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Apr 25, 2010
Part 4: Continuing Down the Side
Before dealing with the details of the car, such as the grille and headlights and such I will just
get the basic shape of the car or vehicle I am modeling. To stick with this routine I am going to start
modeling the section right above the front wheel.
There are two ways we can go about creating this next portion of the car. One way is to just continue
off of the front section we just made. However, if you go with that route you will run into problems
if you mirrored the front as I told you to. The other way is to add another plane instead of continuing
off of the first part. If you haven't mirrored the last piece you can just continue off of that piece.
If you want to go that direction I just want to warn you that if you mess up or something out of your
control happens in which you have to delete the whole piece you are working on you will lost a lot of
work. Personally I do it in small separate pieces just in case something happens.
Alright, why don't we continue with our car? Add a plane in your side view by hitting the space bar -->
Add --> Mesh --> Plane. Then move it into place over the area around the wheel then delete all but one
vertex. You may not be able to see the vertex in the image below, but it's there.
If you haven't already, make sure the vertex is over one of the corners or at the very least on a line that is in your reference image. Then, as usual take that vertex and start extruding along the line that you put the vertex on. Keep going until you have outlined and filled in most, or better yet, all of the area around our wheel.
Before continuing you may see that some parts of the car are blocking your view of the piece you
are working on. This will probably happen throughout the construction of the vehicle. The easiest
way to fix this issue is to move the piece to another layer. Then when you want to put the pieces
together (which we will do soon) you can put them back on the same layer.
Since my hood and the front of the car is going to be in the way when I am in the front view I will
just move these to another layer. If you want to do this, just select the pieces you want on another
layer in object mode and then hit 'M'. A pop up should appear with twenty boxes and one of them
(probably the top left) is already selected. To move the objects to another plane just select a different
box. Then hit 'Ok'.
Now whenever you are in object mode you can find the layer selection on the bar in each of the viewing
windows. To see the objects you just moved, just select the same square you chose to move the pieces to.
To view more than one layer, hold down the shift button and click the layer you want to see.
After the other pieces are out of the way, you can now go and shape the piece to the reference images. When you are done moving the vertices to the correct spot we can mirror this piece then connect it to our front bumper. Here is my finished piece for around the wheel.
Just like with the other two pieces, mirror our side and grab it to the other side of the car. To do this select all by hitting 'A' in edit mode. Duplicate by pressing Shift+D, hit M, and then hit X. After that, grab the new piece along the X-axis by using the G Key.
With both sides in place we can put the whole front three pieces together. First, we want to make these all one object. To do that, go into object mode and select the very front piece and the two new pieces we just made. Press Ctrl+J and select 'Join selected meshes' in the popup.
Next we have to actually put the pieces together. In Edit Mode, go and connect the vertices that should be in the same spot. In some cases you may find that you need to make more vertices for one side. The solution to this problem is to hit K with the edge that needs more vertices selected. A popup should appear. You will want to select one of the Knife options. Of these Knife options there are Exact, Midpoint, and Multicut. Exact and Midpoint will create one vertex, exact being exactly where the line you draw crosses the edge and midpoint creating a vertex in the middle. Multicut is used when you need more than one vertex.
You may notice that the hood does not look like it is in the right position compared to the rest of the car. This is true and if yours is the same way do not worry about it just yet. We will go over adjusting these separate parts later on.