I would like to make a shuttle bus upfit based on this body design for the Gavril H45 but I'm not sure how to go about it. I would like the passenger door to work, perhaps the ability to open the rear luggage compartment door using triggers, the ability to add a destination sign in the space above the windscreen (where it's blanked out in the photos), and the ability to use the resulting vehicle on bus routes. The bus body would have to be joined to the cab and there should be nothing separating the passenger compartment and the cab on the inside. It appears that the wheelbase needs to be extended as well. Obviously, I don't want this to be like Russian mods so I'd like to get all the collision and stuff working properly. Problem is, I'm willing to learn how to model and undertake all the work necessary to create this mod, but I have no idea where to start. I already have Blender.
Well, At first, I'd use a cut and resized Bus body for this project (for collisions and being the JBEAM donor). Also it would fiit a Lore that Wentward was building minibus upfits for the H-series. Other thing that you can do, is use the Cargo box, but it will look really boxy. The third way, is to stretch aa extended Van Body, cut it behind the doors, and make it wider, to fit the DRW rear track (would look like the one on your examples). Other tip that I would give you, is to make a H45 "Scudato" like Iveco does with their Daily mini truck, taht uses part of the structure from the regular cab, and you design and install a complete bus Body over it.
I wouldn't use the bus body as it's way too different, none of it can be reused probably except maybe the displays and some of the interior. Using the cargo box would be even worse, it has nothing in common with a bus. I would start from swapping the longest heavy duty D-Series frame available, then modelling the bus body based on the extended van but would need a ton of modifications and most textures would need to be new, and as for Jbeam it only makes sense to me to do it from scratch because there is no vehicle similar to this (the citybus is way too big and heavy for this).
Alright, I have decided to finally start this mod and I've decided that my approach will be to create a bus body and jbeam from scratch. However, I need to extend the frame and wheelbase. I would prefer to extend that of the van instead of using a D-series frame. When I imported the dae files of the van body and mechanicals into blender just to take a look at them, I noticed that the different frames were all present but the rear drivleine and suspension appeared to only fit the short wheelbase. Can anyone explain why?
Why would they model separate suspensions for each frame length if they can reuse the same one? And also why not use a modified D-Series frame if it's almost the same thing structurally?
Well, I'm not sure how everything works so that's why I was wondering. I saw different length exhausts for different length frames while poking around in the file.
That's not just different length exhaust, they have completely different shape adapted to not just the frame length but also to the position of the suspension and fuel tank on the frame... That's one more reason why you should use a D-Series frame imo, it has the exhaust ready for the longest frame.
