An in-depth (and sorely overdue) tutorial is under construction. It will encompass the many techniques required to model a vehicle fit for BeamNG. Patience is a virtue, folks. Have no idea how to Blender? Well, you're in the right place. Go check out the third section, where I've written an almost extensive, easy to understand beginners' guide where I hold your hand (no homo) and teach you how to Blender. For those who know how to Blender but don't know how to car, read on... You're going to be learning from the tutorial below, because it's an excellent and informative resource. The purpose of this post is to prepare you before you car, and provide you with resource management skills. Something I definitely didn't make up just then. This is the tutorial. http://darkscarab.com/resources/tutorials.php?id=43 There's a little disclaimer in the first paragraph that states "I want to make it clear that this tutorial expects you to know the basic controls of modelling". If you don't know the basic controls of modelling, you probably missed the first bit of this post. NOTE THAT INANE POSTS WHICH ASK FOR INFORMATION FOUND IN THIS TUTORIAL WILL PROBABLY RESULT IN A SNARKY COMMENT ON YOUR WALL FROM ME, QUESTIONING YOUR INTELLIGENCE (or lack thereof) I'll cut the crap and dive right in. Section One PREP (yes, this is necessary): Get Blender. If you don't know how to, stop reading and go spew your armchair physics on Gabe's wall or something; you're too far gone and I cannot help you. Programmes such as 3DS Max and Cinema 4D are ideal, but cost a lot of money. Be ethical. Don't pirate. Go ahead and create a folder wherever you find convenient, and give it a name. I call mine Gary. This is where your CAD projects will live. Create another folder in there and give it the name of whatever car you'll be making. Populate it with more folders for sorting reference images. Finding a good schematic/blueprint is a key contributor in creating an accurate model of the vehicle. Using poor, unclear blueprints often leads to discouragement and frustration from being unable to accurately recreate a component. Look for blueprints with a side, front, rear and top view. Avoid blueprints which aren't orthogonal, like this one. (imported from here) Note how the entire vehicle tapers from bottom to top, and appears bulbous from front view. You definitely don't want this. Check the next section out for a detailed guide on finding and setting up blueprints. Once you have your blueprints, it's time to poke around the Internet for reference images. Find hi-res images of every angle of the vehicle, and ensure the year, type, and model are exactly the same. Nobody likes a Frankencar. The Quattro was one of those in its early stages, so uh, yeah. Stick those in the relevant folder. Now look around for the suspension, drivetrain, interior, engine, frame, chassis, crash tests, whatever, and stick those in their relevant folders. To find reference of the chassis and other internals, use search terms such as "-car name- teardown" or "-car name- build". You should get the jist. By now, your folder should be looking a little like this. (imported from here) And hey, guess what? It's time to start modelling. aw yissssssss Go hit the link at the top of the post. Section Two Finding and setting up good reference images is probably the most time consuming part of preparation. You can find good blueprints by using Google the right way. Take a look at the image below. Not only have I used the search bar, but I've specified only large, black and white images to be displayed. Blueprints are typically just engineering drawings. Some are vectors, but most are black and white. (imported from here) Look for clean, vector graphics, such as the near-perfect blueprint in the link: http://www.solidcad.hu/Design3D/Blueprint_Osszesitve/BMW/6/bmw-m6-2006.gif Once you have your blueprints, separate each view with an error margin of ~1px, and make sure the height of the side, front and rear views are the same. Also ensure the height of the top view is the same as the length of the side view. (imported from here) Start Blender, and hit "n" to open a menu on the right. The second last section is called "Background Images". Click that, and click "Add Image". Find your images and set them up accordingly. If your setup doesn't look like the one below, ya dun goofed. (imported from here) Note that the vehicle must be pointing down in Top View, as shown. Also note that Right View shows the left hand side of the vehicle. Go figure. The side view typically needs a size adjustment to match with the other views. The default size Blender assigns to the background images is 5.000 units. As you can see, I've had to adjust my side view to 7.680 units. Yours probably won't be the same. (imported from here) If you've done everything above correctly, you should be ready to start modelling. I find these resources especially useful. http://www.the-blueprints.com/blueprints/ http://www.suurland.com/blueprints.php?catagory=2&order=name http://www.solidcad.hu/Design3D/Blueprint_Osszesitve/ http://humster3d.com/category/blueprints/ Section Three This is the total beginners' guide to Blender. So, you've decided to take the initiative of learning to model. Good on you. This tutorial will cover many of the techniques used to create cars for BeamNG, and RoR, and will allow you to follow the tutorial linked at the top of the OP. A lot of international folks will be reading this, so I'll stay away from overly complex language and vocabulary. If you feel that the tutorial is insulting your intelligence a little, remember, it's for a good reason. I'll try to avoid being dry as much as possible. Learning how to model isn't the most exciting thing in the world, nor is it the easiest to pull humour from. Bear with me. Let's get started. -- On opening Blender, you'll be greeted by the UI, and a splash screen. Click anywhere in the workspace to make it go away. Hey look, a cube. (imported from here) Let's look around this cube. Click and hold the scroll wheel, and move your mouse around. Why don't we zoom in on it as well? Scroll up or down to zoom in and out. Want to move around? Hold both SHIFT and the scroll wheel down while moving the mouse. Have a numpad? Hit 1, 3, or 7 to adjust the camera to a perfect front, right, or top view respectively. Pressing SPACEBAR, then typing "persp" or "ortho" will allow you to switch between a perspective and orthogonal view. Pressing CTRL and 1, 3, or 7 will do the opposite of each view: rear, left, and bottom, respectively. Pressing CTRL+ALT+"q" will display four simultaneous views of the cube. Press the button combo again for the normal view. (imported from here) You can also move the cube around. Right click and drag it. Once it's moving, you can let go of the button. Left click to confirm, right click to cancel. Another way to move things (which I prefer) is to highlight the object by right clicking, then pressing "g". Blender then ties movement of the mouse to the object. To move it along an axis (that's the red, green or blue arrow) press "x", "y", or "z" while you've grabbed it with right click or "g". This will come in handy when modelling more complex objects. Note: "x" moves it sideways, "y" moves it forward/backward, and "z" moves it up/down. These letters correlate to the red, green, and blue arrows respectively. Note: Holding down SHIFT while moving things around will enable a "Precision Mode". Very handy. Also applies to scaling, rotating, and anything that involves movement. To rotate the cube, highlight it and hit "r". Unless you press "x", "y", or "z" to constrain rotation to one axis, the cube will rotate about the axis of you facing it. Left click to confirm, right click to cancel. Clear as mud, right? To change the size of the cube (scale), highlight it and hit "s". Move the mouse away from the cube to enlarge it, and move it toward the cube to reduce the size. Left click to confirm, right click to cancel. Noticed these thingies? (imported from here) The one on the left is a camera, used for rendering. The weird atom/orb thing on the right is a light source, which provides light to your render. Right click on either of them to highlight. Once highlighted, you can move them around just like you did with the cube. Press F12 to check the render out. Press F11 to go back to the workspace. Don't delete these; they're important. Not that you could anyway, because I haven't taught you how. Press DELETE (around the top right of the keyboard) or "x", then confirm with the dialogue box that pops up to delete something. Man, we are hauling ass. Press TAB, or go to the bottom left of the workspace and change the menu from "Object Mode" to "Edit Mode". This is the part where we get to do stuff to the cube itself. All 3D objects are made up of 3 things: Vertices, edges, and faces. Vertices determine the geometry of the object, edges are what join vertices together, and faces are a surface formed between 3 or more vertices. The N/Bs found in BeamNG and RoR are essentially vertices and edges. Now, go ahead and move one of the cube's vertices. See how the cube stops being a cube? That's how we turn things that aren't cars into things that are cars. (imported from here) Right. So undo that, and select four vertices on one face of the cube by holding SHIFT, and clicking each vertex. Press "g", and move these vertices, constraining movement to one of the axes. You've created a rectangular prism. Cool. (imported from here) Mess around and experiment with moving vertices around until you feel comfortable and confident in your actions. There's no use in modelling something as complex as a car if you don't feel in control. It's like solving a Rubik's cube while upside down. Strapped to the pointy end of a cruise missile. With a ferret mauling your privates. Yeah, it's just not gonna work. Bring some more geometry into your mesh by selecting some vertices and pressing "e" to extrude them out. Don't forget to press "x", "y", or "z" if you want to move them along an axis. Do the same for scaling and rotating. Just go nuts until you're comfortable with these four concepts. Now, the really important part. Edge loops. When it comes to modelling, edge loops are your best friend. Edge loops are how you add detail to your geometry with precision. But like all good things, you should use them in moderation. You can make an absolute hash of your mesh if you use too many. Still have that nice rectangular prism? No? Well, go back to Object Mode (TAB), highlight your whatever that is, and delete it. You've probably accidentally left clicked at some point of dicking around and sent that crosshair away from the centre of your workspace. That's your 3D Cursor, (this thing: (imported from here)) which will prove its worth in more advanced geometry. To get that 3D Cursor back in the centre, hover your mouse on the workspace and press your SPACEBAR. A little menu will come up. Type "center" (not "centre") and click "Snap Cursor to Center". Note: Blender will create meshes wherever the 3D Cursor is located. With that done, go up to the top left of the workspace and click on "Add". Hover over "Mesh" and select "Cube". (imported from here) Hey, the cube's back. We're now going to create an architectural piece which uses all the concepts we've learnt thus far (except extrusion), and introduces edge loops. Zoom right out and move the whole cube back along the Y-axis. Then grab the vertices on the leading face of the cube, and move them along the Y-axis as far as you see fit. (imported from here) With those same vertices, rotate them 90 degrees in any direction, remembering to press "y" as you rotate. The rotation can be controlled by the menu on the left after you perform the rotation. It should be looking a little (actually, a lot) like this. (imported from here) Now hit CTRL+"r" for edge loops. You should see a bright pink line show up on the object. Scroll up to increase the number of loops, or scroll down to decrease. I'll be using 7, but feel free to use fewer, or more if you think you can manage them. Use an odd number of loops. Once you're happy with the number, double click to set them. Don't forget you can use CTRL+ALT+"q"! Select the four vertices which make up the loop in the centre, and move them up along the Z-axis. (imported from here) Continue selecting vertices and moving them up to form an arch. You can make the arch appear neater by selecting pairs of loops and moving them up, instead of moving one loop at a time. While you're at it, make the base of the structure flat. Swap into Object Mode and press SHIFT+D to duplicate the arch. Move the new arch along the X-axis. (imported from here) SHIFT click both arches and hit CTRL+"j" to make them a single object. Both should be highlighted in yellow. Back in edit mode, highlight the four vertices which form the boundary of the gap between the arches, then press "f" to create a surface between them. (imported from here) Hey presto! You've created a simple hybrid box girder/arch bridge with an unnecessary, literal, and probably dangerous twist! This bridge lacks everything required for it to stay upright, so I probably shouldn't do civil engineering. Neither should you. Save this project so you can laugh at it later when you're really good at Blender. Shortcuts you need to know: "e" to extrude vertices "a" to select/deselect all vertices "p" to separate meshes "g" to grab vertices "s" to scale vertices "f" to fill gaps "h" to hide meshes "z" to view wireframe "x" to delete highlighted objects "b" to multiselect by dragging mouse - ALT+"m" to merge vertices (often used in conjunction with "e") ALT+"h" to unhide meshes CTRL+"j" to join meshes Got all that down? Good. Read the first and second section, follow the instructions on preparation, and go hit that link at the top of the post.
I'm sure if you gave Blender a go and followed my tutorial, whatever you make will be slightly less horrific than you imagined Am I missing anything important from the tutorial?
Edit your post, remove the entire quote man. You just copied the entire first post in your reply. Sorry, this is a forum pet peeve of mine.
Ah this is one of those tutorials that were made a little early for the game Some new people interested in modding should take a good look at this. A lot of what I see here if what anyone will need to start making stuff.
Thanks for the kind words! My modelling has improved drastically since I posted this; it's due for a total rewrite. Might include some jbeamy things as well.
I just realised the guy you mentioned his website (scarab something) he adds more than 1 planes and I think I screwed that up. xD
This is definitely a great tutorial for building cars. Most of the tutorials I've found online have been weird and obnoxious. Thanks !
this may sound stupid but is there a function to make level with, like in sketch up when you hold shift(axis lock) and then click a corner it becomes level with, and if not how if you get the bottom of the arc completely flat?
You can highlight the vertices you want level, press 's' to scale, the letter of the axis you want them level 'z', then finally '0'.
No no no they need a video trust me, I will try to make some videos soon but it does take time as stated, I hope to start sometime this week Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
