I am looking to create a forklift vehicle for BeamNG since the only one out there is broke and I want something that will suit my taste. My 3D model skills are rusty but I feel confident enough that with enough effort I can do it. Same goes for photoshop/gimp skills. I feel fairly comfortable with programming. I am wondering how long would it take me to make a vehicle like this with my experience?
A lot longer than I expected. I was expecting like a month or so What If I just downloaded a model that was already made and did the finishing work? I imagine that would cut off some time or I have a feeling it would be more work than its worth. Also what about just copying a engine over if that would work and do some touch up work? I know the suspension is going to be need to be custom made along with the transmission and the wheels. Although I don't think I could find a engine that has a ton of torque (like 2000ft-lb) but low HP to meet my needs I'm just mainly worried about it being able to pick up heavy cars and be able to move while carrying them and for it not to look a total potato. I'm not worried at all about how it deforms since its not made to be crashed or anything. The rest will be icing on the cake which I will improve over time.
Saving time from modeling is bit pointless, if you can somewhat model, you probably can make model in 2 full days and maybe 1 day for texturing work, suspension work and other such notepad++ work will take most of the time, then bug hunting and figuring out what on earth I did wrong which is at least in my opinion half the work, unless of course you know your way around jbeam files, slide nodes, hydros and such which would save time a lot. Everyone is different of course, but redrobin's estimates are not actually that far off, even with using ready made model.
