In this video, we're going to look at
a great way to give those edges a nice,
| | 00:10 | rounded look without a lot of work,
and without creating any more geometry.
| | 00:14 | Now, one method you might be thinking
of to make this look smoother is to
| | 00:17 | use Smooth Preview.
| | 00:18 | So, I'll go ahead and hit 3 on the keyboard.
| | 00:21 | So, Maya gives us an error. That's
because the tire already has so many polygons
| | 00:25 | in it that if we were to do Smooth
Preview on it, it would create so many
| | 00:30 | polygons that the computer
wouldn't be able to handle it.
| | 00:33 | So, go ahead and click, No, cancel operation.
| | 00:35 | Well, Smooth Preview is out of the
question. This is a great opportunity to use a
| | 00:40 | rendering trick called Rounded Corners.
| | 00:42 | In order to use this, we need to make
sure that the Mental Ray renderer is
| | 00:45 | active, because this trick is only
going to be visible in renders; it won't be
| | 00:49 | seen in the viewport.
| | 00:50 | Go up to your Render Settings and you want
to make sure that the Render Using is mental ray.
| | 00:56 | All right, you can close that.
| | 00:58 | The effect is going to be easier to see
if we have a Blinn material on the tire.
| | 01:01 | So, go ahead and hold down the right
mouse button. Go down to Assign Favorite
| | 01:04 | Material, and pick Blinn.
| | 01:06 | Now, we need to do something
special to this Blinn material.
| | 01:08 | So, let's go into Window>Rendering
Editors and pick the Hypershade.
| | 01:13 | All right, go ahead and click on the
Blinn that we just made, and let's load it
| | 01:17 | up into the work area.
| | 01:19 | Now, there's a special texture that we can
use to get the rounded corner effect we need.
| | 01:23 | Make sure your mental ray materials
are open and come down to Textures, and
| | 01:28 | let's add an mia_roundcorners.
| | 01:30 | All right, so I'm just going to zoom
out a little bit here, and move this off
| | 01:33 | to the side, so I can see it more
easily. And, we need to connect this Round
| | 01:38 | Corners to the blinn3.
| | 01:40 | So, go ahead and hold down the middle mouse
button, and just drag that over to blinn3.
| | 01:42 | Now we get a pop up; it's asking us
how we want to connect it. So, go ahead
| | 01:46 | and click on bump map.
| | 01:47 | Now, all of this probably isn't making
much sense, but basically the texture is
| | 01:51 | able to tell what parts of the model
have sharp edges, and then it can generate
| | 01:55 | an automatic bump map that compensates
for the sharp edges. And, this will give
| | 02:00 | the appearance of rounded corners.
| | 02:02 | All right, let's do a test render.
| | 02:04 | Move this off to the side, and go
ahead and click on the Render button.
| | 02:08 | Okay, it's not quite all set up yet.
| | 02:10 | One thing I want to do is save this
image, so that we can flip between this one
| | 02:15 | and the next one to see what the difference is.
| | 02:17 | All right, I'm going to close the Render View.
| | 02:19 | Okay, so let's adjust some of the
settings of the mia_roundcorners.
| | 02:22 | So make sure it's selected, and
let's go into its Attribute Editor.
| | 02:25 | I'm just going to drag this down a little
bit, so we can see all the settings better.
| | 02:29 | What we need to do is increase
the radius of the rounded corners.
| | 02:33 | So, I want to type in something like 0.1.
Depending on how large the tire is in
| | 02:37 | your scene, you might need
to set it higher or lower.
| | 02:40 | All right, I'm going to hit Enter to
lock that in, and let's do another render.
| | 02:44 | Cool, so that's looking more rounded now.
| | 02:45 | All right, it's almost done.
| | 02:47 | Finally, we need to set the normal angle.
| | 02:50 | So right now, there are a few hard
edges here and there that aren't actually
| | 02:53 | being affected by the mia_
roundcorners; basically this edge right here.
| | 02:58 | So, let's go ahead and close our
Render View, and let's click on the tire, and
| | 03:02 | let's go up to the Normals Menu,
and we want to Set the Normal Angle.
| | 03:06 | Now, let's set it to
something like 80 degrees roughly.
| | 03:10 | So, this means that any polygonal angles
that are less than 80 degrees will have
| | 03:14 | soft normals. Anything higher will be
hard, which in turn will be rounded by the
| | 03:19 | round corner's texture.
| | 03:20 | So, go ahead and hit Apply and Close.
| | 03:23 | All right, let's do one more render to
see what that looks like. All right, great!
| | 03:27 | So, there are a few different situations
when I like to use mental ray Round Corners.
| | 03:30 | The example of a tire tread fits perfectly.
| | 03:33 | For one, it's good to use on objects that
you're not planning on looking at very close-up.
| | 03:38 | The effect is convincing at a distance,
but if you get too close, you'll be able
| | 03:42 | to see that the corner isn't actually curved.
| | 03:44 | You'll see that it's just an illusion.
| | 03:46 | Two, I like to use it when adding
actual holding edges or smoothing would
| | 03:51 | create too many polygons.
| | 03:53 | And three, I use it when the model is
going to be used for rendering in mental ray.
| | 03:57 | If you plan to use the model in a
game for example, you'll have to find
| | 04:01 | a different solution.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making the rims| 00:00 | Now that we've got the tire done, let's
move on to something even more challenging.
| | 00:04 | Now, the rims look really complicated.
| | 00:06 | However, there are a few
things we can do to simplify it.
| | 00:09 | Notice that the rims are a repeating pattern.
| | 00:12 | All we have to do is make one section
of the pattern, and then duplicate it
| | 00:15 | to create the rest.
| | 00:16 | Let's get down to business.
| | 00:18 | All right, let's go into Maya.
| | 00:19 | So, we've already got our tire in the
scene, but let's go ahead and hide it.
| | 00:22 | So, select it and hit Ctrl+H. To start
the rims, we're going to make a polygon
| | 00:28 | cylinder to begin with.
| | 00:29 | So, let's go into our side view, so we
can make sure we're making this exactly
| | 00:33 | from the side, and just go ahead and
make a cylinder, and I'm going to hold down
| | 00:36 | X, so that we make sure we snap it
right to the center of the grid.
| | 00:40 | And it doesn't matter exactly how big
we make it; we can always resize it to
| | 00:43 | fit the tire later.
| | 00:44 | And now, we need to set the height. We
can't really see it in this view, so I'm
| | 00:48 | just going to see all of our
four views here while we make this.
| | 00:51 | It actually doesn't matter how high you make it.
| | 00:53 | Now, what we need to do is give it the
right amount of segments. And, that is the
| | 00:57 | number of edges you can see going from
the center out to the outside, so it's
| | 01:01 | kind of like spokes.
| | 01:02 | And, we want to make sure that the
number of edges that we have corresponds with
| | 01:06 | the shapes that we're trying to make.
| | 01:07 | So, if we look at our rim again, you
can see that it's made up of this kind of
| | 01:12 | series of recessed and then raised
sections; recessed and then raised.
| | 01:18 | So, if you count the number of sections
around the rim, you'll find that there's
| | 01:21 | 12. And also, I'm going to need 4 polygon
segments within each section, so that I
| | 01:26 | have enough geometry to
make this hole right here.
| | 01:28 | So, 12 times 4 is 48.
| | 01:30 | Of course, if you're making a
different rim, your mileage will vary.
| | 01:34 | So, back in Maya, make sure you got the
cylinder selected, and let's go into its
| | 01:38 | Channel Box, and let's come down to its
original input node, and let's change the
| | 01:43 | Subdivision Axis to 48, like we figured out.
| | 01:47 | And, something else I want to do is
give it Subdivision Caps a value of two.
| | 01:51 | Now, this is so that I have just a
little bit more geometry to play with in here,
| | 01:55 | and also, if I want to
insert an edge loop at any point.
| | 01:57 | You can't really insert
an edge loop on a triangle.
| | 02:00 | So, all of these polygons in
here are triangles, right?
| | 02:03 | So, if I want to insert an edge loop, I
can do it out here, but not inside here.
| | 02:08 | So, as long as I have at least one edge
loop going around in here, then I can
| | 02:12 | insert more around here as I need them.
| | 02:15 | Okay, so let's look at our
little drawing I did in Photoshop.
| | 02:18 | This is just an example of what
we're going to start out modeling.
| | 02:22 | So, this little section right here that
I have got outlined in yellow is going
| | 02:25 | to be what we're going to model first.
| | 02:27 | And then, once we've got that done, we
can mirror it, and rotate it, and duplicate
| | 02:31 | it for all the other sections.
| | 02:32 | So, what I want to do is delete
everything except the polygons that correspond to
| | 02:37 | that very first starting chunk.
| | 02:39 | So, what I'll do actually is go into
Face Mode, and then just select these four
| | 02:43 | polygons. And, let's zoom out a little bit.
| | 02:45 | I'm going to hold down Shift, and just
drag a selection box over everything. So,
| | 02:49 | that inverts the selection,
and I'll just hit Delete.
| | 02:52 | Now, let's set up the mirrored and
rotated instances, so that we can see how the
| | 02:56 | whole rim is going to look
as we work on just one part.
| | 02:59 | So, what I'm going to do is get out of Face
Mode. And, let's zoom in here a little bit.
| | 03:04 | Okay, now let's go to Edit and
Duplicate Special with Options.
| | 03:07 | You'll notice it's still got the
options we had from when we did the tire.
| | 03:11 | So, I'm just going to go
to Edit and Reset settings.
| | 03:14 | So, I want every chunk to be an instance.
And, let's do the mirrored section first.
| | 03:19 | Let me show you back in Photoshop.
| | 03:21 | So, what we're going to do is notice that
this chunk right here is kind of like a
| | 03:25 | mirror image of the one that
we're currently working on.
| | 03:28 | So first, we want to flip it up. And
then, once we've got these two -- one, a
| | 03:30 | mirrored copy of the other, -- then we can
just duplicate and rotate all the way around.
| | 03:34 | So, for the mirroring, what we want to
do is make one copy, and we want the scale
| | 03:41 | to be -1 on the Y-axis, the green axis.
| | 03:47 | All right, let's click
Duplicate Special. Okay, great!
| | 03:50 | So, now we've got two copies of the same thing.
| | 03:52 | Notice if you go into Face Mode, you
can see they are mirrored. That's great.
| | 03:56 | Okay, let's go back out of that.
| | 03:57 | Now, let's duplicate both
of these all the way around.
| | 04:00 | So, let's select both of them, and let's
go back to Duplicate Special with Options.
| | 04:04 | Okay, let's set the Scale back
to one, and I want five copies.
| | 04:09 | So, there's going to be six in all;
the original plus five is six.
| | 04:13 | And also, I need to rotate them. So, you
notice the red axis here is the X-axis.
| | 04:18 | I need to rotate around that axis.
| | 04:20 | So, let's go into the X for
rotate, and we'll type in 60.
| | 04:25 | So, 360 degrees divided by 6, 60 degrees.
Everything looks good. Click Duplicate Special.
| | 04:32 | All right, let's see how this worked.
| | 04:34 | Let's just click this one. Go
into Face Mode. All right. Great!
| | 04:37 | So, you can see that as we work on one
of these, all of the rest of the rim is
| | 04:42 | going to get updated automatically.
| | 04:43 | So, it does look like a lot of work to
set this up, but it's really going to be a
| | 04:46 | lot easier to make this rim this way,
then it would be to try to model each
| | 04:51 | section of the rim separately.
| | 04:53 | Having instances set up is also going
to help us see the big picture as we
| | 04:56 | work on just one part.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blocking out the rims| 00:00 | Now that we have the instanced and
mirrored pieces of the rim set up, it's a
| | 00:04 | fairly straightforward polygon
modelling job from here on out.
| | 00:07 | We'll be using some standard modeling
techniques, as well as a few fancy tricks
| | 00:11 | thrown in from time to time.
| | 00:13 | Let's get down to work.
| | 00:14 | Okay, let's look at our reference photo.
| | 00:16 | So, around the rims, we need a
little bit of a lip right here.
| | 00:20 | So, let's go in to our Edges, and just
select these edges around the outside.
| | 00:24 | Now, what I want to do is just Extrude
them forward just a little bit, so I'm
| | 00:28 | just going to go right in the
Move Mode, and just push them forward.
| | 00:30 | So, that's creating basically this
little gap right here between this stuff, and
| | 00:36 | this rim right here.
| | 00:37 | Okay, now let's work on the
separation between these raised up chunks and
| | 00:42 | these sunken in chunks.
| | 00:43 | So, what I want to do is select these two
faces down here, and let's extrude them inwards.
| | 00:49 | I'm just going to go ahead and
just push them straight back.
| | 00:52 | That looks pretty good.
| | 00:53 | Okay, I'm going to hit W to
go out of Extrude Mode.
| | 00:57 | Now, one thing you might notice is
that it created this extra little single
| | 01:00 | polygon in between, so we don't
really need that; we can just delete it.
| | 01:04 | So, now you can see we've got these
series of raised up sections and sunken in
| | 01:08 | sections, just like our reference photo.
| | 01:10 | Now, let's add in these holes right here.
| | 01:12 | So, what we want to do is create an
Edge Loop that goes all the way around,
| | 01:15 | kind of in the middle of the section, so that
we can have some faces to delete for those holes.
| | 01:21 | So, let's insert an edge loop first.
| | 01:23 | I'm just going to put this
pretty much right in the middle.
| | 01:25 | Great! Now we can delete
some faces for those holes.
| | 01:28 | So, I'm going to go into Face Mode, and
I want to pick these faces right here
| | 01:31 | in the middle, and then also the faces
that are in the middle of the raised
| | 01:34 | section, and hit Delete.
| | 01:36 | Okay, let's compare this to the photo again.
| | 01:38 | So, it looks like each one of these holes
has a little bit of a surface that goes back.
| | 01:42 | So, what I'm going to do is go into Edge
Mode, and let's select the edges around
| | 01:46 | the hole for both of these pieces,
and then we'll just extrude it back.
| | 01:50 | I'm just going to flip right into Move Mode,
and just pull them backwards. All right, great!
| | 01:55 | Now, let's get out of Edge Mode, and I
just want to see what this looks like with
| | 01:59 | the Smooth Preview turned on.
| | 02:00 | So, we're getting the basic
shape, but it's a little bit soft.
| | 02:03 | We need to add some holding edges to
tighten up some of these corners. So, I'm
| | 02:06 | going to turn Smooth Preview off, and we'll
just go and get our Insert Edge Loop Tool.
| | 02:11 | I'm just going to come in here and
start cutting a few more edges to tighten up
| | 02:15 | some of these corners.
| | 02:21 | Okay, let's get out of Edge
Mode, and see how that looks.
| | 02:23 | All right, looking much better.
| | 02:25 | Okay, let's look at the photo once more.
| | 02:28 | All right, so for each one of these
holes, you can see that this line is pretty
| | 02:31 | straight, and then right up at a
certain point, it starts to curve.
| | 02:34 | So, what I want to do is add a holding edge.
It's about at this point all the way around.
| | 02:39 | So, let's go into Edit Mesh, Insert Edge
Loop Tool, and we'll go ahead and insert
| | 02:44 | an edge loop right about here. Perfect!
| | 02:46 | Now, let's adjust the positions of
some of these vertices right here to help
| | 02:49 | this round out a bit more.
| | 02:51 | So, what you might notice is that it's
not actually rounding out here, and that's
| | 02:54 | because these are two
separate objects right here.
| | 02:57 | So, the smooth actually isn't going to
go between these two. But later on when
| | 03:02 | we actually merge these parts together,
then the smooth is actually going to go
| | 03:06 | across this border.
| | 03:07 | So for right now, we can just
imagine that it's all nice and smooth.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Detailing the rims| 00:00 | Okay, continuing on with
more modeling work on the rims.
| | 00:03 | So, we've got the block up
pretty much established.
| | 00:06 | So, now let's look at some
of the intermediate details.
| | 00:09 | In our photo reference, we can kind
of see that the chunks that are pushed
| | 00:13 | inwards have this kind of slope to them.
| | 00:15 | They go even further back right at this point.
| | 00:18 | So, let's try to get that into our model.
| | 00:20 | So, what I want to do is eventually I'll
be grabbing some of these vertices, and
| | 00:24 | pushing them back, but I want them
to start slipping back more gradually.
| | 00:28 | So, I want to insert an edge loop right
here, in order to keep it kind of straight
| | 00:32 | up to a point, and then start to slope back.
| | 00:34 | So, let's go to Edit Mesh, and Insert Edge
Loop Tool, and I'll put an edge loop
| | 00:38 | right in about here.
| | 00:39 | All right, now I'm just going to hit W
to exit the Insert Edge Loop Tool, and
| | 00:42 | let's go into Vertex Mode. And, I just
want to select these vertices right about
| | 00:46 | here, and let's push them back.
| | 00:48 | Let's exit that, and deselect
it, and we'll just compare it.
| | 00:52 | Okay, it looks pretty good.
| | 00:53 | Okay, so now before we get too far
ahead of ourselves, let's go ahead and put a
| | 00:57 | Blinn material on everything.
| | 00:58 | I'm just going to hold down the
right mouse button, and go to Assign
| | 01:02 | Existing Material Blinn.
| | 01:03 | Now, we can see this surfaces a bit more clearly.
| | 01:05 | Okay, let's see what else we
need to do on our photo reference.
| | 01:08 | So, we can see that in the raised up chunks,
there's kind of a depression right here.
| | 01:13 | So, let's see how we can get that in.
| | 01:15 | What we need to do is kind of get
this area to sink in a little bit.
| | 01:19 | I'm going to use a neat little tool
called Wedge to get that depression.
| | 01:23 | So, what I want to do is go into Face
Mode, and select this face right here. And
| | 01:27 | then, what I want to do is keep that
selected, and go into Edge Mode, and
| | 01:31 | Shift+Select this edge right here.
| | 01:33 | The Wedge Tool is going to sort of
extrude the faces, but it's going to leave
| | 01:37 | the selected edge un-extruded.
| | 01:40 | Let's see how it works.
| | 01:41 | Go into Edit Mesh, and
let's come down to Wedge Face.
| | 01:44 | Now, it looks kind of crazy right off the start.
| | 01:46 | Let's turn off Smooth Preview, so
we can see what's going on better.
| | 01:49 | So, the default settings on this tool
aren't exactly what we want. So, let's go
| | 01:53 | into the Attribute Editor, and let's go
into the Wedge Face tab, and what I want
| | 01:58 | to do is change the Wedge Angle. So,
this actually raised up in the wrong
| | 02:02 | direction. I want it to go the other way.
| | 02:05 | So, I want to type in a
number, something like -10.
| | 02:07 | Okay, so now it's going inwards,
and I don't need four divisions.
| | 02:11 | Okay, that looks much better.
| | 02:13 | So, now we'll go into Face Mode and
we can just delete this face that was
| | 02:16 | created on the inside.
| | 02:17 | All right, not too bad.
| | 02:19 | Let's turn on Smooth Preview to see how that
looks. And, let's compare this to the photo.
| | 02:24 | Okay, so it looks like just a
little bit of tweaking needs to be done.
| | 02:27 | So, what I'm going to do is go into
Edge Mode, select that edge, and then also
| | 02:32 | go into Vertex Mode, and select that
vertex, and we'll just kind of tweak the
| | 02:35 | shape a little bit.
| | 02:37 | So, it looks like this area needs to be
a little bit narrower. And now, I'll just
| | 02:40 | insert some edge loops in order
to tighten these shapes up a bit.
| | 02:44 | So, let's go to Object Mode, go to Edit
Mesh, Insert Edge Loop Tool. And, let's
| | 02:49 | see, I'll put in an edge loop
here, and let's put one in here.
| | 02:54 | All right, let's see how
this looks when it smoothes.
| | 02:56 | All right, so that's looking a lot
like a reference, maybe a little bit more
| | 03:00 | tweaking to do, but let's
move on to something else now.
| | 03:02 | The last thing I want to make for this
movie is to get these ridges around the holes.
| | 03:07 | So, what I want to do is
cut in some special shapes.
| | 03:10 | I want to cut in polygons that
kind of go all the way around here.
| | 03:14 | So for that, I'm going to use my
Interactive Split Tool, and I'll just manually
| | 03:19 | cut some new edges right around here.
Just cut it here, all the way around. Just
| | 03:24 | trying to keep the spacing pretty much
even, and we can just end it right there.
| | 03:28 | I'm just going to right-click to lock that
in. And now, I want to clean some of this up.
| | 03:32 | And actually, we have an unnecessary
edge right here that I created when I made
| | 03:35 | this part, so let's come in
and collapse some of these.
| | 03:39 | So, I'm going to click this one, and this
one, and just hit Collapse. And now, let's
| | 03:44 | collapse some of these as well.
| | 03:45 | All right, let's collapse these, and
let's turn on Smooth Preview just to make
| | 03:49 | sure that's looking good. Okay, great!
| | 03:51 | So, now I've got a base shape
established for making this ridge right here.
| | 03:55 | So, let's go ahead and add some
geometry, so we can finish that off.
| | 03:58 | So, I'm going to go into Edit Mesh>
Insert Edge Loop Tool. And let's say we want
| | 04:03 | one right here, and one right here.
| | 04:06 | Now, I'm just going to go into Face
Mode, select these faces, and pull them
| | 04:09 | forward. And, let's see how this looks smoothed.
| | 04:11 | All right, it looks pretty good.
| | 04:13 | It might need a little bit of
tweaking, but I'll let you handle that.
| | 04:16 | Okay, there you have it! Some nice
basic poly modeling out of the way.
| | 04:19 | This is a good stopping point for now.
| | 04:22 | We'll continue doing some
tweaking to this rim later.
| | 04:24 | Go ahead and combine the pieces, and
merge the vertices, just like we did with
| | 04:27 | the tread.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finishing the rims| 00:00 | We're almost done with the rims now. Just
some finishing touches to bring it all together.
| | 00:05 | So, I've got all the pieces of the rim
combined into one object. And, I also merged
| | 00:09 | all the vertices, so you can see
with Smoothing Mode turned on, it's now
| | 00:13 | smoothing across the gaps.
| | 00:15 | So, there's just one thing I
want to point out about this.
| | 00:17 | We used the merge vertices
function, and what it's got is a distance.
| | 00:23 | So, all vertices within
this distance will get merged.
| | 00:26 | Now, you might find that too many, or
not enough vertices are getting merged.
| | 00:30 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 00:31 | So, if we increase this distance,
you'll find that it starts merging verts
| | 00:35 | that we really don't want to get merged,
or if we bring it too low, you'll notice
| | 00:39 | that these verts get unmerged.
| | 00:42 | So, it might take a little bit of trial
and error to find that sweet spot where
| | 00:46 | just the right number of vertices get merged.
| | 00:48 | You might even have to come in
here and type in an exact number.
| | 00:52 | So, now let's model the rest of the rim.
| | 00:54 | Let's look at our photo.
| | 00:55 | So in here, you can see that we've got
it modelled up to this point right here.
| | 00:59 | And now, we need to get
the rest of these shapes in.
| | 01:01 | So, let's do that with extrusions.
| | 01:04 | So, what I'm going to do is go into Edge
and just double-click this border edge.
| | 01:08 | Now, I'll just click Extrude.
| | 01:09 | Now, what you might think you could do is
just grab on the screen arrow, but it's
| | 01:13 | actually going to do something really weird.
| | 01:15 | So, when this happens, I just like to
hit undo, and just go right into the Move
| | 01:18 | Tool, and pull it forward. And actually,
let's get out of Smooth Preview Mode.
| | 01:23 | So, let's see. In our photo, it looks
like there's kind of an angle to it.
| | 01:26 | So, I'm just going to go into the Scale
Tool, and just scale this out, so we get
| | 01:29 | a nice angle there.
| | 01:32 | All right, looks good. And then, let's see,
it comes forward a little bit, and then
| | 01:34 | it kind of jogs around a little bit,
so I'll just hit extrude again. Go
| | 01:38 | right into Move Tool. And, let's scoot
it forward. Hit G to extrude again. Then,
| | 01:44 | I'll go into the Scale Tool, and just
scale this out a bit, and then back and
| | 01:47 | forth, and back and forth.
| | 01:49 | Let's see our photo again.
| | 01:51 | Looks like just a couple more times here.
And then, what I want to do is at the
| | 01:53 | very end, I want it to have a
little lip, and then go back.
| | 01:57 | Okay, let's go out of the Extrude Tool.
| | 01:59 | All right, so I'm going to go into Objects
Mode. And, let's just turn on Smooth Preview.
| | 02:03 | So, you can see it's a little
bit softer than it should be.
| | 02:05 | In our photo, we can see
that there are harder edges.
| | 02:07 | So, what I want to do is insert some edge loops.
| | 02:10 | Go to Edit Mesh>Insert Edge Loop Tool.
And, just everywhere that I want a sharper
| | 02:16 | edge, I'm just going to add
an extra edge loop in there.
| | 02:20 | All right, now let's see how
it smoothes. All right, great!
| | 02:23 | Now, let's fit the tire to the rim. So,
you might remember, we've actually got the
| | 02:26 | tire in the scene; it's just hidden.
| | 02:29 | So, let's go into Display>Show All. And,
you might notice that there's actually
| | 02:33 | an extra object in here.
| | 02:34 | It's just a simple hub, so you might
see it right here. Just simple cylinders,
| | 02:38 | and a couple of extrusions, and a
couple holding edges. Nothing too fancy.
| | 02:42 | So, let's select the tire, and
let's get it fitting on the rim.
| | 02:45 | So, I'm just going to scale it, and move it
around a little bit, so that it fits on the rim.
| | 02:49 | It looks like I might need to scale it
up a bit more. And, I'm just kind of
| | 02:52 | eyeballing it. It's not exactly
precise right here. Okay, great!
| | 02:56 | So, that's it for the rim and the tire.
| | 02:58 | A lot of intense polygon modeling, but
we've created some really cool detail this way.
| | 03:03 | So, I use this kind of modelling
all the time to create these kinds of
| | 03:05 | complex shapes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling the hub| 00:00 | The last major detail to do on the wheel is
the hub with these three protruding grips.
| | 00:06 | Now, this object isn't as complicated
as the rim, so I'm not going to bother
| | 00:10 | with making a small section of it, and then
mirroring it, and rotating it, and duplicating it.
| | 00:15 | Let's just try to make it all in one go.
| | 00:18 | So, back into Maya. Let's make a polygon
pipe. And, what that's going to be for is
| | 00:23 | for this type of ring shape right here.
| | 00:25 | All right, so back in Maya, what we
want do is go into our side view. And, let's
| | 00:30 | make a new polygon pipe.
| | 00:31 | I want to hold down X, so that it snaps
to the center of the grid. And, I'm just
| | 00:35 | going to draw something out, and we
can always adjust the shape later.
| | 00:38 | And then, let's give it a height,
something like that, and then its thickness. And,
| | 00:44 | don't worry if it's exact or not.
| | 00:46 | So, let's see how this compares to our photo.
| | 00:49 | All right, this is pretty close.
| | 00:50 | I think I might want to
shrink it just a little bit.
| | 00:52 | All right, I think we can work from this.
| | 00:55 | Okay, so now we want three handles. And,
I'm going to be extruding it out of these
| | 00:58 | polygons on the side.
| | 01:00 | So, I want the total number of
polygons around the shape of this object to
| | 01:05 | be divisible by three.
| | 01:06 | So, let's go into the Object Channel Box.
We'll come down to the polyPipe input.
| | 01:11 | And, for subdivisions around
the axis, let's type in 30.
| | 01:15 | Okay, so let's think about how many polygons we
need to extrude for each one of those handles.
| | 01:20 | So, let's see about three.
| | 01:22 | Let's compare it to the photo.
| | 01:24 | So, I just want to see how much
width across I need to select.
| | 01:27 | So, it seems like three is about right, and
then I need to select three more around here.
| | 01:32 | And so, we know there are 30
polygons all the way around.
| | 01:35 | So, if there's three here,
then we need a gap of seven.
| | 01:38 | So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
| | 01:42 | All right, let's select
three here, and then seven more.
| | 01:45 | One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
| | 01:49 | And then, we'll select three here,
and we can just extrude these out now.
| | 01:52 | So, I'm just going to grab on the
blue handle here, and extrude them out.
| | 01:56 | Now, you notice in the photo, it
actually needs to get narrower, not wider.
| | 02:00 | So, what we can do is click on one these
scale cubes. And now, let's just scale it in.
| | 02:04 | Let me just get a better view on this.
| | 02:06 | Let's see if I can get
these other ones work for us.
| | 02:09 | Okay, and let's move it forward a little bit.
| | 02:12 | I just went into the Move Tool. I am
just going to push it forward. And, let's
| | 02:15 | see what we've got.
| | 02:17 | The overall shape is right, but it
looks like I need to tweak some things.
| | 02:19 | So, what I'm going to do is just select
all of these edges that are kind of pushed
| | 02:25 | out in the wrong direction, and
then we'll just scale them in.
| | 02:27 | So, I'm going to go to Scale Mode, and I
want to shrink them in, but actually, since
| | 02:31 | this is an odd-shaped object, the scale
isn't going to be right in the middle. So,
| | 02:35 | let's go into our front
view, or the side view rather.
| | 02:38 | I'm going to hold down D to move the
pivot point, and I'm going to hold down X
| | 02:43 | to snap to the center. There we go.
| | 02:46 | Okay, let's see how this looks
with Smooth Preview turned on.
| | 02:46 | Now, we can scale these in.
| | 02:49 | Okay, looking better.
| | 02:51 | Now, one thing I want to do is have the
polygon in the middle be positioned for this
| | 02:55 | little indentation right here.
| | 02:57 | So, let's exit Smooth Preview Mode. And,
what I want to do is select this edge
| | 03:01 | right here, and just kind of shrink
it, so I get a little bit more even
| | 03:05 | rectangle shape in here.
| | 03:06 | All right, looking at the photo, I need
this indentation to stop right about at
| | 03:10 | this point, and start right about here.
| | 03:12 | So, what I'm going to do is insert edge loops
all the way around at right about that point.
| | 03:17 | So, right about there, there,
there, and then also on the inner side.
| | 03:23 | Okay, let's go into Face
Mode, and extrude those inwards.
| | 03:29 | All right, so with Smooth Preview on,
and let's see what this looks like.
| | 03:32 | So the basic shapes are there;
it's just a little bit soft.
| | 03:35 | So, let's go add some holding edges.
| | 03:36 | Edit Mesh>Insert Edge Loop Tool. And,
I'm just going to add some holding edges
| | 03:41 | everywhere that I want this
to be a sharper, cornered edge.
| | 03:45 | Let's see how this looks now, with
smooth on. Definitely getting there. Just a
| | 03:48 | little bit more to do.
| | 03:50 | It looks like these depressions are
getting a little bit too oval-shaped.
| | 03:53 | I want them to be straighter, and
then, at a certain point, round out.
| | 03:56 | So, we can add some holding edges right
around here that'll keep this straight,
| | 04:00 | and then only start to
round out right at the end.
| | 04:03 | So, I'm going to hit G to go right
back into the Insert Edge Loop Tool, and
| | 04:06 | we'll insert some edges right about
at these points. And then, I just want an
| | 04:12 | extra holding edge right here to kind
of create a tighter crease between the
| | 04:16 | ring and the handle.
| | 04:17 | All right. And, let's see how this looks now.
| | 04:19 | Great! And, let's just put the Blinn
material on it. I'm just going to hold down
| | 04:24 | the right mouse button on the
object, and assign the Blinn material.
| | 04:27 | Okay, looking pretty good. So
one final thing to finish this up.
| | 04:31 | What I want to do is make a locator,
and then parent all the objects to that
| | 04:35 | locator, so that when the wheel is
brought into the main scene, we'll have a
| | 04:38 | main object to grab.
| | 04:40 | So, let's go into Create and make a Locator.
| | 04:44 | Let's hit 4 on the keyboard, so
we can see the Wireframe better.
| | 04:47 | So, it's a little tiny locator. Let's
make it bigger. So, I want to go into its
| | 04:51 | Attribute Editor. And, let's change its local
scale to something more like nine in every axis.
| | 04:57 | Okay, so that's easier to grab now.
| | 04:59 | Let's go ahead and hit 5 to
bring back our Shaded view.
| | 05:02 | All right, so go ahead and select everything.
| | 05:04 | Okay, so the locator is green. So, when
we hit P on the keyboard for Parent,
| | 05:08 | everything is going to
get parented to the locator.
| | 05:10 | So, let's see if that works.
| | 05:12 | I'm just going to select that locator.
Great. Everything else is selected now, too.
| | 05:15 | So, go ahead and hit C to undo that.
| | 05:17 | Now, we want to lock in all of the changes
that we've made to all of these objects.
| | 05:21 | We did a lot of editing, so these
objects have history of where we bent them,
| | 05:25 | and extruded them, and all those kind of things.
| | 05:27 | So, let's go to Edit, Delete by Type,
History, and let's also give the locator
| | 05:32 | a name, so that when we import it
into our main scene, we'll be able to
| | 05:35 | recognize it easily.
| | 05:37 | So, I'm just going to call it wheel.
| | 05:39 | Now, you want to save the wheel out into a
folder called "Wheel" underneath the main project.
| | 05:43 | So, let's go to File, Save Scene As,
and we'll go into our exercise files,
| | 05:48 | pick the right version number, and you
can see I've already got a folder called
| | 05:52 | Wheel where I've already saved a finished wheel.
| | 05:54 | So, I'm not going to save it, but if you
want to, go ahead and save your own wheel out.
| | 05:58 | I'm going to hit Cancel.
| | 06:00 | So, in this video, we looked at some ways
to finish up a part of the model that's
| | 06:03 | going to be used as an external reference.
| | 06:06 | The great thing about this is that we
only need to make one wheel, and if we
| | 06:10 | ever need to make an adjustment to it,
we can edit one file, and it's going to
| | 06:14 | automatically update all four
wheels that are in the main scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Referencing the wheel in the car scene| 00:00 | Okay, so we're back in our main car
scene now, and we need to get the wheel
| | 00:04 | brought in four times.
| | 00:06 | Maya has a great feature called "Referencing".
| | 00:08 | This allows us to bring in other scenes.
| | 00:10 | It's great, because once the wheel is
referenced in, we can make changes to the
| | 00:14 | wheel scene, and those changes will
automatically be updated in the car scene.
| | 00:19 | Let's see how it works.
| | 00:21 | Let's go up to File, and come down to
Create Reference, and let's go in our
| | 00:25 | exercise files. Make sure you're in the
right version number. And then, let's go
| | 00:30 | into the wheel folder, and
pick wheel, and Reference.
| | 00:33 | Now, you can see that it's quite
a bit bigger than it should be.
| | 00:36 | No worries. Just go ahead and select
its locator, and then scale it down to
| | 00:40 | the size it should be.
| | 00:42 | Now, let's just fit it to the blueprints.
So. let's see. I want to have it on this
| | 00:47 | side of the car, since we can see that
the outside is facing to the car's right
| | 00:51 | side. And, we'll just scale it a little bit more.
| | 00:54 | Let's see. We'll position it in this view,
zoom in here, and look at this really close up.
| | 01:00 | Okay, so I'm just going to scale it,
and position it right in the middle.
| | 01:04 | Okay, great. So, it's good on the
side view. Let's make sure it's good on
| | 01:07 | the front view, too.
| | 01:08 | All right, so this is good.
| | 01:09 | Now, it looks like our wheel is a little
bit wider than the wheel in the blueprint.
| | 01:14 | However, I think that the wheel in the
photo is also a little bit on the wide
| | 01:19 | side. And, I kind of like that look, so
I'm just going to leave it the way it is.
| | 01:23 | Now, if you wanted to make any changes
to the width of the tire, don't do it
| | 01:27 | here in this scene.
| | 01:28 | Save this out, and then go back to the
tire scene, and make the adjustment there.
| | 01:31 | Okay, now that we've got one tire in place,
let's duplicate it for the rest of the wheels.
| | 01:36 | So, make sure that you're selecting the
tire's locator. And, let's go up to edit, and
| | 01:41 | Duplicate Special with Options.
| | 01:43 | And, let's go ahead and just
reset all these settings.
| | 01:45 | Let's make sure it's an instance.
And, we'll just make one copy for now.
| | 01:50 | Okay, go ahead and click Duplicate Special.
| | 01:53 | So, now we've got two copies of the tire.
| | 01:55 | Now, for the other side, I want to
flip it over, so I'm just going to put it
| | 01:59 | roughly in place. And then, let's go
into scale mode, and just flip it over.
| | 02:04 | Let's go up into the Channel Box, and make
sure that we're scaling that perfect amount.
| | 02:07 | So, it has already been scaled a little
bit. So actually, what I want to type in
| | 02:11 | here is -.101. And then, we'll just
make sure it's positioned correctly.
| | 02:18 | Okay, let's get both tires selected.
| | 02:20 | So, I'm just going to Shift+Click on the
original tires locator. And, let's go into
| | 02:26 | our top view. And, I want to go
Edit, and Duplicate Special again.
| | 02:29 | All right, so now we'll just drag this
second copy back, and we're duplicating
| | 02:33 | both the left and right tires this time.
| | 02:36 | Okay, so now let's position
it correctly for the side view.
| | 02:40 | Great! Let's look at it in
the Perspective view now.
| | 02:42 | All right, we've got all of our wheels.
So, let's make sure we are understanding
| | 02:46 | how references work.
| | 02:48 | Let's go to File and Reference Editor.
So, in here, we can see all of the objects
| | 02:53 | that are referenced into this scene.
| | 02:54 | Right now, we just have the wheel.
| | 02:56 | So, I'm just going to move this off to the
side a little bit, and click on this check box.
| | 03:00 | This turns the reference on and off.
| | 03:02 | So, let's say we don't need to
look at a wheel for the moment.
| | 03:04 | We can just turn it off
and get it out of the way.
| | 03:07 | Then, when you're ready to see it again,
you just click on that box again, and
| | 03:10 | everything will come back right into place.
| | 03:12 | Okay, so I'm going to close this.
| | 03:15 | Now, I want to show you just one more thing.
| | 03:17 | Let's go ahead and save out
of new version of this scene.
| | 03:19 | Let's Save Scene As, and let's put
it in the Exercise Files for this one,
| | 03:23 | reference wheel. And, I'm just going to make
a new file called Car with wheels, and save.
| | 03:29 | Now, let's open up that wheel file.
I'm just going to go into Recent Files,
| | 03:33 | and pick the wheel.
| | 03:35 | Okay, so one thing you might be
noticing in this is that it's not totally
| | 03:38 | finished. We haven't got the rim
extending back to the back side of the tire.
| | 03:42 | So, what I want to do is select this
rim. And, we'll just go into Edge Mode. And,
| | 03:46 | what I want to do is select the border
edge up here. And, we'll just extrude this back.
| | 03:51 | So, I'm going to go into Move
Mode, and just pull this back.
| | 03:53 | Okay, now we'll just save this scene.
| | 03:56 | Now, let's open up the file
that we saved out before.
| | 04:00 | Recent Files>car with wheels. All
right, let's take a look at the inside.
| | 04:04 | Okay great. So, you see that that
change that we made to the wheel now is
| | 04:08 | being reflected in all of the different
references that we made in this car body scene.
| | 04:12 | We're going to be using
references on several parts of the car.
| | 04:15 | Whenever there's an object that needs
to be duplicated several times, it's a
| | 04:19 | good opportunity to use referencing.
| | 04:21 | It even lets multiple
people work on a scene at once.
| | 04:24 | Some people could work on the
individual objects and someone else could work in
| | 04:28 | a master scene bringing all the pieces together.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
7. Modeling the InteriorModeling the seats| 00:00 | As we get further along in this course,
we'll be skipping over some of the
| | 00:04 | modeling tasks that are very
similar to things we've done before.
| | 00:07 | The basic shape of the seats
is one of those situations.
| | 00:10 | I made this using the same basic
polygon modeling techniques that we've
| | 00:14 | already gone over, things like mirroring,
holding edges and lots of tweaking, nothing new here.
| | 00:19 | So let's skip on ahead to a new challenge,
the seam lines and creases on the seat.
| | 00:24 | So the basic shape of the seat is done,
the next thing I want to do is create
| | 00:28 | these sort of seams or pleats
or creases here on the seats.
| | 00:32 | So one thing you'll notice is that I modeled
the seats with those seam lines in mind.
| | 00:36 | See how the edge loops run in the same
direction and in the same place where I
| | 00:40 | want those seems to be?
| | 00:41 | By planning ahead, it's going to be a
lot easier to model the fine details.
| | 00:45 | Let's start by selecting some of these
edges that run where I want the seams to be.
| | 00:50 | So for example, down here on the seat,
what I can do is go into Edge mode and
| | 00:54 | then just double-click on an edge loop,
and then what I want to do is deselect
| | 00:59 | some of these edges that I don't really want selected.
| | 01:01 | So I'm just going to hold down the Ctrl
button while I just select some of these
| | 01:06 | edges and deselect them.
| | 01:07 | I'm going to hit 5 to go back in the Shaded mode.
| | 01:10 | All right, it looks pretty good.
| | 01:11 | Now let's go into Edit Mesh and Bevel with options.
| | 01:14 | Now what I want to do is have three
edges in total running along the length of
| | 01:19 | each crease, so one in the middle and one on each side.
| | 01:22 | So I'm going to give it two segments that's
actually going to create three edges in total.
| | 01:27 | All right, go ahead and click Bevel.
So by two segments what it actually
| | 01:30 | means is--let me go out of Smooth mode--
so that means one here and one here,
| | 01:36 | so two segments total.
| | 01:37 | All right, it's getting closer.
| | 01:39 | One thing I want to do is change the offsets.
| | 01:42 | So if you click on offset here and
then hold down the Ctrl button on the
| | 01:46 | keyboard while you also hold down the
middle mouse button, just to drag back and
| | 01:50 | forth, you can change the scale of this.
| | 01:52 | So something around there is probably good.
| | 01:54 | Now let's turn Smooth Preview back on.
| | 01:57 | One thing you'll notice is that we're
getting a weird pinch here and that's
| | 02:00 | because the geometry just looks weird in this area.
| | 02:03 | So what I'm going to do is exit smooth
mode and then I'm just going to go into
| | 02:08 | Edge mode and select this edge right here and collapse it.
| | 02:12 | So it's a little bit cleaner, so now
when we smooth it, it definitely doesn't
| | 02:15 | have that pinch anymore.
| | 02:16 | All right, the last thing we need to do
for this crease is to select this edge
| | 02:20 | in the middle and move it inwards.
| | 02:22 | So I'm going to do the same thing I did before.
I'm going to hit 4 to go into
| | 02:25 | Wireframe mode and just double-click
on that edge and then deselect all the
| | 02:29 | edges that you don't want to have selected anymore.
| | 02:31 | All right, looking good, now I'll just move them down.
| | 02:34 | Great, so let's exit Edge mode and go to
Object mode and just deselect this so I
| | 02:39 | can get a clearer picture of what it's
looking like; and let's compare that with
| | 02:42 | the photo reference really quick just
to see if the crease is spaced correctly
| | 02:46 | and if it's the right depth.
| | 02:48 | So that looks pretty good.
| | 02:49 | All right, go ahead and do the
same thing for the other edges.
| | 02:52 | So it looks like we're skipping
every other edge; so we skip this one and
| | 02:56 | actually we'll need to do one in the
middle as well, and then do one here and
| | 03:00 | here as well; and the same thing on the back of the seat.
| | 03:04 | So you can see here in the reference
we also need to make some in the back.
| | 03:06 | Now there is one trick for the edge in
the middle; let me show you what I mean.
| | 03:11 | If we go into Edge mode and we select
this Edge right here in the middle; in
| | 03:15 | order to get this crease here, if we
try to run Bevel on a border edge,
| | 03:19 | it's not going to work.
| | 03:20 | So we have to go and cut this one manually.
| | 03:22 | So what I want to do is select the
Interactive Split tool, and actually let me
| | 03:27 | hit 1 to go out of Smooth Preview.
| | 03:29 | And all I want to do is come in here
and start cutting some new edges.
| | 03:34 | Now my snap is set a little too high at snapping
before I get too close to that vertex there.
| | 03:40 | So what I want to do is open up my tool
settings here and the Magnet tolerance,
| | 03:44 | let's just bring that down, it was at .8 before.
| | 03:47 | Let me just type in something more like 0.2.
All right, so now I can get closer to
| | 03:52 | that vertex before it snaps.
| | 03:54 | So I will just come in here and manually cut right here.
| | 03:58 | Looks like I need to go into Wireframe
mode for just a moment and cut this last one.
| | 04:03 | Right-click to lock it in.
| | 04:04 | All right I'm going to hit W to exit
that tool and 5, now we're in Shaded mode.
| | 04:10 | So now we can just select this border
edge and do just like we did before. I'm
| | 04:14 | going deselect the edges
that we don't need to move down.
| | 04:18 | Five to go back in the shaded
mode and we'll just move this down.
| | 04:21 | Turn on Smooth Preview and you can
see we got the same result as before.
| | 04:25 | One last thing that I want to mention
is that the seats in the photos have some
| | 04:29 | very organic wrinkle detail.
| | 04:31 | This kind of stuff is best done with a
sculpting program like ZBrush or Mudbox.
| | 04:36 | Getting into this detail would be a
little bit beyond the scope of this
| | 04:39 | course, but if you want to try your
hand at making some wrinkly texture maps
| | 04:43 | or sculpting this detail, feel free to check
out my Mudbox or ZBrush courses on lynda.com.
| | 04:47 | So we've got a little deeper into
the Bevel tools as well as a few more
| | 04:51 | modeling tips and tricks.
| | 04:53 | One thing to remember is that, there's
almost always several different ways to
| | 04:56 | accomplish anything in Maya.
| | 04:58 | The more you practice, the more you'll find
the best way to do all kinds of things.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating curves for the piping| 00:00 | In this video, we're going to start
making this upholstery piping that
| | 00:03 | goes around the seats.
| | 00:05 | Maya has a few tools that make this
kind of modeling a lot easier than it would
| | 00:09 | be if you were to try to manually create it.
| | 00:11 | We'll be using NURBS curves.
| | 00:13 | Now some people find NURBS modeling
to be intimidating or complicated, but
| | 00:17 | don't worry, I'll take it easy and explain everything.
| | 00:20 | We're actually only going to use the
very most basic functions of NURBS.
| | 00:24 | So let's see how it works.
| | 00:25 | So we've got our seat here.
| | 00:27 | We've got the creases like we talked about in the last movie.
| | 00:29 | I also combined the two halves
into one object and merged the same.
| | 00:33 | So now, I want to export this seat into a separate scene.
| | 00:36 | So I'm just going to go to File>Export Selection,
and let's save this with our
| | 00:41 | exercise files>Chapter7>pipingcurves
and I'm just going to call it seat, and
| | 00:48 | files of type, let's make sure this
is set to a Maya Binary. All right!
| | 00:53 | Export Selection.
| | 00:55 | Now let's open up that scene that we just exported;
File>Open Scene>seat.
| | 01:01 | We don't need to worry about saving it.
| | 01:03 | Now with the seat in a separate scene,
I can start drawing some NURBS curves over this seat.
| | 01:07 | Remember when we created new
polygons on top of the concept car?
| | 01:11 | We're going to do something similar here.
| | 01:13 | So let's select the seat.
| | 01:14 | I'm going to hit F to zoom in on it,
and go to Modify>Make Live.
| | 01:19 | Now we can draw curves right on the seat object.
| | 01:22 | I am going to switch to the Curves shelf,
and go ahead and click on the EP Curve tool.
| | 01:27 | Okay.
| | 01:28 | Let's start clicking and
creating a new curve right here.
| | 01:31 | So what I want to do is start here in
the center at the bottom, and then just
| | 01:35 | click every couple of inches or so
here along where the piping should go.
| | 01:40 | And you don't have to worry about it being exact;
you can always edit it later.
| | 01:44 | You might want to switch back to the
photo every once in a while just to get a
| | 01:48 | better sense of where this should go.
Okay, right up along that corner there.
| | 01:51 | You want to stop just before you get to the center line.
| | 01:55 | So I'm going to stop about an inch away from it.
| | 01:57 | Go ahead and hit Enter to lock it in.
| | 02:00 | I want to leave a little gap here, so
that when I mirror this curve over and
| | 02:03 | then connect it, it's going to have some space to connect.
| | 02:06 | Okay. Let's zoom out and see how this looks.
| | 02:09 | Okay, so notice that the curve
got a little wobbly in a few places.
| | 02:11 | We can edit this by going into
the Curves>Control Vertex mode.
| | 02:15 | It's similar to a Vertex mode on a Polygon Object.
| | 02:18 | So in this mode, you can just click on individual
vertices and tweak the shape of the curve.
| | 02:23 | Now because this is a live object,
anywhere we move this control vertex,
| | 02:27 | it's going to stick to the surface.
| | 02:29 | So I'm just going to tweak the
position of a few of these vertices.
| | 02:32 | I'm just going to make the curve a little cleaner.
All right! Good enough for now.
| | 02:36 | Okay, so we can exit Control Vertex mode for this curve.
| | 02:39 | So go ahead and right-click on it, hold
down the right-mouse button and just go
| | 02:42 | to Object mode and then let's select it.
| | 02:44 | Now let's duplicate the curve and mirror it over.
| | 02:47 | Now the curve's pivot point is at
the center of the scene by default.
| | 02:50 | So if you hit W to bring up the Move mode,
you can see that the pivot point for
| | 02:54 | the curve is way over here in the center of the grid.
| | 02:57 | Actually, if I turn on the grid,
you'd be able to see that very clearly.
| | 03:00 | So before we duplicate and mirror this curve, we want
to move its pivot point to the middle of the seat.
| | 03:04 | So I'm going to hold down D to move the pivot point,
and we'll just move it up here on the seat.
| | 03:08 | And notice how it snapped actually to
the seat, that's because it's a live
| | 03:11 | object, so anything we do is going to snap to its surface.
| | 03:15 | Now let's just zoom in and make sure it's
really nice and close to the center here.
| | 03:18 | So holding down D again, I'm just
going to move it to its right in the middle.
| | 03:21 | Okay, now let's duplicate the curve.
| | 03:24 | I'm just going to hit Ctrl+D, now we've got a duplicate.
| | 03:27 | I'm going to switch into Scale mode by hitting R,
and then we'll just scale this over by -1.
| | 03:32 | So notice over here in the channel box,
we can set the scale to -1.
| | 03:37 | The next step is to combine these two curves into one.
| | 03:40 | So I'm going to hold down
Shift and select the original curve.
| | 03:43 | Now let's hold down the spacebar so we
get the hot box, and I want to go into
| | 03:47 | Edit Curves, and then Attach Curves.
| | 03:50 | This makes a new curve that's made up of the original two.
| | 03:53 | Now those first two are still in the scene,
but we don't need them anymore, so
| | 03:57 | you can delete them.
| | 03:58 | So what I'm going to do is hold down
Shift and then just click and drag over
| | 04:02 | everything; and it's not going to
select the seat because that's a live object.
| | 04:06 | It just selected the original two curves.
| | 04:08 | So I've got those selected, and I'm just
going to hit Delete on the keyboard. Okay.
| | 04:12 | So now we've got one curve that is a
combination of the first two curves that we
| | 04:17 | made; and it's looking pretty good
except it's not totally closed up here at the
| | 04:22 | end where we ended making that curve.
| | 04:23 | So what I'm going to do is hold
down the spacebar, go to Edit Curves,
| | 04:27 | and Open/Close Curves.
| | 04:30 | So that just saw that there was
a gap there and closed it. Okay.
| | 04:33 | So that's it for making the curve on the seat.
| | 04:36 | Now you can see that there's a
couple of more curves that need to be made;
| | 04:39 | one here that goes around the back of
the seat, and then one that's a little
| | 04:43 | closer to the front of the back of the seat.
| | 04:46 | So go ahead and make those curves the same way.
| | 04:48 | So in this video, we combined something
that we've done before; making an
| | 04:52 | object live with something new, creating NURBS curves.
| | 04:55 | Of course, there are lots of situations
where you want to snap a NURBS curve to
| | 04:59 | a surface, not just when making furniture.
| | 05:01 | Trying to manually snap a curve to
a surface would be a lot of work.
| | 05:05 | So making the chair live and then
snapping the points to the chair really
| | 05:09 | saved us a lot of time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Extruding the piping| 00:00 | Now that we have some curves drawn, we
need to actually create the piping object.
| | 00:05 | For this, we'll be using NURBS extrusion.
| | 00:07 | This is one of the most powerful
modeling tools available to you in Maya.
| | 00:11 | It's going to be useful for creating
all kinds of shapes like pipes, cables,
| | 00:16 | vines, anything with a tubular shape.
| | 00:18 | Let's see how it works.
| | 00:19 | Now before we get started, I just want
to point out something to watch out for.
| | 00:23 | If you have opened this as a new scene
since the last movie, the chair will no
| | 00:28 | longer be a live object.
| | 00:29 | If you're just continuing on from the
last movie, it will still be a live object.
| | 00:33 | So let's make sure we're all on
the same page and make it not live.
| | 00:37 | So go up to Modify, and if this says,
Make Not Live, go ahead and click it.
| | 00:42 | If it says Make Live, go ahead and leave it the way it is.
| | 00:45 | So now the chair should look just like a plain gray object.
| | 00:49 | So we currently have Curves that define
the path that an extrusion should take,
| | 00:53 | but we don't have an extrusion shape yet.
| | 00:55 | So let's create a NURBS circle.
| | 00:57 | I'm just going to go into the Curves Tab, and click the circle.
| | 01:01 | Now we can just drag this out anywhere.
I'm just going to put it right here.
| | 01:05 | So we've got the circle made.
| | 01:06 | Now we need to Shift+Select one of these NURBS curves.
| | 01:09 | Now it can be kind of hard to select
that curve, because the chair is right
| | 01:11 | there and it accidentally selects the chair.
| | 01:13 | So what I want to do is hit Z and
let's turn off the selection of polygon
| | 01:18 | objects by clicking on this button.
| | 01:20 | Now we can't select the
chair no matter how hard we try.
| | 01:23 | So I'm just going to hold down Shift,
and select one of these NURBS curves.
| | 01:27 | Okay, so we have the NURBS circle selected
first, then we Shift+Selected the NURBS curve.
| | 01:32 | Now hold down the spacebar.
| | 01:33 | Now let's go to Surfaces, click and hold,
and we'll go down to Extrude with options.
| | 01:39 | Now there are a lot of Extrude options.
| | 01:41 | I'll let you in on a little secret.
| | 01:44 | There's a certain combination of
settings that I use almost everytime.
| | 01:47 | NURBS extrusion can be tricky and can
give you weird, unpredictable results.
| | 01:52 | However, if you follow these steps, you
should be good to go for almost any type
| | 01:56 | of tube shape imaginable.
| | 01:58 | So what I do is I leave it set to Tube,
I make sure to turn on At path, and
| | 02:04 | then I turn on Component mode, and then
I go to Polygons and turn that On, and
| | 02:09 | then I turn on Control Points. All right!
Let's click Extrude.
| | 02:12 | Let me zoom out to see what this looks like.
| | 02:15 | All right, a nice piece of piping;
| | 02:16 | now it's a little bit too thick, but
this is going to be really easy to fix.
| | 02:21 | What you want to do is select the original
shape of the extrusion, and what you
| | 02:25 | want to do is just scale it.
| | 02:26 | Let me try to get both the circle and
the piping on screen at the same time.
| | 02:30 | So I'm just going to scale it down, and notice how it just
updates automatically.
| | 02:35 | So this way, it's easy to get just the right size.
| | 02:37 | Let's maybe compare this to the photo.
Okay, pretty close.
| | 02:40 | So let's do the same thing with the other ones.
| | 02:43 | I'm just going to hit Q to make it easier to see my selection.
| | 02:47 | So I've got the circle selected, I'm
just going to hold down Shift and select
| | 02:50 | another curve and then just hit
G to repeat the same extrusion.
| | 02:54 | And let's do that again; select the circle,
select the curve, and hit G. All right!
| | 02:57 | So now let's go ahead and select these pipings.
So we've got this button turned off.
| | 03:02 | Remember, if we turn this off,
then we can't select polygon object.
| | 03:06 | So let's make sure we turn it back on,
and let's go ahead and Shift+Select all
| | 03:10 | of these pipings, and I'm going to hit
3 to turn on Smooth Preview.
| | 03:14 | All right! Let's see what this looks like. Great!
| | 03:16 | Well there's definitely a little bit
of work that needs to be done. Some of
| | 03:19 | these bits of piping are a little bit wobbly, and at
some place they kind of raise up off the surface.
| | 03:24 | We'll look at editing those things in the next movie.
| | 03:26 | For now, I just want to demonstrate
the power of extrusions and also the
| | 03:30 | power of NURBS history.
| | 03:32 | So for example, we can still control
the shape of all of these pipings by
| | 03:36 | simply scaling one object.
| | 03:38 | And even after we reference this
seat into the main car scene, you can
| | 03:42 | still scale that circle, and it will
change the size of the piping for all
| | 03:46 | of the pieces of piping.
| | 03:48 | So NURBS extrusion may seem a little
scary at first, but it's really one of the
| | 03:52 | most powerful modeling tools at your disposal.
| | 03:55 | I use it all the time for making tubes,
tracks, trails, wires, and so on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing the NURBS curves| 00:00 | There are just a few finishing touches to do to the seat.
| | 00:03 | We need to edit the Piping Control
Curves in order to get a better fit.
| | 00:06 | There are just a few things
that can get tricky as you do that.
| | 00:09 | So in this video, I'll give you some tips on that.
| | 00:12 | So we've got the piping created.
It's an object with history, which means
| | 00:16 | that it's being made from two different pieces;
| | 00:18 | the shape curve and the path curve.
| | 00:20 | If we change either one of those curves,
the piping will automatically change shape accordingly.
| | 00:25 | So for example, let's zoom in, and you
can see there are a few places where the
| | 00:29 | piping isn't fitting on the surface of the seat properly.
| | 00:32 | Now what you could do is just select
that piping, and go to Vertex mode and
| | 00:36 | try to edit it in a place, but that defeats
the purpose of having made this out of NURBS.
| | 00:41 | So I'm going to hit Z to undo that.
| | 00:43 | So let's edit the shape of the piping
by tweaking the path curve.
| | 00:47 | Now the first problem you might run
into is that it's hard to select this curve
| | 00:50 | with the piping in the way; you can't really see it.
| | 00:52 | Even if you turn on Wireframe mode, you might
accidentally select the piping instead of the curve.
| | 00:58 | So let's make this easier.
| | 00:59 | Let's go into Show, and let's turn off all polygon objects.
| | 01:04 | So now we can only see the curves in our scene.
| | 01:06 | Now it's really easy to select this. Okay.
| | 01:08 | Now I can go into Control Vertex mode.
| | 01:11 | And now that I'm in this mode, let's go
to Show and let's turn Polygons back on.
| | 01:16 | I'm going to hit 5 to go into Shaded mode as well.
| | 01:19 | So now I can just simply grab that
Control Vertex, and tweak this into place.
| | 01:23 | So go ahead, and go around the seat
and fix up any places where the piping is
| | 01:28 | kind of coming up off the surface like right here.
| | 01:30 | But I'm going to skip ahead for now
and show you a few more editing tricks.
| | 01:34 | You can cycle through the Control Vertices on a curve
by hitting up and down arrows on the keyboard.
| | 01:39 | So let me go into Wireframe
mode to make this easier to see.
| | 01:42 | Let's zoom in on the selected vertex. Okay.
| | 01:44 | So I'm just hitting up right now.
| | 01:46 | And if I hit down on the keyboard,
we cycle around the other way.
| | 01:50 | So this makes it easier to select individual vertices.
| | 01:52 | This comes in really handy.
| | 01:53 | So for example, if you're in Shaded mode,
you can't really see the Vertex that's
| | 01:57 | inside of here because it's hidden by the piping object.
| | 02:00 | So instead of going to Show and turning
off Polygons and then selecting one and
| | 02:05 | then going back to Show and then
turning polygons back on, you can just simply
| | 02:09 | use the arrows keys on the keyboard to cycle through them.
| | 02:11 | One last tip is that you might want to use soft
selection to have a gradual falloff as you edit.
| | 02:17 | So for example, you could just be editing
hese curves and you want to move this one
| | 02:21 | and then you decide you want to move this one a little bit
and then you have trouble selecting the other one.
| | 02:26 | So what you can do instead is hit B
on the keyboard to turn on Soft Select.
| | 02:30 | Now if you're in Shaded mode, you're
not going to see anything right away,
| | 02:33 | but if you hit 4 and you go into Wireframe
mode, you're going to see kind of a falloff;
| | 02:39 | a gradual transition from
yellow selected down to orange.
| | 02:44 | I'm actually going to change the size
of this falloff by holding down B on the
| | 02:47 | keyboard, and then just clicking and dragging.
| | 02:50 | So what you're going to get is a radius of falloff.
| | 02:53 | So let's say I want to affect a lot of vertices along this radius.
| | 02:57 | So I can just set the radius wherever I want,
and now as I move it, I'm going to
| | 03:01 | get a falloff to this transform.
| | 03:02 | So that can be really great for making
broader adjustments to the shape of these curves.
| | 03:06 | So I'm going to turn Shaded mode back on by hitting 5.
| | 03:10 | And now, feel free to just simply
adjust any of the shapes of these curves.
| | 03:14 | If you need to get it to fit the shape
of the seat any better, go ahead and do that.
| | 03:18 | Or if any of these curves are a
little bit wobbly and you want to adjust
| | 03:20 | the shape, this is a great time to do that as well. Okay.
| | 03:23 | So let's get this prepared for
referencing into the main car scene.
| | 03:27 | So what I want to do is deselect piping,
and let's go create a locator.
| | 03:33 | Okay. So I created it over here.
| | 03:34 | I'm actually going to move this closer to the chair.
| | 03:37 | Let's bring it up here.
Okay, that should be good right in there.
| | 03:40 | Now let's say for example you just
selected all of these different objects here.
| | 03:45 | Let's actually grab everything, and
then we'll deselect the locator, and then
| | 03:49 | select it again and let's just parent
everything to the locator by hitting P.
| | 03:53 | Now watch what happens if we just move the locator now.
| | 03:56 | What happens is you're getting a double transform.
| | 03:59 | That's because you're moving the NURBS curves
as well as the piping object.
| | 04:03 | So you only want to move the piping, not the Control Curves.
| | 04:07 | So I'm going to hit Z to undo that.
| | 04:09 | And let's just hit Z a few more times to undo the parenting.
| | 04:12 | So what I want to do is just select the
seat object, and then select the piping object,
| | 04:16 | and then Shift+Select the locator
and hit P. So now, when I move the
| | 04:23 | locator, it leaves those curves behind,
but at least the object is going exactly
| | 04:27 | where I wanted to go.
| | 04:28 | Go ahead and hit Z to undo that. Okay.
| | 04:30 | And finally, let's just change the name of the locator.
| | 04:33 | So go ahead and go into its Attribute
Editor, click on the Locator 1 tab, and
| | 04:37 | let's just call this seat.
| | 04:39 | Now we're ready to save this out.
| | 04:41 | So I've already saved it out into a
location in the exercise files in our
| | 04:47 | version number; and I made a folder called seat.
| | 04:50 | So there's a finished seat right in
this folder; and this is what we're going
| | 04:54 | to reference into the main car scene.
| | 04:56 | So you can go ahead and do that.
| | 04:57 | Just follow the same instructions we
did last time when we referenced the
| | 05:01 | wheels into the car scene.
| | 05:02 | So hopefully, this demonstrates the power of NURBS curves.
| | 05:05 | With just this basic understanding of
how they work, you can create a huge
| | 05:09 | variety of shapes that are based on curves.
| | 05:11 | Then you can edit those shapes by
simply tweaking the curves rather than having
| | 05:15 | to edit the resulting polygon object.
| | 05:17 | I use this type of modeling all
the time to make tubular shapes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the dashboard| 00:00 | Most of the work that will go into modeling
the dashboard and the floor is the
| | 00:03 | same time type of work that we've been doing so far.
| | 00:06 | Blocking in a shape, tweaking it, mirroring it,
using holding edges and so on, nothing new there.
| | 00:11 | However, there are a few little tips and tricks
that I want to touch on that involve the dashboard.
| | 00:16 | Things like transparent objects, modeling
at an angle and some duplication tricks.
| | 00:21 | Let's get down to it.
| | 00:22 | One thing about the Dashboard is
that it's not really visible in any of
| | 00:26 | the blueprint views.
| | 00:27 | For example, the side view, you can't see it,
you can't even really see it in the top view.
| | 00:32 | Let's look at our photo reference.
| | 00:33 | You can tell that it's definitely at a
slight angle, but without the ability to
| | 00:37 | know exactly what angle it is, I just had
to eyeball it and get it as close as I could.
| | 00:43 | Let's go back into Maya, and I'm going
into my Perspective view and let's select
| | 00:47 | the Dashboard and Rotation.
| | 00:49 | So I just had to kind of rotate it
until it looked good. You might notice
| | 00:53 | over here in the channel box, we see
how much it's rotated by, and it's kind of
| | 00:57 | this complicated decimal number.
| | 00:58 | What I wanted to do was rotate it a
very even round number, so that I could
| | 01:04 | easily remember it and it would be easier
to rotate other objects to that same degree.
| | 01:08 | Now let's talk about actually editing objects that are rotated.
| | 01:12 | Let's make a new dashboard control.
| | 01:14 | What I want to do is go into Polygons
and let's make a new cylinder, and what I
| | 01:20 | want to do is make this in the front view.
| | 01:22 | It doesn't really matter exactly where,
I'm just going to kind of draw it out
| | 01:26 | right here and let's give it a little bit of thickness.
| | 01:28 | So in Perspective view, let's just go ahead
and move this roughly into place near the dashboard.
| | 01:33 | It doesn't need to be anywhere very specific.
| | 01:36 | Now what I want to do is rotate this by 10 degrees
so that it matches the rotation of the Dashboard.
| | 01:40 | So you can see I just rotated it a little bit
just to make sure I was on the right axis.
| | 01:45 | And now I'm going to type in 10.
| | 01:47 | Now let's position this on the Dashboard.
| | 01:50 | You might notice that our translation
manipulator isn't aligned with the
| | 01:55 | rotation of the cylinder.
| | 01:57 | It all comes down to how you have your tool settings.
| | 02:00 | So let's go up into our tool Settings here.
| | 02:03 | For the Move tool, there are two basic axes
you could have this on.
| | 02:07 | You can have it on world, so that the
manipulator is aligned with the grid or
| | 02:11 | you can have it on object so that
the manipulator aligns with the object.
| | 02:14 | Now let's switch to Rotation.
| | 02:16 | So you can see it right now, it's aligned to the world.
| | 02:19 | However, if I wanted to align the object
for rotation mode, you actually want to set it to local.
| | 02:24 | Okay. So this is great.
| | 02:25 | Now that we've got all of our manipulators
aligned with the object, it's going
| | 02:29 | to be easier to position this on the Dashboard.
| | 02:31 | Now there is one thing to watch out for
and that is that you can lose this
| | 02:35 | custom orientation if you freeze the object's transforms.
| | 02:38 | Let me show you what I mean.
Go to Modify and let's go down to
| | 02:42 | Freeze Transformations.
| | 02:43 | Now the position, rotation and
scale of the object have been reset.
| | 02:48 | The object still looks rotated, but Maya
no longer thinks of it as being rotated.
| | 02:53 | This may or may not be what you want.
| | 02:55 | If you want to be able to edit an object
relative to its rotated orientation,
| | 02:59 | make sure that you don't freeze its transformations.
| | 03:01 | So I'm just going to hit Z to undo that.
| | 03:04 | Let's do a little bit of modeling
to turn this cylinder into a gauge.
| | 03:07 | Let me get rid of my tool Settings here.
I'll just go into Face mode.
| | 03:12 | I'm just going to select all the faces here.
| | 03:14 | I just want to select all of these faces
and now I'll deselect these right here
| | 03:18 | and it looks like I might still have Soft Select turned on.
| | 03:21 | I'm going to hit B to turn that off and
let's deselect these faces here. Okay. Great!
| | 03:26 | Now what I can do is just extrude this
and let's extrude it out a little bit,
| | 03:31 | I'll go into scale mode, kind of extrude it in
a little bit, and we will do that
| | 03:35 | a couple more times; let's extrude it in here.
I'll do one more extrusion out this way,
| | 03:39 | maybe extrude it in a little bit.
| | 03:41 | Okay, let me go back into Move mode.
| | 03:45 | You'll notice that all of those edits
that we did in Face mode,
| | 03:48 | had the same orientation as our object.
| | 03:51 | So if we were in World mode, all
those extrusions and movements that we made
| | 03:55 | wouldn't have been aligned with the rotation of the objects.
| | 03:57 | We'll just go back into Object mode now.
| | 04:01 | One thing that I want to do is, extract
the current selection into a new object.
| | 04:05 | So let's make sure we've got our polygons menu set here.
| | 04:08 | Let me just go to Mesh>Extract with options.
We want to separate it into a
| | 04:14 | separate object, so we want to keep that
checked, go ahead and hit Extract. Okay.
| | 04:18 | So what I'm going to do is just select
that one object--actually let me get out
| | 04:22 | of the face mode here--and we want to
apply a new material, just like a glass material.
| | 04:27 | You can see I've actually already
got it applied to this glass object here.
| | 04:31 | That lets me see through to any objects that
are behind it, like this needle right here.
| | 04:35 | Let me just show you how I made this transparent material.
| | 04:38 | What I'm going to do is open up my Hypershade,
under Window>Rendering Editors>Hypershade
| | 04:44 | Let's make a new material, so Blinn here;
and what I want to do
| | 04:49 | is go to its Attribute Editor and
let's change the Material name to glass, and
| | 04:54 | then I just want to crank up the Transparency,
and now I can just middle mouse
| | 04:58 | drag the material onto the object.
| | 05:00 | So now you can see it is transparent.
| | 05:03 | I like to apply transparent materials
like this to all transparent objects
| | 05:07 | like glass, like the windshield for example,
and that just lets me see through it as I work.
| | 05:12 | It's just a preference that I have.
| | 05:15 | It's helpful, because with the transparent material applied,
I can see through the glass to any detail inside.
| | 05:20 | So now I can close the Hypershade; and let's
just zoom out and take a look at everything.
| | 05:26 | So for this video, I skipped ahead and
already did some of the things like the
| | 05:30 | floor and the dashboard and the gauges,
because those were made using very basic
| | 05:34 | modeling, things that we've already done before.
| | 05:37 | We did that so that we could learn more about
Object Orientation, Extractions and Transparency.
| | 05:42 | This little collection of tips and tricks should
come in handy when doing all kinds of modeling tasks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Blocking out the steering wheel| 00:00 | The steering wheel on a Shelby Cobra is
of course different from any other steering wheel.
| | 00:05 | Even though the exact steps that
we're going to follow to make it might not
| | 00:09 | apply to steering wheels on the other cars.
| | 00:11 | This is a good opportunity to learn a
few tips and tricks that can be applied to
| | 00:14 | all kinds of other modeling situations.
| | 00:17 | Let's jump into it.
| | 00:18 | So looking at the steering wheel reference,
we see that it's mostly a bunch of
| | 00:21 | cylinder and torus shapes.
| | 00:23 | The only complicated part is these spans
in between the center and the outer rim.
| | 00:29 | So these metal parts are where
we'll spend most of the time.
| | 00:32 | Now it looks like all three of these spans are the same.
| | 00:35 | So I'll just start by making one and
then we can duplicate it for the others.
| | 00:38 | I'll start by building this in a fresh
Maya scene and then we can reference it
| | 00:43 | into the main car scene later.
| | 00:45 | So what I want to do is start with a single plane.
| | 00:48 | So let's make sure our grids are visible;
and I want to go into the front view.
| | 00:54 | Let's go ahead and make a plane and what
I want to do is have it centered so I'm
| | 00:58 | going to hold down X while I just simply drag out of plane.
| | 01:01 | Don't worry if it's the right size or
shape exactly, we can always tweak that later.
| | 01:05 | Now in the channel box for the plane, what I want to do
is just give it some subdivisions to start out with.
| | 01:10 | So I'm just going to go ahead and type 3
into both of these fields.
| | 01:13 | Okay. So let's go ahead and start tweaking this.
| | 01:16 | Now what I want to do is to make sure
I'm doing this symmetrically, so instead
| | 01:20 | of tweaking on one side and trying to
match it on the other side, let's go ahead
| | 01:23 | and set some symmetry settings.
| | 01:26 | So in the Move tool, we can turn on reflection,
underneath the Reflection settings.
| | 01:30 | Reflection axis X seems to be working well.
| | 01:34 | So once you've got this set up, I'm going
to go ahead and close tool settings here.
| | 01:38 | And now, I'm just going to start tweaking
the shapes so that it matches this
| | 01:42 | more or less; so it looks like it tapers,
it's wider here and then it comes down
| | 01:45 | to a narrower width here.
| | 01:48 | So what I'm going to do is pull these in here
and let's see it bring these down a little bit.
| | 01:55 | This is just going to be a little bit
of back and forth tweaking.
| | 01:58 | I don't have an exact plan
of how I'm going to tweak this.
| | 02:00 | I'm just kind of playing it by ear. It
looks like these need to be a little bit wider.
| | 02:05 | So flip it back and forth
between my reference and my model.
| | 02:08 | So this polygon in the middle is
basically going to be this hole right here.
| | 02:12 | So it looks like I need to taper
these vertices in a little closer.
| | 02:15 | I'm going to Vertex mode here
and we'll bring these in tighter.
| | 02:19 | It looks like these could be scooted up more.
| | 02:22 | Now something else I'm noticing is
that there's kind of an angle here, so it
| | 02:25 | seems to come out kind of straight and
then it bends and angles forward
| | 02:28 | and then it comes up straight again.
| | 02:30 | So what we can do for this is just select all of these.
| | 02:33 | Let's go into our perspective view, turn on 5
for shaded mode, and let's just scoot these forward.
| | 02:39 | Okay. Great!
| | 02:40 | So it looks like we have enough detail
to start adding a little bit more polygons.
| | 02:43 | Let's go to Edit Mesh and
let's use the Insert Edge Loop tool and
| | 02:48 | just refine the shape a bit more.
| | 02:50 | So let's' see, I can insert an edge loop there;
and then what I can do is go
| | 02:55 | into scale and kind of flare this out a
little bit, because as you can see here
| | 02:57 | it going to needs the flare out.
| | 02:59 | Then let's see I can also add
another Edge Loop right about here.
| | 03:04 | So the hole is going to come down about this far;
and then I need another Edge Loop right about up here.
| | 03:10 | I want it to be straight here and then start to curve up here.
| | 03:14 | So let's add another edge loop here
and let's see about right here.
| | 03:17 | Let's go into Face mode and delete this one.
| | 03:19 | So now, when I turn on Smooth preview,
you can see it rounds up.
| | 03:23 | Now it's not quite perfect yet.
| | 03:24 | It looks like I should've deleted these as well.
| | 03:27 | Yeah, that's what I wanted. Great!
| | 03:29 | So now, you can see it's pretty much got the right shape.
| | 03:32 | Let's do a couple more things.
| | 03:33 | I want some holding edges.
| | 03:35 | So let's go ahead and make a holding
edge right here so we can get a sharper
| | 03:40 | corner on that, and then here as well.
| | 03:42 | Okay, looking better.
| | 03:44 | Let's actually get a Blinn material on it now.
| | 03:46 | Add a Favorite Material and Blinn.
| | 03:48 | And so this is just going to make it
easier to see any highlights so we can see
| | 03:52 | what the shape is looking like better.
| | 03:54 | All right, let's compare this to a photo.
| | 03:55 | There's still probably a little bit of
tweaking that needs to be done,
| | 03:58 | but this is looking pretty good.
| | 04:00 | So this part is just a lot of old-fashioned,
heavy duty modeling.
| | 04:04 | We'll continue it in the next video.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Duplicating steering wheel parts| 00:00 | Okay. So let's continue making
this Shelby Cobra steering wheel.
| | 00:04 | Now let's look at our photo reference.
| | 00:06 | We need to make a circular object here
in the center in order to gauge exactly
| | 00:11 | the positioning of these different spans.
| | 00:14 | So let's go into our front view and
let's go ahead and make a cylinder.
| | 00:18 | I'm going to hold down X so I
can snap it exactly in the center.
| | 00:22 | Now it doesn't actually matter
how much height we drag up.
| | 00:25 | And let's go into the Perspective view.
| | 00:26 | All right, it looks good.
| | 00:28 | We actually don't need most of these.
| | 00:30 | So I'm just going to select
most of these and just hit Delete.
| | 00:33 | All right, let's go into Object mode now.
| | 00:35 | What I want to do is size and position
both of these objects relative to each
| | 00:39 | other so that they're pretty much accurate.
| | 00:42 | So it looks like maybe this shape
needs to be a little bit smaller in
| | 00:46 | relation to the span.
| | 00:48 | Actually, I don't want to move the cylinder
off of the axis, so I'm going to undo that.
| | 00:52 | I want to move the span closer.
I'll just move the span. Okay.
| | 00:56 | Let's see what happens if
we make some more spans.
| | 00:58 | So what I want to do is move the
pivot point of the span into the center.
| | 01:02 | So let's go into the front view and
let's go into Wireframe mode
| | 01:06 | just so I can see my grid better.
| | 01:08 | I'm going to hold down D so that I move
the pivot point and let's also hold down X,
| | 01:12 | so we snap to the grid and we'll
just snap the pivot point to the center.
| | 01:16 | All right, I'm going to go into the perspective
view now and let's just hit Ctrl+D.
| | 01:20 | I'm just going to make a test duplicate for now
just to see if everything is sized correctly.
| | 01:25 | Let me look at my photo here, I just want
to see how much I should be rotating it.
| | 01:30 | I'm just going to eyeball it for the most part.
| | 01:32 | Let's see how much was that rotated by,
-97 degrees.
| | 01:36 | So let's rotate another one with the same amount.
| | 01:38 | Put 97 degrees in this direction.
| | 01:40 | I just want to get a sense if the
right amount of spacing is in here.
| | 01:45 | So I want to look at this little area
right here and just compare it with this.
| | 01:50 | So it looks like in the photo, there's a little bit
less gap right here than there is right here.
| | 01:56 | So what I might want to do is shrink
this down until I get about the same gap.
| | 02:01 | So let's move this forward so it's more accurate here.
Okay. So that seems pretty close.
| | 02:06 | My rotation looks good, my size, everything
relative to everything else looks good.
| | 02:12 | So what I'm going to do is
just delete this and delete this.
| | 02:15 | And so now, I just know exactly how
much I need to rotate it by and actually
| | 02:19 | have a true instance created.
| | 02:21 | So let's go to Edit>Duplicate Special.
| | 02:25 | Yes, we want an instance.
| | 02:26 | We want just one copy and we
need to rotate it on the blue axis.
| | 02:32 | So that's Z. So we'll just rotate it 98 degrees and apply.
| | 02:39 | And then, we'll do another one, -98 and apply.
| | 02:42 | Oops, I rotated this one instead of
reselecting this one, Apply. All right, great.
| | 02:47 | So in the next video, we'll finish
this up but this is a good stopping place.
| | 02:51 | We've practiced some polygon modeling techniques,
as well as learned a bit more about instancing.
| | 02:55 | It has also been a good opportunity
to practice modeling from observation
| | 02:59 | without having an image plane to guide us exactly.
| | 03:02 | It's always a good idea to keep
your eyeballs sharp by modeling objects
| | 03:05 | like this that requires you to pay attention
to the proportions between different objects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Combining the steering wheel parts| 00:00 | Continuing with the steering wheel, there's a
few more modeling workflow tips to share with you.
| | 00:04 | So we've got these three spans created.
| | 00:07 | Now we need to get them combined
together with a ring that goes around the
| | 00:10 | inside of the grip as you can see in this reference photo.
| | 00:13 | So let's make a ring shape and then we'll attach it
later to the spans that we've already made.
| | 00:18 | So back in Maya, let's go ahead and go
into our front view and we'll just make
| | 00:21 | a ring with the Polygon Pipe tool.
| | 00:23 | I'm just going to hold down X and
click and drag out a polygon pipe.
| | 00:27 | Now a polygon pipe has height,
but it doesn't really matter.
| | 00:30 | We're just going to delete it later, so
you can just make it whatever you want.
| | 00:33 | Also you want to drag out a thickness.
| | 00:35 | You can also edit this after the fact,
so it doesn't really matter.
| | 00:38 | Okay. Let's look at this more closely in the front view.
| | 00:41 | Now what we want is a pipe that has a
number of segments that corresponds
| | 00:45 | with the edges on the spans.
| | 00:47 | So you can see there are four edges on the span.
| | 00:50 | So we need to have four edges on
the polygon pipe that correspond here.
| | 00:54 | So the way we can do that is by going to
the Channel box or the polygon pipe and
| | 00:59 | let's come down to its input.
| | 01:01 | Now in the subdivision axis,
you just click on that and then
| | 01:04 | Ctrl+Middle-click+Drag with the mouse.
| | 01:07 | You can just increase or decrease the number of segments.
| | 01:10 | And one thing you might notice is that
it's all happening around this point.
| | 01:14 | So what we want to do is rotate this object
so that its axis of symmetry is more vertical.
| | 01:19 | I'm actually just going to go into the
Attribute Editor and make sure that's
| | 01:22 | rotated exactly 90 degrees.
| | 01:24 | All right, back into Channel box. So the
subdivision axis, now you can see that
| | 01:30 | it's happening symmetrically along that vertical axis.
| | 01:33 | So I figured out in advance that
this needs to have 65 subdivisions.
| | 01:37 | If we zoom in close here, we can see that
there's an edge corresponding across the span.
| | 01:43 | So each span edge corresponds with an
edge on the polygon pipe and that's the
| | 01:48 | same thing with all the others.
| | 01:49 | This is going to make it really easy to
connect these two objects together. Okay.
| | 01:53 | So now that we've got that made,
let's go into our perspective view.
| | 01:57 | I'm going to go into Face mode and just select all of
these faces that we don't need anymore and delete them.
| | 02:02 | Something else I want to do is get this
aligned with the spans right around here.
| | 02:06 | So let's go out of Face mode and we'll just scoot this forward.
| | 02:11 | Let's go into the side view just so we can get them exact.
| | 02:14 | So back in the Perspective view now
you can see that everything is aligned.
| | 02:18 | Now let's say that we need to
change the thickness of this ring.
| | 02:21 | So I'm going to go into Edge mode and
just double-click on this outside edge.
| | 02:24 | Now, we'll go into Scale mode and
we can change the thickness this way.
| | 02:28 | So let me compare that with our photo reference.
| | 02:30 | Okay, that looks right. I'm just eyeballing it.
| | 02:32 | Now that that is done, let's go out of
Face mode and let's just select all the
| | 02:36 | spans and the ring and combine them into one object.
| | 02:40 | Finally, we need to merge up all these vertices.
| | 02:42 | So let's go into Vertex mode and
go to Edit Mesh>Merge Vertex tool.
| | 02:47 | So with this tool, you can just click
and drag from one vertex to another and
| | 02:51 | it will just snap them together and merge them.
| | 02:53 | Go ahead and do this all the way around.
| | 02:54 | I'm going to hit W to go out of that tool.
| | 02:57 | Go into Object mode and I'm going to
turn on the smooth preview just to make sure
| | 03:00 | everything is merging together.
| | 03:02 | Now it looks like there's a little
bit of border here, that's because the
| | 03:06 | outer ring didn't have the same material.
| | 03:08 | We put a blinn material on those spans
before and we just had a lambert on the
| | 03:12 | outer ring so there's still that difference of material.
| | 03:14 | So I'm just going to hold down the right mouse button,
Assign Existing Material and blinn.
| | 03:18 | So now, there's no gap at all. Okay.
| | 03:20 | So there's still more to do to finish it off,
but at least we've got the basic shape together now.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finishing the steering wheel| 00:00 | The metal part of the steering wheel
is a good example of modeling an object
| | 00:04 | that has uniform thickness.
| | 00:06 | In cases like these, it's a really good
idea to model them as a single polygon
| | 00:10 | thin object and to then add
the thickness once you're done.
| | 00:13 | Let's see how it works.
| | 00:14 | So in order to give this some
thickness, we're going to use Extrude.
| | 00:18 | Go ahead and click on Extrude up here
and you might want to turn off Smooth Preview
| | 00:22 | by hitting 1 on the keyboard;
it's just getting in the way for now. Okay.
| | 00:25 | So let's grab Extrude and just pull
this out to give it some thickness.
| | 00:29 | Now one thing you could do is just
extrude it to the thickness that you want
| | 00:33 | and then go in and Insert Edge Loops in
order to make holding edges so that when
| | 00:37 | you do turn on Smooth, you get a nice and sharp edge.
| | 00:41 | Like for example, if we look in here, I'm going to zoom in.
| | 00:44 | You can see that there's a nice
sharp edge around the entire edge here.
| | 00:47 | However, if we do it that way, it's
going to be a lot of work because there are
| | 00:51 | a lot of edges to add holding edges to.
| | 00:53 | So instead of doing that, let's go
back into un-smooth mode; instead of
| | 00:58 | extruding the full thickness right way,
let's just extrude just a little bit for
| | 01:02 | a holding edge and then I'm
going to hit G to extrude again.
| | 01:05 | Now let's get our full thickness and
then hit G to extrude one more, little
| | 01:10 | tiny time for an extra holding edge.
| | 01:11 | I'm going to hit W to go out of the Extrude mode.
| | 01:15 | Let's go back into Object mode, deselect everything
and now let's turn on Smooth preview.
| | 01:20 | Okay. Great!
| | 01:20 | So now you can see we've got that nice, crisp edge.
| | 01:23 | Now let's say for example, that we
didn't quite get the thickness right on this.
| | 01:27 | Let's say it was a little too thick or too thin.
| | 01:29 | So what we can do is go into our object
here and let's scroll down in our inputs.
| | 01:35 | Now there's going to be three Extrude faces.
| | 01:38 | Let's pick the one in the middle.
| | 01:39 | This is the extrude that we did to
give the main thickness to the object.
| | 01:43 | Let's scroll down until we find the Local Translate Z.
| | 01:47 | What I want to do is to just click on
Local Translate Z, and now let's hold
| | 01:51 | down Control on the keyboard and then middle-mouse
click and drag in order to change the thickness.
| | 01:56 | Now you can see we can change that
thickness after the fact without changing
| | 02:00 | the amount of holding edge on the
last extrude that we did. Okay.
| | 02:04 | So let's finish this wheel off with adding the wood grips.
| | 02:08 | So let's zoom out here in our photo reference.
| | 02:10 | We need to make some objects that go
around the outer ring. Instead of
| | 02:14 | creating some new objects from scratch, let's base
these off of things that we've already got made.
| | 02:20 | Now these wood parts kind of sandwich
the metal ring. So what we can do is
| | 02:25 | base if off of what we already have.
| | 02:27 | Now I'm going to hit 1 to go out of
Smooth mode and let's duplicate this object.
| | 02:31 | So I'm going to hit Ctrl+D and then
let's hit Ctrl+H to hide the duplicate.
| | 02:35 | So we've got two versions of the steering wheel,
one of them is hidden right now.
| | 02:39 | So what I want to do is select just the faces
that are going to be part of that wood handle.
| | 02:45 | So I'm going to go into Face mode and let's click 1
and then double-click the one right next to it.
| | 02:49 | That's going to select an entire ring of polygons.
| | 02:52 | Let's go around to the other side and do the same thing.
| | 02:55 | I'm going to hold down Shift and click once and
then keep holding down Shift and double-click.
| | 03:00 | Let's invert that selection by holding down Shift
and then just dragging over the entire wheel.
| | 03:05 | Now we've selected everything except
what we want to keep, go ahead and hit
| | 03:08 | Delete on the keyboard.
| | 03:09 | Let's look again at the photo reference
to see what we want to make.
| | 03:12 | I think there's a better photo that's
going to show me exactly what I want.
| | 03:16 | I'm going to try to find one where we can see the
steering wheel a little bit more from the side maybe.
| | 03:21 | Okay. It might be a little bit hard to see
but actually, what we need to make is
| | 03:24 | something that kind of fits on the metal part flat
and then it has kind of just a rounded curve to it.
| | 03:30 | We might be able to see it here,
let's try to zoom in. Okay.
| | 03:34 | You can kind of see it there; where it meets the metal
is flat and then it's just almost like a hemisphere,
| | 03:39 | it's just rounded. So what we can do
is just extrude this now.
| | 03:43 | Let's come up here where we can see the
manipulator and what I want to do is the
| | 03:47 | same thing as before, just extrude a
little bit to give us a holding edge and
| | 03:51 | then I'll extrude once more by hitting G
on the keyboard and let's turn on
| | 03:56 | Smooth preview just to see how that looks. Okay.
| | 03:58 | So I want to keep that smooth preview
on as I extrude it a little bit more.
| | 04:01 | All right, it looks pretty good.
| | 04:02 | So what I'm going to do is go out of the Extrude mode
and now let's bring back that metal part.
| | 04:07 | So go to Display, Show All and let's see
how this turned out. Okay. Great!
| | 04:12 | So we've got the metal part and it's sandwiched
now between two other parts. Okay.
| | 04:17 | So that's all of the complicated
parts of the steering wheel out of the way.
| | 04:20 | Of course, there are other parts to be
done for example, the steering column
| | 04:24 | right here, but that's just some simple
cylinders and you just tweak the shapes.
| | 04:28 | And then, there's probably a little
bit of work that needs to be done here on
| | 04:30 | the horn part of it, just to make it a
little bit nicer, but that also involves
| | 04:34 | the same type of modeling we've been doing so far.
| | 04:37 | So I'll just leave that up to you.
| | 04:38 | And then, once that's done, all you
have to do is create a locator, and parent
| | 04:43 | everything to that locator, and then
reference that into your main car scene,
| | 04:48 | just like we did with the wheels.
| | 04:49 | So we've made the steering wheel
using a few more modeling tricks.
| | 04:52 | What we've done in this video is the
kind of thing that I do all the time.
| | 04:56 | Piecing together different parts and using
the existing parts to make new parts.
| | 05:00 | It really saves time over creating each part individually.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling the shifter| 00:00 | Some of the parts of the shifter assembly
are fairly straightforward to model,
| | 00:04 | but there's also a few other parts that
can be tricky. such as the indentations
| | 00:08 | in the base where the screws attach
and also the bend and the shifter.
| | 00:11 | I'm going to cover yet more modeling
tips and tricks that should come in handy
| | 00:15 | when modeling all sorts of things. So let's do this.
| | 00:18 | Okay. So our exercise file starts out
with the easy stuff done already.
| | 00:22 | I've already started building the shifter
in a new scene and then we're going to
| | 00:26 | reference it into the car scene just
like we've done several times already.
| | 00:29 | First, let's look at the base
where the screws will be placed.
| | 00:32 | Now in the reference photo, we can see
that there should be some indentations here.
| | 00:37 | So let's go in into Maya and click on this base object.
| | 00:40 | So you might notice that when I built
this polygon pipe, I built it with the
| | 00:44 | right amount of subdivisions
so that it's pretty much square.
| | 00:47 | Each Polygon is pretty close to square.
| | 00:49 | So what I want to do is go into Face mode,
and I just want to select some faces.
| | 00:54 | Actually, you might notice that I've
got Reflection turned on, so let's go into
| | 00:58 | our tool Settings and turn on that off, Reflection, off.
| | 01:03 | So now I just want to select four different
polygons that are evenly spaced.
| | 01:07 | So let's go into Extrude in order to create this indentation.
| | 01:11 | In Extrude mode, we can just grab the
manipulator and move it up or down or
| | 01:14 | whatever we need to do.
| | 01:16 | We also want to shrink it a little bit.
| | 01:17 | So go ahead and click on any one of
the cubes, and now let's click on the cube
| | 01:21 | in the middle and we can shrink all of these the same.
| | 01:24 | Let's see how this looks if we turn on Smooth preview.
| | 01:26 | I'm going to go ahead and deselect everything.
| | 01:28 | Now we can see it more clearly.
| | 01:31 | So it's not looking too bad.
| | 01:32 | We've got some indentations now,
however, it's a little bit soft and we have
| | 01:36 | some weird pinching here at
the edges of each indentation.
| | 01:38 | So let's take care of that.
| | 01:40 | Let's go back into un-smooth mode and
I actually want that indentation to come
| | 01:45 | down a little bit lower, so I'm just
going to select all of these, hit W to go
| | 01:49 | into Move mode and just scoot that down a little bit.
| | 01:51 | So now, let's deal with that weird
pinching that we were seeing; and that's
| | 01:54 | caused by this extra geometry at the corners.
| | 01:57 | So you notice how there's a single vertex right here.
| | 02:00 | It has five edges going into it and
when that happens right at the edge right
| | 02:03 | here, it causes weird things to happen.
| | 02:05 | So let's create some more polygons
that kind of act as a buffer between the
| | 02:09 | edge and this extrusion.
| | 02:10 | So what I want to do is go into Face
mode, let's just click one, and then
| | 02:15 | Shift+double-click one next to it, and then
we'll do the same thing on the inner ring.
| | 02:18 | Just Shift, click one, and Shift+double
click another and let's extrude these. Okay.
| | 02:24 | This should give us a good buffer area
between the indentions and the edge of the object.
| | 02:28 | So let's just go into Object mode
and turn on Smooth preview again. Okay.
| | 02:32 | You can see that's looking much better.
| | 02:34 | So let's move on now to the shaft of the
shifter, and let's look at the photo reference.
| | 02:39 | You can see it has got this bend to it.
| | 02:41 | It's straight here and then it bends at
an angle and then it goes straight again.
| | 02:44 | You can't really see it so well but believe me, it does.
| | 02:47 | Now there are lots of ways that you could do this.
| | 02:50 | You could make a NURBS Curve path and
you could extrude a circle along that path
| | 02:55 | or you could use a bend deformer.
| | 02:57 | However, let's try a technique that
we haven't used before in this course.
| | 03:00 | So let's break this cylinder into three pieces.
| | 03:02 | I'm going to go into my Insert Edge Loop
tool and let's just cut this into a few pieces.
| | 03:09 | Let's turn off the Smooth Preview here
so we can see exactly what this is doing.
| | 03:13 | So I just want to cut a little bit of a
gap in here and I'm going to select all
| | 03:17 | of these rings and polygons
and delete them and here as well.
| | 03:21 | It might be a little confusing while I'm
doing this at first, but it will all make sense.
| | 03:24 | So what I want to do is put a little bit of a bend in this.
| | 03:29 | So I'm going to offset this a little bit.
| | 03:31 | Let's look at our reference here. Okay.
| | 03:33 | It looks like a good amount of tops headed by.
| | 03:35 | And then this piece that's angled might
need to be a little bit shorter, so I'm
| | 03:39 | just going to scale that up a little bit.
| | 03:41 | Now let's rotate it and we'll just
move it into position here and actually
| | 03:45 | let's move both of these down.
| | 03:47 | I think this space needs
=to be a little bit longer.
| | 03:50 | I'm looking at the distance from here to here.
| | 03:52 | It looks like it needs to be longer,
so I'm just going to go into Vertex mode
| | 03:56 | and bring this down. Okay.
| | 03:58 | So we've got the angles in here,
now we need to get the actual bend.
| | 04:01 | I'm just going to make a little bit of
an extra tweak here, maybe scoot this
| | 04:04 | one over a bit more.
| | 04:06 | So now, let's go into Edge
mode and fill in these gaps.
| | 04:09 | What I want to do is double-click on
an edge here and then double-click on a
| | 04:14 | corresponding edge while
holding down the Shift button.
| | 04:17 | Now let's go into Edit Mesh
and let's get the Bridge tool.
| | 04:20 | So you can see this fills in the gap.
| | 04:23 | Now we need to fix some of these settings here.
| | 04:26 | The Curve Type, we want to change to Blend
and the Divisions, it's a little bit too much.
| | 04:31 | We probably don't need that many.
| | 04:33 | I'm going to type in 3, so you can try it with 2. Okay.
| | 04:36 | Let's do the same thing on the other side.
| | 04:39 | I'm just going to double-click one of
these edges and then Shift+double-click
| | 04:42 | the corresponding side and I'm going
to hit G to repeat the last function.
| | 04:46 | And then the same thing, let's change
it from Linear to Blend and then the
| | 04:50 | Divisions, let's try a 3. Okay, good.
| | 04:52 | So let's go out of Edge mode.
| | 04:54 | We've got the same thing going on
that we did with the steering wheel where
| | 04:57 | when we created this bridge, it
actually applied the default lambert material
| | 05:01 | rather than the blinn.
| | 05:02 | So I'm just going to hold down the
right mouse button, go to Assign Existing
| | 05:05 | Material and put the blinn on it.
| | 05:07 | Now let's turn on Smooth preview. Okay.
| | 05:09 | So we've got that nice angle going on.
| | 05:12 | Finally, I just want to adjust the
position of this shifter now so it aligns
| | 05:15 | with the center of the grid.
| | 05:17 | So let's select it and go into the top view.
| | 05:19 | So this part right here is actually
what needs to be aligned with the center
| | 05:23 | because that's what's going to
go into the rubber shifter guard.
| | 05:26 | So let's just go into Move mode and
just move it until this circle shape is
| | 05:31 | pretty much over the center and we can
move it up a little bit too because the
| | 05:35 | rubber shifter guard is going
to kind of fill in this area.
| | 05:38 | Okay, so again, these are just some
good old-fashioned, hard surface modeling
| | 05:41 | techniques that I use everyday for all sorts of things.
| | 05:44 | The more you practice them, the more
you'll get a sense of which tools and
| | 05:48 | techniques to use in which situations.
| | 05:50 | You'll also develop your own style
of modeling because there's rarely one
| | 05:53 | right way to do anything.
| | 05:55 | You may find that you prefer some
techniques over others, and that's great.
| | 05:59 | Whatever works for you is what you should do.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making the flexible shifter guard| 00:00 | Another big thing to do with the
shifter is that we need to make this
| | 00:03 | flexible rubber guard.
| | 00:05 | Now it seems like it might be a
very complex object to model, but if we
| | 00:08 | break down its structure and build it in
steps, it actually is not going to be too bad.
| | 00:13 | Now one way to think about the guard
in a more simplified way is to imagine
| | 00:16 | what it would look like if it weren't
being bent forward into the side, if it
| | 00:21 | were pointing straight up in a neutral position.
| | 00:23 | The overall shape would be based on a cone.
| | 00:25 | So let's make a cone to start.
| | 00:27 | Let's make sure we've got our Polygons menu
set here and I'm just going to click on the Cone.
| | 00:31 | And now, I want to hold down X on the
keyboard and click and drag at a cone shape.
| | 00:36 | So first, we can just drag out the size,
roughly about the same size as the base is good.
| | 00:41 | And now, we just click and drag out a height.
| | 00:43 | It doesn't have to be exact, we can always adjust it later.
| | 00:46 | Now we need to create these wavy rib shapes.
| | 00:49 | As it is, we don't have enough Polygons
to work with, so let's set the
| | 00:52 | Subdivisions on the Axis and the height to 12.
| | 00:55 | So in our Attribute Editor, let's go to
the polyCone node and let's set the
| | 01:01 | Subdivisions Height to something like 12.
| | 01:06 | And then something else that's just my
preference is, I want to decrease the
| | 01:09 | number of Subdivisions on the Axis;
it just seems too much to me.
| | 01:13 | I think 12 looks good there too.
| | 01:15 | Let's look at our photo again.
| | 01:16 | So if we count the number of ribs here,
there are one, two, three, four, five.
| | 01:20 | So let's come in here and let's
select five rings of Polygons.
| | 01:24 | So I'm going into Face mode and click
one and Shift+click the one next to it
| | 01:28 | or Shift+double-click.
| | 01:29 | And then we're just going to do the
same thing going up this object,
| | 01:33 | here's four and here's five.
| | 01:34 | We're actually going to
delete the top a little bit later.
| | 01:37 | Okay, so let's extrude these out, go
ahead and click on Extrude and let's grab
| | 01:42 | this manipulator and just pull it out a little bit.
| | 01:44 | I'm going to turn on the Smooth Preview
to get a better idea what this is going
| | 01:49 | to look like as I pull this out.
| | 01:50 | All right, not too bad, let's see what happens
if I try to pull this down a little bit as well.
| | 01:54 | I'm just going to go into Move
mode and just pull this down.
| | 01:57 | Now I'm going to delete
some unnecessary Polygons.
| | 02:00 | So let's just select these Polygons on
the top here and hit Delete on this and
| | 02:04 | then on the under side, there are
some Polygons that we don't need.
| | 02:07 | I'm just going to select the big
one here and hit Delete. All right!
| | 02:10 | One last thing here is that I want to
have a little bit of a nicer edge right here.
| | 02:14 | So I'm just going to select this ring of edges
and we'll just extrude this inward a little bit.
| | 02:18 | I'm just going to go right into Scale
mode and just scale it in and then hit G
| | 02:24 | to repeat that and we'll just push that down a little bit.
| | 02:26 | So now we've got kind of nice little lip
where the shifter can stick into. All right!
| | 02:31 | So let's go into Object mode and just
take at look at it and see how it looks.
| | 02:36 | All right, not too bad.
| | 02:38 | Now depending on how this is going to
be used, you might want to stop here.
| | 02:41 | For example, if the Shifter is going
to be used in an animation, you would
| | 02:45 | want to leave it in a neutral shape
like this so that a technical director
| | 02:49 | could rig it for animation.
| | 02:51 | However, if you're just going to be
rendering some still images, you might
| | 02:54 | want to modify the shape, so that it has a bend
to it like you can see in the reference image.
| | 02:58 | You might want to save out two versions
of Shifter, one in neutral position like
| | 03:02 | this and a separate version that's bent.
| | 03:05 | So let's actually bend it now.
| | 03:07 | We're going to rotate the top of the
guard with soft selections so that there's
| | 03:10 | a nice gradual falloff.
| | 03:12 | So let's select our objects, and I want
to come in here and let's go into Face
| | 03:16 | mode and I'm just going to click one of
these faces, double-click the one next
| | 03:20 | to it so we get a nice ring there.
| | 03:21 | Let's also go into Move mode and I'm
going to hit B on the keyboard in order to
| | 03:25 | turn on soft select.
| | 03:27 | So we need to change the range of the
soft select, so it goes down closer to the
| | 03:30 | bottom so hold down B and click and drag.
| | 03:33 | It'll spring that down until it's
just about at the bottom. All right!
| | 03:36 | So let's go into Rotate mode to bend this.
| | 03:38 | I just want to see what happens here
if we bend this and we're just going to
| | 03:42 | move it and just kind of bend this
into position, try rotating a little bit
| | 03:46 | more, let's see, let's rotate it from this view as well.
| | 03:49 | Let's put a little bend in it,
push it off to the side a little bit.
| | 03:53 | Okay, so let's go to the object mode
and see how that looks. All right!
| | 03:55 | It looks pretty good, now we just
need to move this Shifter into position.
| | 03:59 | So this is going to take just a
little bit of tweaking; there's no exact or
| | 04:03 | precise way to do this. You just have
to kind of move it until it looks good.
| | 04:06 | Okay, so like you should be doing with
most objects when you're done with them,
| | 04:09 | you just want to delete history; so
we'll go to Edit>Delete by Type>History and
| | 04:14 | we can also freeze the transformation,
so that locks in any of the rotates and
| | 04:18 | just moves and scales that we have done.
| | 04:20 | So go to Modify>Freeze Transformations
and then we'll create a locator and let's
| | 04:25 | scale that up, so we can see it better.
You just want to parent everything
| | 04:28 | to that locator and then you'll reference
it into your main car scene just like
| | 04:31 | we did with the wheels.
| | 04:33 | I'll let you handle that on your own.
So in this video we've learned a few more
| | 04:36 | tools and techniques; but maybe even
more importantly, we've practiced ways of
| | 04:40 | thinking about modeling.
| | 04:42 | We broke the Shifter Guard down
into simpler shapes that we could
| | 04:44 | approach systematically.
| | 04:46 | Rather than getting overwhelmed with
one big complicated shape, we analyzed it
| | 04:50 | and looked for ways to take it one step at a time.
| | 04:53 | And that's a big part of modeling that goes
beyond simply knowing how the tools work.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling the screw head| 00:00 | So the last thing we need to do to
this shifter is to model the screws and
| | 00:04 | get them into place.
| | 00:05 | Now screws are one of those things
that you can model once and then just put
| | 00:09 | them in a folder somewhere,
and reuse them anytime you want.
| | 00:12 | Just import them into any scene and you have
got instant screws that you can use anytime.
| | 00:16 | One nice thing about screws is that
you can usually just model the head of it
| | 00:20 | and ignore the rest. Okay.
| | 00:22 | So we have our shifter here in this scene.
| | 00:24 | Let's just make a box.
| | 00:25 | I want to build it on the grid and I
want to hold down X just to make sure I'm
| | 00:30 | snapping to the grid and
getting a perfect square shape.
| | 00:32 | All right, so let's just drag up the height.
| | 00:34 | Okay, so we want the screw to be kind of
rounded on the top, but kind of flat at the base.
| | 00:39 | Let's add a holding edge.
| | 00:41 | Go to Edit Mesh> Insert Edge Loop tool and
we'll add a holding edge down here. All right!
| | 00:45 | So it looks like our Soft Select is still on.
| | 00:48 | I'm just going to hit B to turn that off.
| | 00:50 | Now let's do Smooth Preview and see what we get.
| | 00:53 | Okay, not too bad, basic screw head shape.
| | 00:56 | Looks like we could bring the top down a
little bit, maybe shrink it a little bit too.
| | 01:00 | Okay, so we need a little bit more
detail in this screw head in order to model
| | 01:04 | that notch that the flathead
screw driver would go into.
| | 01:07 | So instead of using Smooth Preview,
let's actually subdivide the model.
| | 01:11 | Let's click on Smooth and actually in those,
I had one polygon selected so it smooths just that one.
| | 01:16 | So if you run into that problem, just
make sure you're on Objects mode and
| | 01:20 | smooth the entire object.
| | 01:21 | Let's go ahead and smooth it one more time.
| | 01:23 | Now we have some Faces that can be
used to model that flathead notch.
| | 01:28 | So what I want to do is select
some faces where that notch would be.
| | 01:31 | Let's make sure we're in Face mode and
let's go into our Front View. I'm just
| | 01:37 | going to drag a selection over some of
these faces here, and what I'm going to
| | 01:41 | do is extrude these.
| | 01:42 | So let's extrude them downwards.
| | 01:44 | I'm just going to go right into Move mode
and just move them down, then also I'm
| | 01:48 | going to go into Scale and let's
scale them until they're flat. All right!
| | 01:51 | Let me just take a look at this; see how it is.
| | 01:53 | I'm going to hit F to zoom right in on it. Okay, great.
| | 01:55 | Now we need to flatten up the walls, so
you can see it's kind of wobbly right here.
| | 01:59 | So what, I'm going to do is select these
faces all along here and actually let's
| | 02:04 | turn on Reflection mode so we can
do the other side at the same time.
| | 02:08 | Let's go into our tool Settings and turn on Reflection.
| | 02:11 | It's reflecting correctly because we
can see the dots here on the other side.
| | 02:15 | I'm just going to scale this and flatten it out.
| | 02:17 | Okay, it looks good.
| | 02:19 | So this notch looks a little wide.
| | 02:20 | So what I'm going to do is go into Move
mode and just tighten to this up a bit.
| | 02:24 | Okay, let's see what this looks like in Object mode.
| | 02:27 | All right, not too bad.
| | 02:28 | Now I'm not going to worry about
getting obsessively detailed about this screw
| | 02:32 | model because usually, you
never see a screw close up.
| | 02:35 | It's one of those things that's always
seen very small and from a distance.
| | 02:39 | I'm not going to worry about making it perfect.
| | 02:41 | Let's get this screw into place.
| | 02:43 | We also need to make some copies of it.
| | 02:45 | I'm going to get the tool Settings out of the way
and let's just bring this closer over to our shifter.
| | 02:51 | What I want is four of them, so I want to show
you a little trick to get four of them placed.
| | 02:56 | Let's go to Edit>Duplicate Special, with
options, and I want to make some instances.
| | 03:02 | Let's go ahead and clear all the settings out
so we're not accidentally rotating or scaling or anything.
| | 03:07 | So let's turn Instance on and we
want three copies or four in total
| | 03:11 | and Duplicate Special.
| | 03:12 | So now that we have got some instances,
let's get them placed.
| | 03:15 | Something that's going to make this
easier is if I just select all these screws.
| | 03:19 | I am going to rotate them, so
I can see their bottom side up.
| | 03:22 | Okay, let me just position my
camera so I can see this more clearly.
| | 03:25 | So here is a little a trick we're going to do.
| | 03:27 | Let's go into Modify and click the Snap Together tool.
| | 03:30 | So what you do with this tool is you
just click on one object and then you
| | 03:34 | just click where you want it to go on
a different object and hit Enter and it
| | 03:38 | snaps right into place.
| | 03:39 | Now it's a little too big, we'll deal with that later.
| | 03:41 | Go ahead and hit G to repeat the
last function and do the same thing.
| | 03:45 | Just click in the middle of the bottom
of the screw and then just click again to
| | 03:48 | tell it where to go and hit Enter to lock it in.
| | 03:51 | Do that two more times and enter.
| | 03:54 | So let's get them scaled appropriately.
| | 03:56 | Now if we just scale one of them, it
only does one of them, but if we go into
| | 04:00 | Face mode, in effect its component,
then we can scale all of them together.
| | 04:05 | Let's see how this is looking.
| | 04:07 | Okay, not too bad; we'll just move it down a little bit,
too, get it fit right nice inside of that depression;
| | 04:13 | maybe scale it just a bit more.
Okay, let's see how this looks.
| | 04:17 | All right, not too bad and maybe just a little bit
of tweaking to get this fitting here really nice.
| | 04:22 | Then we'll just rotate each one by a
different amount just to make it look natural.
| | 04:26 | All right! Let's see. Looks great.
| | 04:28 | Now all we have to do is parent these
screws because notice we have the Locator
| | 04:33 | here; if we move this, the screws aren't going along.
| | 04:36 | So we'll just select each screw, just
holding down Shift and select each one and
| | 04:40 | then Shift+click the base and hit P to parent that.
| | 04:44 | Okay, so everything's moving together now.
So now you want to save this out.
| | 04:48 | Go to File>Save Scene As, and we'll go
into our Maya Version number; and I've
| | 04:54 | already got a folder here, Alt shifter
and I've already got a version saved out.
| | 04:58 | So I'm not going to save it, but if you
need to do that, go for it. Then you
| | 05:02 | can just reference that into your main car scene.
| | 05:05 | So we looked at making a screw, but we
also looked at a really easy way to make
| | 05:09 | duplicate copies of an object
and stick them on to a surface.
| | 05:13 | This type of stuff comes in handy
doing all kinds of different modeling.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Modeling the Finishing TouchesMaking the roll bars| 00:00 | The rollbar is an interesting object to model.
| | 00:02 | It's basically two pieces of metal tubing
that have been welded together.
| | 00:06 | This is going to involve a little bit of polygonal surgery.
| | 00:10 | Once you learn these techniques,
you'll use them when modelling all kinds of
| | 00:13 | welded things like bicycle frames and machinery.
| | 00:15 | All right, let's look at our exercise file.
I've already created a few pieces to start with.
| | 00:20 | So for one, the main part of the rollbar,
I just created this torus.
| | 00:24 | I lined it up with the blueprints,
and I also changed the number of height
| | 00:27 | subdivisions from the standard 20 to 10,
just to make it a little bit easier to work with.
| | 00:33 | Then looking at the supporting brace,
I also set the number of subdivisions
| | 00:38 | to 10 and then I just placed this
wherever it should go, just lined it up with
| | 00:42 | the reference here.
| | 00:44 | You can see that our torus did a really
good job of getting the shape of the top
| | 00:48 | of the rollbar where it's a really nice half circle.
Let's get the bottom half.
| | 00:52 | I'm going to go into Face mode,
and just delete the bottom half here.
| | 00:58 | Now to get the straight part, I'm just
going to go into the Edge mode and let's
| | 01:02 | double-click some edges here and hold
down Shift and double-click some more and
| | 01:06 | we'll just extrude them down.
| | 01:07 | Now you might think that you could
just grab this arrow right here, but it's
| | 01:11 | not going to extrude both sides the same way.
| | 01:12 | I'm going to hit Z to undo that and
we'll just into Move mode with W.
| | 01:17 | We'll just move this down.
| | 01:18 | Now one thing to look out for is that in your
tool Settings, you might have this set to World.
| | 01:24 | So if this is on World, and if you try to move
it down, it's not going to be at the same angle.
| | 01:28 | So make sure have an Object
and we'll just move that down.
| | 01:32 | Okay, let's close tool Settings now.
| | 01:33 | Now for the surgical part, we need to
cut some edges on these objects so that
| | 01:38 | the two can be sort of welded together.
| | 01:40 | So what I want to do is go into the
Interactive Split tool and we'll just cut
| | 01:45 | some edges all the way around here.
I'm just going to cut here and here.
| | 01:49 | I just want to leave a little bit of gap, as well.
| | 01:52 | Now this edge right here already
kind of goes where I want it to go.
| | 01:56 | I'm just going to click here and
then right-click to lock it in.
| | 01:59 | Then I'm going to hit W just to
get out of the Interactive Split tool.
| | 02:03 | Now let's just go and finish the rest up;
right-click to lock it in.
| | 02:07 | Now let's get out of the Interactive
Split tool again and let's just delete all
| | 02:11 | of these faces right here.
| | 02:12 | All right, so now, let's get the support brace lined up.
| | 02:17 | I'm going to get out of Face mode here for the rollbar.
Let's select this here now.
| | 02:21 | What I want to do is go into Vertex mode.
| | 02:24 | Let's just look at this in wireframe
and let's just scoot this down out of the
| | 02:28 | way so we can see it better.
| | 02:29 | Also, something I want to do is just
get rid of all of these faces right here.
| | 02:33 | Let's go into Face mode and I'll just
select all of these and then Ctrl+select
| | 02:37 | the ones that I don't want to delete
and let's hit Delete. Okay, great.
| | 02:40 | Now let's go into Vertex mode
and make sure this is lining up.
| | 02:44 | We'll just move this forward until we get kind of a gap.
| | 02:48 | It's about the same as the size of
the weld marks we see right here.
| | 02:51 | I just want to leave a little gap like that.
| | 02:53 | Now let's combine these two objects into one.
| | 02:56 | Go ahead and click one, Shift+click the other
and go to Mesh>Combine.
| | 03:00 | Now let's fill in this gap.
| | 03:02 | Let's use the Append Polygon tool.
| | 03:04 | For this, go into Edit Mesh and click Append to Polygon tool.
| | 03:07 | Now with this, what we want to do is
click one edge on one side and then a
| | 03:11 | corresponding edge on the other
side and hit Enter to lock it in.
| | 03:15 | Now we'll just hit G to do the
same thing all the way around.
| | 03:18 | Now we could have used the Bridge tool
like we've done before, but I just want
| | 03:21 | to try out different techniques, different tools.
| | 03:24 | The more you learn the more options you have.
| | 03:27 | All right! Let's zoom out and see what this
looks like with Smooth Preview turned on.
| | 03:30 | Let's compare that to the photo.
| | 03:32 | All right, not too bad.
| | 03:34 | It looks like we could put a little bit more detail in here.
| | 03:37 | Let me zoom in on the photo to get
that welding mark in there better.
| | 03:41 | So what I want to do, go out of Smooth
Preview mode and let's insert some edge loops;
| | 03:46 | one right there for a holding
edge and another one right there.
| | 03:49 | Okay, let's see how this looks now.
| | 03:50 | All right, even better.
| | 03:52 | Let's zoom out now.
| | 03:54 | Let's look at the photo reference again.
| | 03:55 | I'll just zoom out here.
| | 03:57 | You can see that there are a few more pieces to be done.
| | 04:00 | There's a little support brace here and then
there are little things that goes around here.
| | 04:04 | However, those can be done with the
same basic polygon modeling techniques that
| | 04:07 | we've covered already.
| | 04:08 | So there's really nothing new there.
| | 04:10 | I'll let you handle that on your own. All right!
| | 04:12 | So in this video, we've practiced joining
together two objects and making them
| | 04:16 | look like they were welded together,
as well as a few other tips and tricks.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using bump maps to create headlight detail| 00:00 | Sometimes an object will have a lot of detail
that would take a long time to painstakingly model.
| | 00:06 | In times like those, you may be able to
use a bump map to simulate that detail
| | 00:10 | rather than modeling it.
| | 00:12 | One of those cases is with the headlight.
| | 00:15 | It would take a lot of work to model
in those weird refractors in the glass.
| | 00:19 | Since these bumps are on the inside of
the glass, they don't actually change the
| | 00:23 | shape of the glass on the surface.
| | 00:24 | So we can get away with a bump map.
| | 00:26 | Let's see how to do it.
| | 00:28 | Let's look at our Maya scene.
| | 00:29 | Before I get too far into the bump map,
I want to show you something that
| | 00:32 | I've got going on here.
| | 00:34 | This headlight assembly is just made up
of some cylinders and some toruses,
| | 00:37 | very simple modeling, nothing fancy.
| | 00:39 | However, I want to show you that there are
these two separate panes of headlight glass.
| | 00:43 | You can see it more clearly now.
| | 00:45 | One of these panes is for the smooth
exterior and one for the bumpy interior.
| | 00:50 | Since we're putting a texture map on
the interior glass, we need to make sure
| | 00:53 | that that one has its UV's laid out.
| | 00:55 | Now this is a very simple shape,
so this should be very easy.
| | 00:59 | Let's make sure that we've got
the headlight glass selected.
| | 01:02 | I'm going to actually deselect the
outside glass because we only need to put a
| | 01:06 | UV map on the inside glass.
| | 01:07 | Let's just look at this from a front view, and we
go to Create UVs>Create UVs Based on Camera.
| | 01:13 | Let's look at the UV Texture Editor just to
make sure that it worked. Okay, looks great.
| | 01:17 | That's all we needed to do.
| | 01:19 | Now let's make a bump texture in Photoshop.
| | 01:22 | If you don't have Photoshop, you can
use most any photo editing software.
| | 01:26 | There's even a free one that runs
right on your Internet browser if you go to
| | 01:29 | pixlr.com, that's pixlr.com/editor.
| | 01:35 | We're going to make a new document and I want
it to be 1024 pixels wide by 1024 pixels tall.
| | 01:43 | Okay, so what I'm going to do is start by
making just one of these little refractors.
| | 01:50 | Let's make a rectangle;
about that size should be good.
| | 01:54 | What I want to do is put it on a new layer.
| | 01:56 | Let's make a new layer and I'm
just going to get my paintbrush out.
| | 02:00 | First, I want to fill it black, so
I'm just going to paint it all black.
| | 02:03 | Then let's get white out.
| | 02:05 | What I want to do is just make sure
I have a nice soft falloff brush here.
| | 02:10 | I want to size it to about the same
size as this rectangle or this square.
| | 02:14 | Let's just brush a single white stroke
down the middle of it.
| | 02:18 | Let me make that more precise.
| | 02:19 | I'm just going to hold down Shift while
I do this, so I get a nice straight line.
| | 02:23 | Let's deselect everything.
| | 02:25 | I am going to hit Ctrl+D on the keyboard
or Cmd+D on a Mac, and let's blur it.
| | 02:30 | I'm going to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur
and just a small amount of blur.
| | 02:35 | Something like about five should
be good, maybe even a little less.
| | 02:39 | Now all we need to do is start duplicating this layer and placing copies of
| | 02:43 | this graphic all over the place.
| | 02:45 | So I am going to go to the Move tool
and let's just drag this layer one down
| | 02:49 | to make a new layer.
Now you can drag it over.
| | 02:51 | You can hold Shift to make sure
that it stays on the same level and you
| | 02:55 | could hit Cmd+T or Ctrl+T to go
in the Transform mode and so we
| | 03:00 | could actually change this up.
| | 03:01 | So you might notice that some of these
are thinner, some of them are shorter,
| | 03:05 | some are wider, and some are bigger.
| | 03:07 | You just want to make a nice variety of them.
| | 03:09 | So I'm going to hit Enter to lock that in,
make a duplicate of the original,
| | 03:13 | let's move this one up and let's see.
| | 03:14 | We'll do Cmd+T again.
| | 03:16 | Let's actually make this one a
shorter one, so, so on and so forth.
| | 03:19 | Duplicating them, sizing them,
positioning them until you get something that
| | 03:23 | looks sort of like this kind of pattern.
| | 03:25 | So let me load up one that I actually have finished.
| | 03:28 | It's inside of our exercise files, our
version number, and in a folder called
| | 03:32 | Textures>Headlight Bump.
| | 03:34 | These patterns of white and black will
make the headlight look like it has bumps
| | 03:38 | and valleys to simulate the surface
patterns that we see in the photos.
| | 03:41 | Let's go back into Maya now.
| | 03:43 | What I want to do is go to our Hypershade.
| | 03:45 | Let's go to Window>Rendering Editors>Hypershade.
| | 03:48 | So we have already got a glass material
made, but let's make a duplicate of it,
| | 03:52 | so we can put the bump on just one material.
| | 03:55 | So go to Edit and Duplicate>Shading Network.
| | 03:58 | Okay, so we've got a new material and
let's just give it a name that makes
| | 04:02 | sense like headlightbump.
| | 04:05 | Now we need to apply this material
just to the inner headlight glass.
| | 04:10 | What I'm going to do to make this
easier to select is I'm going to go into
| | 04:14 | Object mode and actually
let's hide this one really quick.
| | 04:17 | So I'm going to hit Ctrl+H. Just select
this one and I'm going to middle mouse
| | 04:21 | drag from here over to the material.
| | 04:24 | Okay, now let's select that
material again and let's put the bump in.
| | 04:27 | Over in the Attribute Editor for the
material, let's go to Bump Mapping and
| | 04:31 | click this little box here.
| | 04:32 | Now we need to load in a file and
this is good we want to use this bump.
| | 04:37 | Notice that usually the bump depth is
a little too high, so I'm just going to
| | 04:40 | bring this down to about 0.1 and now
we need to actually put that image plane
| | 04:45 | into our bump value.
| | 04:46 | Now let's load up the image, so let's go into
Image Name and click this little File Load button.
| | 04:51 | What we want to do is navigate to our
exercise files, our version number and
| | 04:55 | then textures, headlightbump, and open.
| | 04:58 | Now we want to see this material in our view port.
| | 05:02 | Let me get the Hypershade out of the way.
| | 05:04 | Let's rotate this around, so right now we can't see it.
| | 05:07 | Let's change the View Port Render to View Port 2.0.
| | 05:09 | This allows us to see a bump and it's
just going to take a minute, it has to
| | 05:14 | load the texture in the memory.
| | 05:14 | In View Port 2.0, we're actually going to see
our image planes right here in the View Port.
| | 05:18 | It's a little bit annoying, but all we
have to do now is hit 6 on the keyboard.
| | 05:22 | Now that's going to show us bumps in our View Port.
| | 05:24 | You should see now this bump
here applied to the headlight.
| | 05:28 | It looks pretty good.
| | 05:29 | Let's bring back that glass that we hid before.
| | 05:31 | Go to Display and Show All.
| | 05:34 | Now view port 2.0 is kind of a
more advanced View Port Render.
| | 05:38 | It allows you to see a bump in the
View Port and a few other special things.
| | 05:42 | However, I typically don't like to model in View Port 2.0.
| | 05:45 | It sometimes doesn't display things correctly as I work.
| | 05:48 | I'll turn on View Port 2.0 to check if
a bump map is looking good and
| | 05:53 | then I'll just switch back to the default Quality Rendering.
| | 05:56 | So hopefully, you can see the power
of bump maps for making heavy detail.
| | 06:00 | It would have been so much more work
to model all of those bumps into the
| | 06:03 | geometry of the headlights.
| | 06:04 | Now if you're handy with Photoshop,
you can generate all kinds of detail by
| | 06:08 | painting it or by editing photographic detail.
| | 06:11 | I use bump maps a lot when there's
heavy detail on the surface of an object and
| | 06:15 | when that detail doesn't really
change the shape of an object.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Starting the exhaust pipes| 00:00 | Here's another great modeling challenge:
how to make this exhaust structure?
| | 00:03 | Now it looks pretty complicated.
| | 00:05 | We have these four pipes, they all
are curved together, and then they join
| | 00:09 | together into one big pipe.
| | 00:11 | In this video, I'm going to show
some techniques that can make this a lot
| | 00:14 | easier than it looks. Here we go.
| | 00:16 | I'm starting out in a fresh scene so
that I can reference this scene into the
| | 00:19 | main scene, just like we've done before.
| | 00:22 | I've also made the easy part already, so
that we that we focus on the new challenges.
| | 00:26 | My strategy for this is to identify the
shapes that we know have to be there first.
| | 00:30 | Then we can fill in the shapes that
are just kind of ambiguous afterwards.
| | 00:34 | We know that there have to be four
cylinders right here, and we know that they
| | 00:38 | eventually have to form into one cylinder down here.
| | 00:42 | Let's get this started in Maya.
| | 00:43 | I'm going into my four views and what I
want to do is look at this from the front view.
| | 00:48 | Now what I want to do is create
one of those four cylinders first.
| | 00:52 | So let's click on the Cylinder tool,
and I want to hold down X, just to make
| | 00:56 | sure we're snapping exactly to a grid
point here and let's drag it out to this point
| | 01:01 | where you can see that this
cylinder is filling four squares right here.
| | 01:06 | As we make the other three cylinders,
they'll fit into perfect squares right
| | 01:10 | here and they'll be right up
next to each other as you can see.
| | 01:13 | All right, so let's bring back all four
of our views so we can drag out the height.
| | 01:17 | Let's look at this in our Perspective View.
| | 01:19 | We have one little cylinder right here.
| | 01:21 | Let's see how this compares to our reference.
| | 01:23 | Okay, so that one cylinder here
corresponds to this one here, great.
| | 01:27 | Let's look at the photo reference
to see what we need to do next.
| | 01:30 | So each of these cylinders, looks like
they start to angle downwards towards the
| | 01:34 | one big cylinder here.
| | 01:36 | So what I'm going to do is select
all the faces on one end and start
| | 01:39 | extruding them down.
| | 01:40 | To make this a little bit easier,
let's go into the Attribute Editor for the
| | 01:44 | polyCylinder, and what I want to do is,
change the Subdivisions Caps to zero, so
| | 01:49 | that we don't have any
triangles on the ends of the cylinders.
| | 01:52 | So that will just make it easier to
select a single polygon back here.
| | 01:55 | All right, so what I'm going to do is extrude.
| | 01:58 | And we'll just bring this back and
we'll position it right here in the middle.
| | 02:03 | So I'm actually going to hold down X,
so we can snap it right in the middle.
| | 02:07 | Okay, let's look at this in our Perspective view.
| | 02:09 | It looks like I could just bring it
down a little bit further right here.
| | 02:12 | Okay, so let's look at our photo reference again.
| | 02:15 | So you can see in this one that it kind
of goes straight and once it reaches the
| | 02:18 | point right about here, it starts
to flatten out and kind of flare out.
| | 02:23 | So let's put in a holding edge
right here, so we can make that shape.
| | 02:26 | So I want to hit W to go out of
Extrude mode and let's just go into
| | 02:30 | Edit Mesh>Insert Edge Loop tool and we will
put an edge right in here. Okay, great.
| | 02:34 | So I'm going to exit the Insert Edge Loop tool.
| | 02:37 | Let's go into Face mode and
reselect that face that's on the end there.
| | 02:40 | I am going to hit 4 to go into
Wireframe view, to make that easier to see.
| | 02:44 | Now let's just scale this up so
it matches the size of the big pipe.
| | 02:48 | Okay, I'm going go hit 5 now
to go into our shaded view.
| | 02:52 | Okay, so that's looking pretty good.
| | 02:54 | Let's look at the photo reference again.
| | 02:55 | So we can that this cylinder, it
gets a little bit wider right here.
| | 02:59 | So what I can do is just select all of
these faces right here and I can just
| | 03:03 | extrude them out a little bit,
just to give it a little thickness.
| | 03:06 | So now, you can see that when
these bent pipes come in,
| | 03:09 | they'll have somewhere to go into.
| | 03:10 | I also need to make a little bit of a lip.
| | 03:13 | What I'm going to do is select this
face right here, click Extrude and push
| | 03:17 | that in a little bit.
| | 03:18 | So now you can see when it
smooths, we get a little bit of a lip.
| | 03:22 | So you can see that this is actually
smoothing out more than it needs to.
| | 03:25 | So I'm going to go into Face mode and
delete this face right here and also
| | 03:28 | this one right here.
| | 03:29 | Now that there's an open edge right there,
it's not actually going to smooth out.
| | 03:32 | That's exactly what we want.
| | 03:34 | And then something else that's happening
right here is, it's smoothing out too much.
| | 03:38 | As you can see, I need a little bit
more of a sharp definition there, so let's
| | 03:41 | add some holding edges on this part.
| | 03:43 | Go into Edge mode, go to Insert Edge Loop tool
and we will just add another edge right here.
| | 03:48 | Okay, now let's see what it looks like smooth.
| | 03:50 | All right, not bad.
| | 03:52 | Let's get that blinn material on it.
| | 03:54 | So I'm going to hold down the right mouse
button and Assign Existing Material>blinn1.
| | 03:57 | Let's look at the photo reference one more time.
| | 03:59 | So we need to make these other three sections.
| | 04:02 | So let's make them by rotating the existing one.
| | 04:05 | We want them all to rotate
around the center of the big pipe.
| | 04:09 | So what I'm going to do is go into
the Front View, I'm going to hold down D
| | 04:12 | for moving the pivot point, and I'm
going to hold down X to snap to grid.
| | 04:16 | We'll just move the pivot point of this
object right here to the middle of the big pipe.
| | 04:20 | Now let's go into Rotate mode.
| | 04:22 | You can see the axis that we
need to rotate on is the blue one.
| | 04:25 | So what I'm going to do is go into
Edit>Duplicate Special with options.
| | 04:30 | Let's see, let's make sure we've got
Instance selected, Number of copies should
| | 04:33 | be three and we want to rotate
each copy on the Z axis by 90 degrees.
| | 04:40 | Let's click Duplicate Special.
| | 04:41 | All right, let's go into our perspective
view and see what we have got.
| | 04:43 | I am going to turn off grid to make it easier
to see, and let's compare this to our reference.
| | 04:49 | In this case, I'm going to leave these
four separate pieces intersecting each other.
| | 04:53 | I'm not going to bother with making it
one continuous model because really,
| | 04:56 | it looks pretty good as it is.
| | 04:58 | So we just want to combine these three into one object.
Let's go to Mesh, Combine.
| | 05:02 | So this is a good example of how you
don't always have to model something 100%
| | 05:06 | how it would be in the real world.
| | 05:08 | As long as it looks believable,
in the end, that's all you need.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making the curved exhaust pipes| 00:00 | Now to work on the bent portion of the exhaust pipes.
| | 00:03 | This looks challenging because of the precise
way that these four pipes bend together.
| | 00:07 | Now we're going to use a new trick for this.
| | 00:10 | Basically, we're going to extrude faces
out and use a NURBS curve to control the
| | 00:14 | shape of the extrusion. Okay.
| | 00:16 | So let's go into Maya and I want to go into our top view.
| | 00:19 | Let's go into the Curves Tab,and make a new EP curve.
| | 00:23 | What I'm going to do is hold down X
so I can snap to the grid, and I want
| | 00:27 | to click twice right about here, and then
I want to click twice more right out here.
| | 00:33 | Now it's going to took really messy at first, but after
the curve is made, we can edit the control points.
| | 00:38 | So lock it in by hitting Enter. All right!
| | 00:40 | So hold down the right-mouse
button to go into Control Vertex.
| | 00:44 | So we've got some vertices here
and they are kind of at weird angles.
| | 00:47 | So we can make this a straight line if
we select these vertices here and then
| | 00:51 | we're just going to go into the
Scale tool and then just scale them until
| | 00:54 | they're all in a straight line here.
| | 00:56 | Let's do the same thing with this one,
scaling in the other axis. Okay, there we go!
| | 01:01 | Let's just zoom in a little bit and
I just to want to move this and hold down X
| | 01:05 | and just move it 'till it snaps
right in the middle there.
| | 01:08 | I will take these, hold down X,
move it till it snaps right there.
| | 01:12 | So now we can control the amount of curve
by just moving some of these vertices around.
| | 01:16 | Since we have three, we know that we
are going to get a straight line between
| | 01:20 | the first two vertices right here, and a straight
line between the first two vertices right here.
| | 01:25 | So now we can control exactly how much of
a straight, and how much of a curve that we have.
| | 01:30 | So let's look at this in our Perspective View,
and try to get a sense for how
| | 01:33 | much straight we need here.
| | 01:35 | So we can see here, it goes
straight for about that much distance.
| | 01:40 | So that actually looks pretty good,
this amount of straight right here.
| | 01:43 | So now what we can do is actually
extrude from this object and use this curve as
| | 01:48 | a guide to actually bend the extrusion.
| | 01:50 | So what we want to do is come in here, I
am going to turn off Smooth Preview mode.
| | 01:54 | I am going to come in here and
select all of these open edges right here;
| | 01:58 | just holding down Shift and double-clicking.
| | 02:00 | And actually first, let's extrude it
inwards just a little. So I'm going to go
| | 02:03 | to Polygons>Extrude; and I just
want to give it just a little bit of an
| | 02:07 | extrusion inwards before I do this. Okay, good!
| | 02:11 | With those edges selected, I just want
to go into Move mode by hitting W.
| | 02:14 | So I can get out of Extrude mode.
I need to get out of Edge mode.
| | 02:18 | So I'm going to go into Object mode here,
and notice how it still has those edges highlighted.
| | 02:22 | So now, I can hold down Shift and select our curve.
| | 02:25 | Let's go into the Edit Mesh menu,
and go to Extrude with options.
| | 02:29 | So in here, we can set several different options.
| | 02:32 | One thing you definitely want to turn on is Curve Selected.
| | 02:36 | So this is going to tell Extrude
to use the curve that we selected.
| | 02:39 | Now we also want to set the number of divisions.
| | 02:41 | Now if we leave it at just 1, it's going to
have just one polygon straight from
| | 02:45 | the beginning right to the end, and it
will be a straight line, and you won't
| | 02:49 | actually see the curve at all.
| | 02:50 | So we just want to increase this.
| | 02:51 | It really doesn't matter exactly how much,
but something around 12 should be good enough.
| | 02:55 | All right. Click Extrude. It looks pretty good.
| | 02:58 | Since we extruded all four pipes at
the same time on the same curve,
| | 03:01 | we can be sure that they all
follow the same path together.
| | 03:04 | It's pretty impressive, isn't it?
| | 03:06 | Now here is something cool.
| | 03:07 | You can even edit the curve and the
extrusion will automatically update.
| | 03:11 | So I'm going to just exit out of Extrusion mode.
I am going to hit W on the keyboard.
| | 03:15 | Let's go in here and select our curve.
| | 03:18 | I'm just going to hold down the right-mouse
button, go to Control Vertex.
| | 03:21 | Let's say we want to adjust the amount of curve on here.
| | 03:24 | So I'm going to hit 4 to go into Wireframe
mode, and let's select these two vertices here.
| | 03:29 | I am going to hit 5 to go back into Shaded mode.
| | 03:32 | Now you can see if we adjust the shape of the
curve, the pipes update automatically. Okay.
| | 03:36 | Let's see if there's anything left to do
by looking at our reference image.
| | 03:40 | So you can see that there's a little
bit of organic detail right here
| | 03:44 | where there are some welding seams.
| | 03:46 | Those kinds of things would be nice to do
in a sculpting program like Mudbox or ZBrush.
| | 03:50 | If you want to take it to that level,
there are several courses on lynda.com
| | 03:53 | that can show you how to sculpt that kind of texture.
| | 03:56 | So let's finish this up and get ready
for importing in to the car scene.
| | 04:00 | So I want to create a locator,
and let's just make this a bit bigger.
| | 04:04 | I'm going to set the Scale to
something like 5 in all axes.
| | 04:08 | Then, we'll just parent everything
to the locator, so I just selected the
| | 04:12 | locator last and hit P. So now
everything is parented to the locator.
| | 04:16 | Let's just name the locator now, Exhaust.
| | 04:20 | Now we would want to save it.
| | 04:22 | So go to File>Save Scene As, and let's go
into our exercise files, our version number.
| | 04:28 | I've already got one saved out in a
folder called exhaustpipes in Exhaust.
| | 04:32 | So you would just save it out and then
reference it into your car scene just
| | 04:36 | like we did with the tires and everything else.
| | 04:38 | So this technique of using a curve
to guide extrusions is really useful.
| | 04:43 | Imagine all the things you could make with it;
| | 04:45 | tree branches, squid tentacles,
cartoony hair. It's a really powerful tool.
| | 04:50 | I use it all the time to make extrusions that follow a path.
| | 04:53 | We also looked at ways of thinking about
modeling, about breaking shapes down
| | 04:57 | into simpler chunks to make it easier to model.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Modeling the windshield| 00:00 | The windshield is another part that seems
really complicated and you might be
| | 00:04 | wondering just where even to begin.
| | 00:06 | Like we've seen before, most objects
and even complicated structures have a
| | 00:11 | basic shape that is usually fairly simple.
| | 00:14 | It's no different with the windshield.
| | 00:15 | All we have to do is block in that simple shape
and everything else will fall into place.
| | 00:20 | Granted, there are lots of little
bits and pieces to make, but once the
| | 00:23 | underlying shape is made, it's just a matter
of keeping at it until all the parts are made.
| | 00:28 | So let's see how to get started.
| | 00:29 | Probably the most basic objects in
the windshield assembly is the Glass,
| | 00:33 | so let's start there.
| | 00:35 | Let me go into Maya and let's
make a new plane in the front view.
| | 00:39 | So I'll just zoom in a little bit here
and what I want to do is just go and make
| | 00:43 | a new plane and we'll just click and
drag something out in the front view.
| | 00:47 | Okay let's make sure we can see our
image plane, so you might want to click on
| | 00:50 | this button if you can't see your image plane.
| | 00:52 | What I want to do is make sure that these
vertices right here on this edge are in the center.
| | 00:56 | I'm just going to go into Vertex mode
and hold down X and move them on the
| | 01:01 | X axis to lock them in.
| | 01:03 | Okay, so from here it's just a little
bit of tweaking and inserting edge loops
| | 01:07 | in order to get the windshield in the right place.
| | 01:10 | So first I'm just going to move some
vertices and that various views, so it
| | 01:15 | looks like I can move the entire
structure back a little ways, we'll just zoom
| | 01:19 | in here and let's see we'll just move
the top vertices over and let's go into
| | 01:24 | our perspective view.
| | 01:25 | So something else we're definitely going to
want to do is give ourselves some more details.
| | 01:29 | So let's get the Insert Edge Loop tool
out and we'll just put an edge in here
| | 01:33 | and then I'm going to tweak it to see
how it's kind of intersecting with the car,
| | 01:37 | so I'm just going to raise it up a little bit,
so it's off of that.
| | 01:39 | I'll just hit G to do that again and
just give ourselves a little bit more
| | 01:43 | detail to play with here.
| | 01:44 | Okay, let's see how this is lining up in the front view.
| | 01:47 | So I'm just going to do a bit more tweaking.
| | 01:50 | Okay, so now let's mirror this over to the other side.
| | 01:52 | I'm going to go into Objects mode.
We've got our pivot point and it's not
| | 01:56 | quite in the center so I'm just going to
hold down D to move the pivot point.
| | 02:00 | I'm going to hold down V to snap the vertices, so we
can just snap it over here to this vertex on the window.
| | 02:05 | Now hit Ctrl+D to duplicate.
| | 02:07 | I want to go into Scale mode and just
flip this on over to the other side.
| | 02:11 | Let's make sure it's exactly flipped.
| | 02:13 | In the Channel Box I want to make
sure that the Scale is exactly negative one.
| | 02:17 | Okay, so let's just select the two objects
now and combine them into one.
| | 02:21 | Now we just need to merge all these vertices.
| | 02:24 | So let's go select those vertices,
go to Edit Mesh>Merge.
| | 02:28 | So now if we use Smooth Preview here,
you can see that we're getting a nice
| | 02:31 | smooth all the way across the two halves here.
| | 02:34 | Let's take a last look at this to see if there
is any tweaking that needs to be done.
| | 02:37 | I want to put the blinn material on it
just so we can see everything more clearly.
| | 02:42 | All right, looks pretty good. Let's just make
sure it's lining up in our blueprint views.
| | 02:46 | Let's see about the side view.
| | 02:48 | Looks like just a little bit of tweaking left to do.
| | 02:50 | Now it looks like our various blueprint
views aren't totally agreeing with each other.
| | 02:53 | So I'm just going to make
something that looks good to me.
| | 02:56 | Let's scoot these down a little bit and actually,
I want to do this with reflection turned on.
| | 03:01 | So let's go into our Tool Settings and we'll
come down to Reflection and just turn that on;
| | 03:06 | X axis, looks like it's getting it, good.
| | 03:09 | So we can turn Tool Settings off now
and just tweak this a bit more.
| | 03:13 | So we have the basic shape of the glass done.
| | 03:15 | Now we need to give it thickness.
| | 03:17 | So what I'm going to do is
simply extrude the whole thing.
| | 03:20 | So go up to Extrude and let's just
give the whole thing a certain thickness.
| | 03:25 | I'm going to go out of Smooth
Preview mode just so I can see this better.
| | 03:28 | That looks pretty good.
| | 03:29 | Now something I want to do here is give
this some more Divisions, because it's
| | 03:32 | smoothing out a little bit too much.
| | 03:34 | So instead of adding, holding edges
manually, one thing you can do is just come
| | 03:38 | in here and set the Divisions to something like 3.
All right, let's see how it smooths now.
| | 03:43 | Okay, a bit sharper now.
| | 03:44 | Now the great thing about having this
part made now is that all of these other parts,
| | 03:47 | like the frame around it and this rubber seal
can be made by extracting pieces off of the glass.
| | 03:53 | So let's go back into Maya and I can
I see that there is just one little thing
| | 03:57 | want to do before I continue and let's add some
holding edges to tighten up this curve a little bit.
| | 04:02 | You can see it's not quite so rounded
in the reference and then actually it
| | 04:05 | needs to be a lot less rounded down here.
| | 04:07 | So I'm going to go out of Smooth Preview mode
and let's go to Edit Mesh>Insert Edge Loop Tool
| | 04:11 | and I'm going to put one right here
and about the same distance
| | 04:16 | on the other side, then one right here
and then one really close down here.
| | 04:20 | So let's see how it smooths now, much better.
| | 04:23 | So now that we've got the basic glass made,
it's going to be a lot easier to
| | 04:26 | make the other objects that
have to conform to the glass shape.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making the windshield frame| 00:00 | So we've got a few parts of the windshield frame
that need to conform exactly to the windshield glass.
| | 00:06 | It would be a lot of work to try and
fit new objects to the glass, so we're
| | 00:10 | going to use the existing model as a base to start from.
| | 00:13 | So let's go into our Maya scene.
| | 00:15 | We've already got the glass created, but we
want to create new objects based off the glass.
| | 00:20 | So what I'm going to do is hit Ctrl+D to
duplicate it and then let's hide the duplicate.
| | 00:26 | So let's go to Display>Hide>Hide Selection.
| | 00:30 | So now let's start building the
window frame off of this piece.
| | 00:33 | Now let's look at the reference again.
| | 00:35 | So basically the window frame is just this metal
frame that goes all the way around the glass.
| | 00:41 | So we can create this by starting off
and selecting the polygons that go all the
| | 00:45 | way around the outside.
| | 00:46 | So let's turn off Smooth Preview
so we can see this more easily.
| | 00:50 | Okay, so I'm going to start selecting
some of these polygons around.
| | 00:53 | So let's select this one here in the middle
and now I'm just going to hold down
| | 00:56 | Shift and double-click on the one right next to it.
| | 00:59 | So now we've got a ring of polygons all
the way around the objects that are selected.
| | 01:03 | There, you can see it better in Wireframe mode,
alright so back to Shaded mode.
| | 01:07 | Now what I want to do is select the
polygons to either side of this as well.
| | 01:11 | So I'm just going to hit Shift and hit the Period key.
| | 01:15 | So what that does is it selects any
polygons that are touching a current
| | 01:19 | selection, it basically grows the selection.
| | 01:22 | So let's zoom out a little bit and what I want
to do is delete everything that's not selected.
| | 01:26 | So I'll just hold down Shift and drag a
selection over at the whole windshield.
| | 01:30 | So that has inverted the selection and now just hit Delete.
| | 01:34 | So now we've got a basic structure for the windshield frame.
| | 01:37 | Now it needs to have some thickness.
| | 01:38 | So what I'm going to do is go into Object mode
and just extrude the entire thing out a little bit.
| | 01:44 | See if that's the right amount.
| | 01:46 | What I'm going to do is look at my
photo reference for a little bit.
| | 01:49 | Okay, it looks like I need to push it just a
little bit further, let's see how that looks.
| | 01:53 | All right, that's pretty good.
| | 01:55 | Go ahead and hit W to exit the Extrude mode.
| | 01:58 | Let's go back into Object mode and let's see
what this looks like with Smooth Preview on.
| | 02:03 | Cool, not too bad. Everything conforms pretty nicely.
| | 02:06 | Let's take another look at a reference just to be sure.
| | 02:08 | So it's pretty close, there is a
little bit more tweaking that we could do.
| | 02:11 | We could insert some more edge loops
to tighten up some of these corners.
| | 02:15 | So for example this corner down
here looks like it needs to be tighter.
| | 02:18 | So I'm going to hit 1 to exit Smooth Preview mode.
| | 02:20 | And also something weird that happened
when we extruded, some of these corners
| | 02:24 | didn't quite stay as sharp as I'd like
them to be, so let me zoom in on this.
| | 02:28 | I'm just going to see if I can edit this,
just to keep that a little bit sharper.
| | 02:32 | I see Wireframe mode, hitting 4 on
the keyboard, bring that out there.
| | 02:36 | All right, so what I want to do to keep
this sharper is insert an edge loop here.
| | 02:40 | So let's go to Edit Mesh>Insert Edge Loop
and we'll put one really nice and tight in that corner.
| | 02:46 | Let's see how this looks when
we smooth it. Okay, much better.
| | 02:49 | Now these tweaks that I'm making to one
side of it aren't happening to the other side.
| | 02:53 | So what I'll eventually want to do is
that when I get this looking exactly the
| | 02:58 | way I want it is, I'll just go into
Face mode and delete half on one side and
| | 03:03 | then we'll just mirror it over like we've done before.
| | 03:05 | Okay, so let me zoom in here and see what
other kinds of tweaks I need to do to this.
| | 03:09 | So overall it's looking maybe just a
little bit soft, so what I'd like to do is
| | 03:14 | add some more holding edges.
| | 03:15 | I'm going to go into Edit Mesh>Insert Edge Loop Tool
and let's just add one
| | 03:19 | really nice and tight to each side.
Do it on the inside as well.
| | 03:25 | Okay, that's looking much better now, much sharper.
| | 03:27 | And it looks like it gets a little bit
thin right here, so I'm going to tweak
| | 03:31 | some of this and go into Unsmooth mode
and I just want to tweak the shape just
| | 03:35 | to build out a little bit more thickness here, much better.
| | 03:38 | Let's do the same thing down here.
| | 03:40 | Okay, looking good.
| | 03:42 | So there is probably a little bit more
tweaking I could do on this, but let's
| | 03:45 | move ahead now to something else.
| | 03:47 | Something else I want to do is get
this a little bit of weather stripping.
| | 03:50 | This shouldn't be too hard to do, and we can
base it right off the frame that we already have.
| | 03:54 | So I'm going to hit Ctrl+D to duplicate
this and then we'll hit Ctrl+H to hide it.
| | 04:00 | Now with the window frame selected
let's just select these three faces right here,
| | 04:04 | then I'll Shift Select everything
to invert the selection and hit Delete.
| | 04:08 | Now I can start building that weather
stripping off of this one piece.
| | 04:12 | It probably needs to move forward a little bit.
| | 04:14 | It looks like the pivot point got reset to the
center of the grid, so let me just move that.
| | 04:19 | I'm going to go to Modify and Center Pivot.
| | 04:21 | Okay, so let's zoom back in on that and
we'll just move it forward a little bit.
| | 04:25 | Let's bring everything back that we have hidden.
| | 04:27 | So go to Display>Show>All, and now
it's just a little bit of tweaking to get
| | 04:31 | this weather stripping to have the right shape.
| | 04:33 | So I'll just select some of these vertices and tweak them.
| | 04:36 | Let's insert an edge loop that we can get the
shape of this to be curved a little bit more.
| | 04:41 | So you can see here in the reference so
this has got a little bit of a curve to it.
| | 04:45 | Finally let's extrude this out to
give it some thickness, looking great!
| | 04:49 | So there's definitely some tweaking
that can be done and you'll also definitely
| | 04:53 | want to mirror over any one half that doesn't
have another half so you can have a full object.
| | 04:57 | But that's the same type of thing
that we've been doing so far.
| | 05:00 | I'm sure you can handle that on your own.
| | 05:02 | So the combined techniques of starting
with a simple overall shape and then
| | 05:06 | basing new shapes off of existing shapes
is often a really great way to work.
| | 05:10 | Whenever I feel myself getting overwhelmed
with a huge modeling project,
| | 05:13 | I remind myself to just jump in
and make the simple shapes.
| | 05:17 | Then once there is some sort
of simple structure in place,
| | 05:20 | the rest of it doesn't seem so challenging.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cutting out the gas cap indentation| 00:00 | Let's look at the gas cap in
the reference photos for a moment.
| | 00:03 | Although the gas cap is kind of complicated,
probably the trickiest part for a
| | 00:07 | lot of people is the indentation in the body.
| | 00:10 | We've already got this nice, smooth fender
and it's like there is a chunk taken right out of it.
| | 00:15 | How do we make this shape without
ruining the clean curves of the body?
| | 00:19 | In this video I'll show you a few tricks for that.
| | 00:22 | One word of warning!
| | 00:23 | Since this modeling involves making
changes to just want one side of the car body,
| | 00:27 | it's a good idea to make sure that you're
done making any tweaks or changes to it.
| | 00:32 | All right, let's go into Maya.
| | 00:33 | So one thing I want to point out is
that since the last video I mirrored over
| | 00:38 | the car body and I also added some
thickness to it, so I just simply grab the
| | 00:42 | edge around the open part of the car
and just extrude it inwards and then
| | 00:46 | extrude it one more time just to
give it this nice thickness around.
| | 00:49 | Okay, so let's move on to the gas cap.
| | 00:52 | What I want to do is go into our top
view and I want to make a simple cylinder
| | 00:57 | place holder for the gas cap for now.
| | 00:59 | I'm just going to drag that into the
top view, go ahead and give it some
| | 01:03 | thickness and now I'll just move it up into place.
| | 01:06 | Let's go into our perspective view.
Let's see I want to turn Smooth Preview
| | 01:10 | off just to make it easier to see what we're doing.
| | 01:12 | I'm going to go into the Interactive Split tool.
| | 01:15 | We're just going to cut a shape into the
car body that kind of matches this cylinder.
| | 01:19 | It's going to be pretty rough but we can fix it up later.
| | 01:22 | So let's see, I'll just click one here
and here and let's see we'll click from
| | 01:26 | here over to here and from here to here.
| | 01:31 | Now actually what I'm going to do is cut across
here as well, and I'm just right clicking to lock it in.
| | 01:37 | Okay, now that that's done what I want to do is
select these faces that are right here underneath this.
| | 01:42 | What I want to do is extrude this downwards,
so I'm just going to move right
| | 01:46 | into my Move tool and just pull this
down and let's go into the wireframe.
| | 01:50 | I'm going to hit F to zoom in on it and
what I want to do is go into scale and
| | 01:55 | just bring this down until it's flat.
| | 01:57 | Okay great, let's see what this
looks like with Smooth Preview turned on.
| | 02:00 | So I'm going to go into the
Object mode and let's just take a look.
| | 02:04 | It's not terrible, but I think there are some things
we could do to make a little bit sharper.
| | 02:08 | For one I think we need to add some holding
edges in here to keep these corners tighter.
| | 02:12 | So let's go in here and I'm going to
go out of Smooth Preview mode.
| | 02:16 | Let's just add some holding edges.
| | 02:18 | I am going to go to Edit Mesh>Insert
Edge Loop Tool, I'm going to turn on
| | 02:21 | Wireframe mode to make this easier to see.
| | 02:23 | Let's put one down at the base and
then one up at the top of that cut-out.
| | 02:28 | All right let's see how this looks now.
Okay, not too bad!
| | 02:32 | So we now have the basic indentation cut.
| | 02:34 | However, it needs some tweaking.
| | 02:36 | Because we cut this shape kind of
irregularly into an already irregular surface,
| | 02:41 | the indentation is going to be slightly irregular.
| | 02:44 | We need to tweak it so that it's a perfect circle.
| | 02:47 | Let's go into the top view and let's select the body here.
| | 02:52 | What I want to do is go into Vertex mode.
I just want to start tweaking some
| | 02:55 | of these new vertices that we cut and
making sure that when it's in Smooth mode,
| | 02:59 | it really fits nicely around the circle.
| | 03:02 | So I'm just going to jump back and
forth a little bit between Smooth and
| | 03:05 | Unsmooth mode, just so I can get
everything lined up nice and even.
| | 03:10 | Going into Unsmooth mode is going to
make it easier to select these vertices,
| | 03:14 | because notice what happens actually is
when we just grab this one vertex,
| | 03:18 | we drew a box over it,
we're actually getting all four of these.
| | 03:21 | So then if I go into Smooth mode, we
can see how it's actually rounding out and
| | 03:26 | then we can edit it appropriately.
| | 03:28 | Okay, so it looks like we're fitting a
really nice circle around here, that's great!
| | 03:31 | Now let's compare this to our reference again.
| | 03:34 | So one thing I think happens here
is that it's slightly conical.
| | 03:38 | So I think we're done with this
stand-in cylinder, we can delete that.
| | 03:43 | What I'm going to do is just select these two
faces down here and let's actually grow
| | 03:47 | this selection so I'm going to hit
Shift+Period, just grow that selection a
| | 03:51 | little bit and I just want to shrink
it just a little bit. Okay, great!
| | 03:54 | So we've got the shape of it
being a really nice circle right now.
| | 03:58 | And what we need to do finally is just clean up
any weird things that are happening to the fender.
| | 04:04 | So since we cut this shape out, some
of the shape has changed a little bit, so
| | 04:08 | I'm just going to tweak some of these things.
| | 04:10 | For example, looks like this part
raised up a little bit too high.
| | 04:14 | I'm just going to tweak it downwards a little bit.
| | 04:16 | Something that can actually help us is,
if we go into the side view, we can
| | 04:19 | kind of compare the two sides so we can
see where the fender is on the side that
| | 04:25 | wasn't cut out and just see how that's
lining up with the side that was cut out.
| | 04:29 | Okay, something else I want to fix
here is; there is a little bit of a weird
| | 04:34 | lump that we're seeing, so I'm just
going to try to tweak this into shape.
| | 04:38 | See if we grab these and try to push them
down a little bit, we pull them out a bit,
| | 04:43 | just trying to get rid of that weird creasing.
| | 04:45 | I can still slightly see it.
| | 04:47 | Something else that we might want to
do that could help is cut a new edge,
| | 04:51 | because you can see this is actually
an engon, it's a lot more than four sides.
| | 04:54 | So let's go out of Smooth Preview mode.
I want to get our Interactive Split tool
| | 05:00 | and just cut right here and let's see if this fixes any of that.
| | 05:03 | So you can see the result is now
we have two four-sided polygons.
| | 05:07 | So it should be a lot cleaner,
just a little bit of tweaking here.
| | 05:10 | All right, it's getting there.
| | 05:13 | This part of the process is going to
take some time, but it's just basically
| | 05:16 | about restoring the shape to what it
was before we started cutting things up.
| | 05:20 | It's going to be a lot of tweaking so
I'll just let you handle it from here on out.
| | 05:24 | The indentation for the gas cap is a
detail that you see in a lot of vehicles.
| | 05:28 | Its place is where one shape is
interrupted by another shape and it can be
| | 05:32 | difficult to see where to begin
to bring the two shapes together.
| | 05:35 | Of course every situation is different,
but what I find usually works best is to
| | 05:40 | just dive in and start cutting and tweaking.
| | 05:42 | If it's not working you can always
load up a previous version and try
| | 05:46 | a different approach.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making the gas cap| 00:00 | Now for the gas cap itself.
| | 00:02 | Now most of these shapes are the same
types of things that we've been doing so
| | 00:06 | far in this course; making cylinders, adding
holding edges, extruding, that type of thing.
| | 00:11 | So really the only part that's tricky
is this precision machined lever-handle type thing.
| | 00:16 | So I'll let you handle these other shapes and I'll
just demonstrate how to make this handle right here.
| | 00:22 | Let's start in a fresh Maya scene.
| | 00:23 | Now the first thing I want to establish
are these two cylindrical shapes right here.
| | 00:29 | So let's go into Maya and let's go in the side view
and just make a couple polygon pipes.
| | 00:34 | I'll just make one and we'll drag out
a height. Now the bottom one is a
| | 00:38 | little bit wider than the other so we'll
just go ahead and make another one here.
| | 00:43 | We'll just make it not quite as wide, great!
| | 00:47 | Okay, so let's position this relative to each other.
| | 00:49 | I'm going to go into the top view, and just make
sure that their sides are lining up right here.
| | 00:54 | Okay, looking good.
| | 00:55 | Now something else I want to do is create this flat
spot right here, so this won't be too hard to do.
| | 01:01 | I'll just get our Extrude tool out
and extrude some of these edges.
| | 01:06 | Okay, this should be about right.
| | 01:08 | Just go right into the Move tool and extrude
and then we'll also scale it to make it a flat spot.
| | 01:13 | May be I'll shift it up a little bit too. Okay, great.
| | 01:16 | So the next thing I want to do is make
this bridge right here. You can see
| | 01:21 | there is a gap between the side of
the cylinder and where this bridge starts.
| | 01:24 | So we need to add some holding edges for this.
| | 01:26 | So let's go into Edit Mesh>Inset Edge
Loop Tool, I'll put an edge here.
| | 01:32 | Let's put one on the other side or on the other object.
| | 01:34 | Then also let's put one right here on
this object and let's make sure that this
| | 01:39 | one lines up in the top view. Okay great.
So that we know that this edge loop on
| | 01:44 | the lower cylinder is going to line
up with the edge on the upper cylinder.
| | 01:48 | Okay, let's make sure that the
spacing is right between these two.
| | 01:52 | It looks like there needs to be a
little bit more of a gap in here.
| | 01:56 | I'm just going to drop this one down.
| | 01:57 | So now what I need to do is delete some
of these faces, so that I have a space
| | 02:01 | to extrude this bridge from.
| | 02:03 | Let's go in here and select one, two, three,
four, five, six, let's do seven and delete.
| | 02:09 | Now the same thing on this one. Let's see we
probably want to start from about on the side.
| | 02:14 | So I'll do one, two, three, four, five,
six, let's do the seventh up here, delete.
| | 02:20 | All right, so in order to bridge these two
they have to be part of the same object.
| | 02:24 | So I'll just select them both, go to Mesh>Combine.
| | 02:27 | Now let's go down into Edge mode
and we'll select the open edges.
| | 02:30 | So I'm just going to double-click here and
then Shift+Double-click on this open edge.
| | 02:35 | Now let's bridge the gap.
| | 02:36 | I'm going to go into Edit Mesh and Bridge with Options.
| | 02:39 | So one thing I do, want to do is have
a smooth path with a curve, because you
| | 02:44 | can see in here there is a little bit of curve to this.
| | 02:47 | And then let's see five divisions, sounds
about good, everything else looks good.
| | 02:50 | I'm going to hit Bridge and let's see what this did.
| | 02:53 | What we have here, I'm going to go into
Object mode and actually let's go into wireframe.
| | 02:57 | What you might see is that there
is a new curve created right here.
| | 03:01 | So this extrusion or this bridge that
was created actually has a dynamic curve
| | 03:05 | that we can come in here and Edit.
| | 03:07 | So I want to go into Control Vertex and
actually edit this shape of this curve.
| | 03:12 | This is really great because it's automatically
going to change the shape of that bridge.
| | 03:16 | So now I can adjust the shape here.
| | 03:18 | You can see that the bridge is a lot
flatter on this side, a lot straighter and
| | 03:22 | then it's got some curve and some bowing on this side.
I just want to try to replicate that shape.
| | 03:27 | Let's see what it looks like in this mode,
just a little bit more tweaking here.
| | 03:31 | I'm going to hit the up arrow to cycle through
and also the down arrow to cycle through this,
| | 03:35 | just trying to get the right shape on this.
| | 03:38 | Okay, that's pretty good!
| | 03:39 | Now the next shape we need
to make is this handle up here.
| | 03:43 | So I'm going to come into this top
shape right here and just select some of
| | 03:47 | these faces so we can extrude this out.
| | 03:49 | Let's see, I should probably start from
this one and let's see how many should
| | 03:53 | I pick; let's come out, a couple more.
| | 03:55 | All right that should be good and we'll just extrude these.
| | 03:58 | I'm just going to go right into Move mode.
We'll just pull this up and I want
| | 04:02 | it to rotate around as it comes around
and we'll shrink it up a little bit too.
| | 04:07 | It looks like there needs to be a little
bit more of a curve here. There is kind
| | 04:10 | of a bend to it, so what I'm going to do
is insert a new Edge Loop and then just
| | 04:15 | kind of push this one back. When it
smooths out it should round up pretty well.
| | 04:20 | Let's see what happens if we turn on Smooth Preview.
| | 04:22 | Okay yeah that's pretty good.
| | 04:23 | I'm going to go into Scale tool and
just kind of flatten this out a little bit
| | 04:26 | so that those vertices aren't so crunched together.
| | 04:28 | Maybe we'll rotate it too, just
try to make it a little bit cleaner.
| | 04:31 | Okay, so now let's extrude it out this way.
| | 04:34 | Come around at this side, we'll
select these faces and hit Extrude.
| | 04:41 | Now I can just delete them because when
we mirror this over, we want to have an
| | 04:45 | open gap there so I can connect.
| | 04:46 | So let's go into Object mode to see what we have.
| | 04:49 | I'm just going to hit Smooth Preview here.
| | 04:51 | So that's not too bad, all we need
to do is add some holding edges now.
| | 04:55 | Let's go into Edit Mesh>Insert Edge
Loop tool and I'm just going to come around
| | 04:59 | and just throw in edge loops
everywhere I think I might need them.
| | 05:02 | These are going to help those edges stay nice and sharp.
| | 05:05 | All right, let's try smoothing it again.
| | 05:07 | All right, looking pretty good.
| | 05:08 | Let's put on the Blinn material, so I'm
going to Assign Favorite Material>Blinn.
| | 05:12 | Let's hide the grid so we can see this
better. Let's compare this to our photo.
| | 05:17 | So that's not too bad.
| | 05:19 | Probably a little bit more tweaking that could
be done, but that's probably pretty close.
| | 05:24 | So I'll let you take it from here. All
you have to do is mirror this object over
| | 05:29 | and combine it and then simply work on
these cylindrical shapes here and create
| | 05:34 | a screw. We already know how to make
a screw head. You should be able to
| | 05:38 | finish this up on your own.
| | 05:39 | So in this video we've seen probably some
of the most heavy duty polygon modeling yet.
| | 05:44 | But we made it easier by starting from
some basic shapes that we knew were
| | 05:47 | accurate and then building on top of those.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Making rivets| 00:00 | A lot of vehicles have rivets; these little
metal dots that fasten paneling to other parts.
| | 00:06 | Making an individual rivet is no problem,
but how do you efficiently place a
| | 00:10 | whole bunch of them on a model
without manually positioning each one?
| | 00:14 | In this video I'll show you a technique to
position rivets along the surface of a model.
| | 00:19 | So in this video we're going to do the rivets
on a hood air intake, so let's go into Maya.
| | 00:24 | One thing to keep in mind when using
this approach is that it's going to stick
| | 00:28 | rivets to an unsmoothed shape of the model.
| | 00:31 | So let's click on the hood air intake
and I want to zoom in on it.
| | 00:34 | Now notice it's got Smooth Preview turned on.
| | 00:36 | So if we turn off Smooth Preview,
you can see that the shape is significantly different.
| | 00:41 | I want to avoid any problems in that regard,
so what I'm going to do is just
| | 00:46 | smooth the entire shape once.
| | 00:47 | Right now let's click off of it to deselect it.
| | 00:50 | Now let's see what happens when
we turn on Smooth Preview.
| | 00:53 | Okay, so it's much less of a
difference between the two shapes.
| | 00:56 | Okay, now let's make a single rivet.
| | 00:59 | Let's look in our photo.
| | 01:00 | You can see that it's pretty much just a
little tiny cylinder, a little tiny disc.
| | 01:05 | So let's just make a little cylinder here in our scene.
| | 01:07 | I'm just going to draw anywhere.
| | 01:09 | We can then size it and position it later.
| | 01:14 | Okay, sp I made it on the grid and now
let's just move it up closer to where
| | 01:18 | we're going to place it.
| | 01:19 | We can shrink it down,
let's see what it looks like smoothed.
| | 01:29 | Okay, so that's pretty good.
| | 01:31 | I'll just make it really small
and I'll position that into place.
| | 01:38 | I just want to see how it fits on our air intake.
| | 01:41 | Maybe just a little bit smaller, okay, looking good!
| | 01:48 | Okay, now we need to create a path
that the rivets are going to follow.
| | 01:51 | So what I want to do is select our hood
air intake and let's make this surface Live.
| | 01:57 | Remember, making a surface live means that
you can draw curves right on the surface.
| | 02:02 | Okay, so what we're going to do is go
into the Curves Tab and I want to start
| | 02:06 | a new EP Curve and what we want to do is
just click out points for this curve to follow.
| | 02:11 | You don't actually have to click
exactly where the rivets are going to be.
| | 02:14 | You just want to make sure you're
clicking out enough points so that the
| | 02:18 | curve follows the shape.
| | 02:19 | I'm just going to hit Enter to lock that in.
| | 02:22 | We're just going to do half the rivets
for now and then when we're done,
| | 02:25 | we'll just mirror them to the other side.
| | 02:26 | Now I'm going to go into Wireframe
mode just to make sure that this curve is
| | 02:30 | going where I want it to go.
| | 02:31 | So if you want to tweak this shape
you can just go into Control Vertex and
| | 02:35 | then reposition any of these vertices and
change the shape of the curve, if necessary.
| | 02:43 | Okay, looking good!
| | 02:44 | Okay, so now we've set the stage for
creating a series of evenly spaced rivets.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Duplicating rivets along a path| 00:00 | Now we have the stage set for
creating a series of evenly spaced rivets.
| | 00:05 | We're going to be using some
animation features to get this done.
| | 00:08 | Now it might not make sense why at first.
| | 00:10 | But once you see how it works, you'll
want to use this technique all of the time.
| | 00:14 | So just to pick up where we left off,
you can see that inner scene, we've got a
| | 00:18 | rivet and then we've got a curve that
snap to the surface of our air intake.
| | 00:23 | So to get this done, we want to
select that rivet and then we also want to
| | 00:27 | select the curves, I'm going to hold on Shift.
| | 00:29 | You might have trouble clicking on it
because that air intake is in the way.
| | 00:33 | What I'm going to do is turn off Polygon Selections
for the moment and now we
| | 00:37 | can Shift+Click that curve.
| | 00:38 | Okay, let's go into the Animation menu set.
| | 00:40 | I'm actually just going to use the
Hot Box by holding down the spacebar.
| | 00:44 | Actually we can't see it on the screen right
now when I move my cursor off a little bit.
| | 00:48 | All right, so now we can go over to Animate
and I'm going to go into Motion Paths,
| | 00:53 | Attach to Motion Path with options.
| | 00:54 | Now you might be asking yourself where is
this going, why do we want to animate a rivet.
| | 00:59 | It's all going to make sense shortly.
| | 01:00 | So just a couple options to set in here,
let's change this to Start/End, because
| | 01:05 | we want to set a start and
end time for the animation.
| | 01:08 | Start time can stay at 1 and then
the End time we want to put in 17.
| | 01:13 | Now this is because I counted beforehand,
how many rivets there are and on one
| | 01:17 | side of it there are 17 of them.
| | 01:19 | So this is going to cause the rivet to be
animated along the curve for 17 frames.
| | 01:25 | Go ahead and click Attach.
| | 01:26 | All right, let's zoom out to see what this did.
| | 01:28 | And we can scrub on our timeline
to see this animation now.
| | 01:31 | All right, so that's pretty cool.
| | 01:33 | Now by default Maya sets and ease and
then ease out to animation curves.
| | 01:38 | You can see that the first couple of frames,
it's not moving as much and then here
| | 01:42 | in the middle, it's moving a lot more
and then at the end there's just a small
| | 01:46 | little space between the last two.
| | 01:48 | So we want them more evenly spaced.
| | 01:50 | So for this, let's open up the Graph Editor.
| | 01:52 | Go into Window>Animation Editors>Graph Editor.
| | 01:55 | So we've got our rivet selected and so
it's showing the animation curve for the rivet.
| | 01:59 | I'm going to hit F just to zoom in
on that curve there better.
| | 02:03 | So you can see we've got a
curve here for the animation.
| | 02:06 | We want it to be a straight line.
| | 02:08 | So I'm just going to click and drag
over the start and end of point and then
| | 02:12 | click Linear tangents.
| | 02:13 | This is going to get rid of that ease in
and the ease out, so we can close this now.
| | 02:18 | Now let's scrub through and you can
see that they're all evenly spaced.
| | 02:21 | Now we need to convert the position of the
rivet for each frame into its own object.
| | 02:26 | So we've got the rivet selected,
let's Shift+Click on that curve again.
| | 02:30 | Now I'm going to hold down the spacebar and go to
Animate>Create Animation Snapshot with options.
| | 02:36 | Now let's put in some settings here.
| | 02:38 | We want the end time to be 17 and the
start time we actually want to set to two.
| | 02:43 | That's because the original rivet we
already have in our scene is set to one.
| | 02:47 | So we don't need to make an extra one for frame one.
| | 02:49 | All right, click Snapshot.
| | 02:51 | Okay, a rivet was made for every frame of the animation.
| | 02:54 | Now the interesting thing about this is
that you could still edit this curve and
| | 02:58 | it'll update the positions of the rivets.
| | 03:00 | So I'm just going to click on that curve
again and actually I want to go in the
| | 03:04 | Wireframe mode just to make it easier to click on this.
| | 03:06 | I am going to hold down the right mouse button, oops!
| | 03:09 | It's still selecting the polygon object.
| | 03:11 | Let me undo that, go into Object mode.
Let's try and select that curve again,
| | 03:15 | I'm going to zoom in closer so
it doesn't get the wrong thing.
| | 03:17 | Go to Control Vertex and pick a vertex
on that curve and as we move it we can
| | 03:22 | see that the rivets move right along.
| | 03:24 | So if you need to make any last
minute adjustments to that curve on the
| | 03:27 | positions of the rivets, you could do it this way.
| | 03:30 | I'm going to hit Z to undo that.
| | 03:31 | and let's go back in the Shaded mode with five.
| | 03:33 | Okay, so we can actually see that
there's a couple of places where the rivets
| | 03:37 | are kind of intersecting the geometry here.
I'm just going to scoot the curve
| | 03:41 | up a little bit so that those pieces don't stick inside.
| | 03:43 | All right, looking better.
| | 03:46 | Okay, so let's finish this up.
| | 03:47 | One thing I want to do is make sure that
the rivets will no longer be affected by the curve.
| | 03:51 | We just want to lock in everything that we've done.
| | 03:53 | Go in to the Selection mode and let's
turn on Polygon Selection so we can select
| | 03:57 | all of our rivets and we'll just
go through and click on all of them.
| | 04:01 | Now let's delete their history,
Edit>Delete by Type>History.
| | 04:05 | So this is going to remove
their connection to the curve.
| | 04:07 | Now if you were to edit the curve
nothing would happen to the rivets.
| | 04:10 | Let's also hit 3 on the keyboard to
turn on this Poly-Smoothing for them and
| | 04:14 | finally I want to combine them into
one object; go to Mesh>Combine.
| | 04:18 | Okay, we'll talk about mirroring
them over to the other side later on.
| | 04:22 | Well there you have it, a
great technique for making rivets.
| | 04:25 | There are so many things you
can do with this technique.
| | 04:27 | You could make tank treads, chains,
telephone poles following a road.
| | 04:31 | Really, the possibilities are wide open.
| | 04:33 | I use this technique all the time.
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| Mirroring models: Advanced tips| 00:00 | So far we've been using mirroring on a
fairly basic level to duplicate one side
| | 00:05 | of a symmetrical object to
the other side of the car.
| | 00:08 | But what do you do if an object is more
complex, like it's made up of a lot of
| | 00:12 | little parts or it's at an odd angle?
| | 00:15 | In this video I'm going to cover a few
tips to make mirroring a little easier.
| | 00:19 | In our scene here, we've got most of
the various odds and ends modelled,
| | 00:23 | but they're only on one side of the car.
| | 00:25 | We need to get copies made and
mirrored over for the other side.
| | 00:28 | Now some of these are going to be easy.
| | 00:29 | For example, the headlight can simply be
instanced and moved on over to the other side.
| | 00:34 | Let's go ahead and click on this headlight here.
| | 00:36 | Now this whole assembly is parented
to the base object and if you actually
| | 00:40 | just hit the up arrow with one of them
selected, you'll go through and select
| | 00:43 | all of these objects.
| | 00:45 | So with these selected what you
can do is simply instance them; go to
| | 00:49 | Edit>Duplicate Special with Options.
Make sure it's set to Instance and make
| | 00:53 | sure it's not scaling or rotation or
anything. We'll just make one copy and
| | 00:57 | Duplicate Special. Then you can
just simply move it over to the other side.
| | 01:01 | Let's just zoom in and make sure it's perfectly aligned.
| | 01:04 | So that was pretty easy.
| | 01:06 | Let's do something a little bit more complicated.
| | 01:08 | Sometimes you'll have multiple
objects that need to be flipped.
| | 01:11 | So let's look at the instance of the
fans and the radiator, that kind of stuff
| | 01:17 | on the inside of the car.
| | 01:18 | So I'm just going to start selecting
these different things. We've actually
| | 01:22 | got this entire fan assembly parented
to one locator. I'm also just going to go
| | 01:27 | through and Shift+Select all of the
other objects on the inside of this.
| | 01:31 | Okay, with these all selected, what we
can do is group them into one object.
| | 01:35 | So I'm going to hit Ctrl+G and this
creates a group and placed its pivot point
| | 01:40 | right at the center of the grid.
| | 01:41 | So that makes for a really convenient mirroring.
| | 01:44 | Actually it looks like I forgot one
little piece, this bar right here, so
| | 01:48 | I'm going to hit Z to undo that, select
that piece there and hit Ctrl+G again, perfect.
| | 01:54 | Now let's go to Edit and Duplicate Special
with Options and everything should be right.
| | 01:59 | Duplicate Special.
| | 02:01 | Now let's go into our Scale tool
and let's just flip this over now.
| | 02:06 | So you notice the scale isn't quite
exactly right, so we just want to type in
| | 02:10 | negative one, perfect!
| | 02:11 | Okay, that wasn't too hard.
| | 02:13 | Now let's look at an even trickier situation.
| | 02:15 | The exhaust pipes right here are at a
weird angle, so you can't just simply
| | 02:20 | scale them over because they'll
scale in the wrong direction.
| | 02:24 | This a referenced object, so we don't
want to freeze its transforms.
| | 02:27 | That would cause problems.
| | 02:28 | So you might be thinking that you could
change the manipulator access to world.
| | 02:33 | So let's see what happens if we try that.
| | 02:35 | We've got our tool Settings here
and let's change the Axis to World.
| | 02:38 | Okay, so you might be thinking okay,
we can just rotate it this way.
| | 02:41 | But this causes a few problems because it won't let you
scale by an exact amount when you're in this mode.
| | 02:46 | Notice we get a warning, non object-space
scale baked into components.
| | 02:51 | It's kind of confusing, but basically
it means that we don't have precise
| | 02:54 | control over this scale in this mode.
So I'm going to hit Z to undo that.
| | 02:58 | We'll go back into Object mode for this tool.
| | 03:00 | The solution is to do like we did with the radiator system.
| | 03:04 | You simply want to select this and then
hit Ctrl+G to group it under a new object.
| | 03:09 | Now we can duplicate this and scale
this object. We want to make sure we
| | 03:14 | scaled exactly negative one, and that will
place it exactly on the other side of the car.
| | 03:18 | So that's really all there is to it.
| | 03:20 | Go ahead and instance and mirror
everything else that needs to be done.
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| Examining the finished Shelby Cobra| 00:00 | So here it is after a lot of work.
a finished 1966 Shelby Cobra 427.
| | 00:06 | I'm sure you'll notice there are a
few details that I've skipped ahead on.
| | 00:10 | In this video I'll point out what some
of those details are and what they're for.
| | 00:14 | Now in order to save time in this course
and to not continue showing the same
| | 00:17 | techniques over and over again, I've
skipped over some of the details that
| | 00:21 | really wouldn't have taught anything new anyway.
| | 00:24 | One thing is some Filler Geometry.
| | 00:26 | So what I'm going to do is zoom in here
in a Perspective View and I just want to
| | 00:30 | point out a couple of objects here.
| | 00:32 | So these boxy polygons models underneath
the body of the car are here to fill in holes.
| | 00:37 | Without them there are some places in
the car where the viewer might be able to
| | 00:40 | see through little gaps, for example
around the tries or through the rims.
| | 00:44 | These pieces don't need to be terribly
detailed, they just need to fill in the
| | 00:48 | space and make it feel like the car is more solid.
| | 00:51 | Something else you might want to do
is turn off visibility of NURBS Curves.
| | 00:55 | We still have some NURBS Curves in
our scene that were used to make the
| | 00:59 | piping on the upholstery and there is
a curve here that was used to make the
| | 01:03 | curve on the exhaust pipe.
| | 01:05 | And let's see, there is a couple other
little curves, maybe this one over here
| | 01:08 | that was used for the upholstery.
| | 01:10 | So these might get in the way and you
might actually accidentally move them or
| | 01:14 | edit them, which could make a change you don't want.
| | 01:16 | So let's just make it so we can't see them.
| | 01:18 | Go into Show and let's turn off NURBS Curves.
| | 01:22 | Something else we might want to hide are the locators.
| | 01:27 | So those locators we're just creating
a bunch of visual clutter. We don't
| | 01:30 | really need to see them and we can always
bring them back if we need to move one of them.
| | 01:35 | Something else we can do is delete the image planes.
| | 01:37 | Since we're done modeling, we don't
need these image planes anymore.
| | 01:39 | So one way to get rid of them is to simply
drag a selection over them and hit Delete.
| | 01:44 | Something else you can do is
open up your Hypershades; go to
| | 01:48 | Window>Rendering Editors>Hypershade.
| | 01:50 | In here you can open up Utilities tab and just
select your image planes in here and hit Delete.
| | 01:55 | Okay let's close that.
| | 01:58 | Another final check that you might
want to do is to make sure that you don't
| | 02:01 | have any normals facing in the wrong direction.
| | 02:04 | So let's go into our Perspective View
and what I'm going to do is the Lighting,
| | 02:08 | turn off Two Sided Lighting.
| | 02:10 | So you might have notice that
some objects went black on one side.
| | 02:13 | So that means that the part that
went black is the inside of the object.
| | 02:17 | So yes we do want this to be black here
because that's the inside of the exhaust pipe.
| | 02:22 | Few other places are black like the
inside of the rims and so on, so that's fine.
| | 02:26 | We want to look for places that shouldn't be black.
| | 02:29 | So actually it looks like our gas, brake,
and clutch pedals are inside out.
| | 02:35 | Let's fix that really quick.
| | 02:36 | I'm just going to click on one of these and you'll
notice that the AC logo is parented to the pedal.
| | 02:43 | So if we were to reverse the normals
right now, it would actually flip what is
| | 02:46 | actually correct right now.
| | 02:48 | So I'm going to hit down on the keyboard
and that's going to make it so that it
| | 02:51 | only selects the objects that I clicked on
and not any of its child objects.
| | 02:56 | Now we can go into Normals>Reverse.
| | 02:58 | We'll do the same thing here, just click on
the object, hit down arrow on the keyboard,
| | 03:02 | Normals>Reverse, same thing again,
hit down on the keyboard, and I'm
| | 03:05 | just going to hit G to repeat
the last action. Okay, great!
| | 03:09 | Looks like the only thing left
to do is the inside of the gauges.
| | 03:13 | I'll go ahead and let you handle that,
same thing as we did before.
| | 03:16 | Once that's done, it's a good idea to name everything.
| | 03:19 | So for example, let's click on some of these objects here.
| | 03:23 | So when we click on the hood air intake,
you can see that its name is
| | 03:27 | temp3:polySurface101, so that's not very informative.
| | 03:31 | So let's just click on here and call it
something like hoodAirIntake.
| | 03:36 | Now it might feel like a lot of busy work,
but you definitely want to go through
| | 03:39 | all of your objects and give them a name.
| | 03:42 | Now if any of your objects are referenced
into the scene, so for example the
| | 03:46 | tire here was referenced in from a
different scene, what you want to do is give
| | 03:49 | it a name in the original scene.
| | 03:51 | So you would open up the tire
scene and change the name in there.
| | 03:54 | Okay let's do another clean up job now.
| | 03:56 | What we want to do is look at outliner.
| | 03:59 | So if we go under Window>Outliner and
this is a list of everything in this scene.
| | 04:03 | So what you might want to do is go into
Wireframe mode and then start clicking
| | 04:08 | on things in here and what you might
see is that when you click on something,
| | 04:13 | there is an object but there is no
actual geometry associated with that object
| | 04:17 | and so that's kind of a dead object.
| | 04:19 | If we just hit Delete on that, we can
get it out of our scene without changing
| | 04:23 | anything in the scene because it's
sort of an object that was used to create
| | 04:26 | something else and now
it's not really used anymore.
| | 04:29 | So we'll just on a few more of these,
so you can see nothing is lighting up,
| | 04:32 | nothing is lighting up there, nothing
is lighting up there, we can just get rid
| | 04:35 | of all these things.
| | 04:36 | So if we click on this one, you can
see it's lighting up our dashboard.
| | 04:40 | So we don't want to delete that one.
A few other things in here that are being lightened up.
| | 04:44 | So you just want to go through all
of this and delete any dead objects.
| | 04:48 | Okay, so there we have it, a finished car.
| | 04:51 | In this video we went over some of the
finishing steps that should usually be
| | 04:54 | performed on any model before it goes on to
other steps like laying out UVs or rigging.
| | 05:00 | It should always be done especially if
you're sending the model to someone else,
| | 05:04 | so that they don't get confused or
have to ask you to make any fixes.
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ConclusionNext steps| 00:00 | Well this is the end of the course and
as I'm sure you've seen, modeling a car
| | 00:04 | is a fun and satisfying challenge, but
there is so much more you can do with
| | 00:08 | it beyond this course.
| | 00:09 | You may want to layout its UVs and set up
some lights and materials for rendering.
| | 00:13 | You could paint texture maps on it or
you could rig the wheels so that they turn
| | 00:18 | and animate as you drive it down the highway.
| | 00:20 | Luckily for you, the lynda.com Library
has courses covering exactly these topics.
| | 00:25 | You might want to check out Mudbox 2013
Essential Training where I show you how
| | 00:29 | to sculpt organic details like the wrinkles on the seats.
| | 00:32 | You also might want to check out Maya Essentials 4:
| | 00:34 | Creating Textures and Materials with George Maestri.
| | 00:37 | Here you can learn how layout the UVs
and create textures and materials so that
| | 00:41 | the car really looks like metal and rubber and glass.
| | 00:44 | From here you might want to look at Photorealistic
Lighting with Maya and Nuke with Mark Lefitz.
| | 00:49 | He shows you how to light, render and composite
the car into a realistic environment.
| | 00:53 | In this course he is actually using the concept vehicle
that I show at the beginning of my course.
| | 00:57 | And speaking of that concept vehicle,
you can actually how I sculpted it in
| | 01:01 | Sculptris Essential Training.
| | 01:03 | So I hope you've got a lot out of this course.
| | 01:06 | You can apply it to anything you do that is
related to modeling, not just for vehicles.
| | 01:10 | All right, well I hope to see you next time.
| | 01:12 | Have a good one.
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