Modeling
The start of the car
**REMEMBER
THIS**
If you don't follow this step you might wreak your car before you start!
Before you put any faces (polies same thing) on the car you MUST move the axis by going to the following: Display>Place Axis
This would be the best area:
http://img239.exs.cx/img239/8632/111111zn.jpg
Also, go to Options>Normals>Automatic Update
It will prevent you car from looking like this:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v18/SSH_Dude5/zmod/worst_civic_ever.jpg
First go to Create>Surface>Flat and make a square somewhere near the bottom left of the car door:
http://img83.echo.cx/img83/1826/surfacename1fn.jpg
When that box shows up, give the surface a name like body or something. (you are going to rename it later but that’s not for awhile)
For the horizonal and vertical steps, put 1. Don't put 10 or something or you will have to many polies in a single area. Now that you have a surface to work on, you can start the car. Go to Create>Faces>Single (don't worry about the other ones until later) and click on the surface you made. After you click it red dots should show up in those places I circled.
http://img221.echo.cx/img221/7581/vertice2bp.jpg
Now with the Faces>Single tool still selected, click on one of the red dots (or vertices as they are called) and you should get this:
http://img206.echo.cx/img206/2407/firstpoly7bz.jpg
After that, click on another vertices and you should put a triangle like this:
http://img210.echo.cx/img210/9955/firstploy26qa.jpg
After you have done this, go ahead and place more polies onto the one you just placed like so:
http://img210.echo.cx/img210/482/polyplacement9kv.jpg
Remember to use the move tool (Modify>Move) to move vertices so they go with the car like that last picture.
After a while of placing polies, you should have (approximately) this much of the car covered:
http://img77.echo.cx/img77/8177/goodstart2it.jpg
But wait a second! The car isn't flat like that so now you will be introduced to the art of extruding polies. So now, you select the move tool (Modify>Move) and you go to the front view. as you can see, its flat straight up and it doesn’t look like the car at all.
So now that you have the move tool and you turned to the front view, start moving the polies so they fit the car. (I had to use the top view because there is something wrong with my front blueprint)
http://img33.echo.cx/img33/5797/poliewraps2gi.jpg
Over time, with lots of extruding (or moving the polies around, as I like to call it ;-)) the polies will be wrapping around the car and it will start to look like the real thing in the 3d view.
Now that you have begun the extruding process, the polies will have bends so they look like the car but something else might and will happen a lot in the car making process.
It’s the normals. (I don’t know what they exactly but it is kind of hard to explain.) After a lot of extruding, the polies will get this nasty black shade on they like this:
http://img213.echo.cx/img213/8995/normalsintro0sj.jpg
To solve this problem, go to Surface>Normals>Calculate (don’t worry this is no inserting numbers anywhere involved). When you use the Calculate tool, it moves the poly that is selected so that the normal will turn white and when you get the car in game, there won’t be a nasty shaded spot on the textures.
But remember, the Calculate tool doesn’t always fix the normals problem! To fix the normals without the Calculate tool, all you have to do it get the move tool and move the poly around until the shaded black part goes away. There will be some serious normals problems when you get the wheel wells and the bottom of the car.
Now back to the tutorial….
After you have placed many polies and you have gone around the wheel well like this:
http://img92.echo.cx/img92/9535/wheelwell6aj.jpg
You should work you way to the hood of the car and get about this far:
http://img218.echo.cx/img218/5637/hood4jl.jpg
Stop at the top of the headlights. The front of the car is one of the hard places to model on a car. (But I like to get it out of the way first.:P)
For the front of the car, you will need to look in the front (duh) and side view of the car. But like the many mysteries of zmodeler, the polies you place on the front view won’t be the same for the side. But that’s what makes zmodeler fun! :)J
Part 2 is coming soon
