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Hello everybody. My name is Plekhanov Vladimir and I am starting a sort of master class course on Modeling in Alias environment.
It’s considered for people which are already acknowledged with instruments,
with how thing are done more or less, but in fact can learn in the process.
Since we have a quite difficult task, I chose as object of modeling the car – Lexus LFA.
I’ll tell you from the beginning that a car is not the easiest thing,
and if somebody feels unconfident, then it is better to begin with simple objects.
I mean modeling some small things like TV remotes, phones, Hair dryers, anything small.
A car is difficult enough, has its own particularities, but anyway I recommend everybody to watch it.
This will be, how it is used to call, a sort of work in progress.
Work will be uploaded in separate parts. I will do it and then upload on the web.
Will try to merge it somehow to look acceptable so nobody gets bored. I hope that for someone it will be useful.
Let’s roll. As you see I have the blueprints, side view, top view, front, back. All as usual.
Blueprints are vector, not very precise as I see, but it is not so crucial.
Modeling by blueprints has its own specifics. So it is different compare to modeling by scans.
Scans of surfaces with 3D point clods, so we use what we have. Such a thing I think to many will be interesting.
First of all we need to make a net of curves. Curve net is a quite boring task, so I will slowly do them.
We chose and create a curve, and give it desired shape. Let’s start from the roof. We define a degree, in this case 4.
Recently tried degree 4, and it fits well. Will tell you from the beginning that I don’t have a ready model of Lexus,
So, everything I do is real-time as you see, together with you. Gradually something will emerge, I think. At least I hope so.
Frankly, I didn’t model by blueprints for a while, so will see… Everything should be Tiptop. No other way around.
So we take curves and slowly find their shape. Meanwhile I will tell you about points distribution.
Control points, In Help it is written, if somebody red it, is acknowledged with splines theory,
there is well described how they should be positioned, logic of their position.
Control points are not arranged randomly, they should follow a strict topology.
You can’t just put them randomly, give a shape and leave it as is. They should stay correctly.
If they are arranged nicely, then the result will be nice too.
But if we will put them as we wish then we will get respective result.
And of course it is good to have a lot of photos of this Lexus. It would be good to study it in real world, if possible.
I didn’t see a real one, only in Grand Turismo 5 for PlayStation :))
Well, for now let it be this way. We have two curves and now we switch to top view and give shape.
Now we will try to join them with a surface. For this we will use Skin.
Palette – Surfaces – Skin, and just connect two curves. This is what we got.
What we need, is to delete history, and align it to symmetry.
We see that points moved away a bit, so we will have to adjust the manually a bit.
In principle it is a little same to polygonal modeling, it has its own specifics and of course everything is different there.
Sometimes we have to tweak it manually. If we wish to get a good result, it is desired to control everything.
I mean less automatism and more careful manual modeling. Let’s see the roof. Accurate, straight result.
Now, a bit about junction. We see that curve is broken a little, and in the back part it is more visible.
Also there is a sensitivity tweaking. And so on, carefully tweak one point, and then another.
The roof must be without flattening in the middle.
Because it is evident, but when everything is smooth then we get a totally different result. It’s all seen, anyway evident.
Well, here is something that looks like a roof. This is how it is done. The roof is a simple enough element.
Can’t be simpler. Let’s leave it for now, we still have curves. Don’t forget to save!
Generally, of course this is it, I did the roof, but we must put all the curves. It’s a very boring process.
Simply digitize all the lines from blueprint in order for them to form a network in 3D.
I will not record it, simply will show the result later.
Well, let’s continue my friends. It is seen that I did a few curves.
Corrected the roof, arranged blueprints to be more symmetrical.
To be precise, not symmetrical but just to fit each other. They didn’t fit, but it is not that important.
Now I will show you how to do will arch the right way, or at least how I always do, or try to do if I have time.
If there is not enough time, I do them freestyle way. So we create a square.
Resize it, and set the degree 2 by 2. In principle it should be enough.
So we have a back view blueprint and accordingly bend this surface, approximately plus-minus.
Here we get such a thing, bended under corner.
In fact, by automotive normative, there is such a sector on top of the wheel that must be closed, to pass the certification.
I don’t have it now, but this is why all arches are a bit bended there. It is for avoiding dirt, you know…
We do the same with the front one. We type ctrl+c, ctrl+v. Move it there, and look. Turn on the front blueprint.
In principle on this Lexus they are almost the same. As I see. Well, approximately this way.
Maybe tweak it here a bit. Well, we got two such surfaces. If we shade them, it will be visible.
They cover approximately half of the wheel. All this way, like this…
Now in order to create a class-A surface, around the arch, to make it nice, we need to create a curve.
Select circle, and put it there. Scale it, scale. By the way blueprints are not perfect…
But it’s better than nothing. Well, then the circle needs to be rotated.
We need to rotate in a way that this dot will be positioned on the bottom, and we could cut and try to rebuild it.
Select the cut instrument, press Alt and cut. We don’t need this, and we need that.
Now with this curve we must make something beautiful. Let’s make it degree 7, span one. Well, not that good…
Well, leave it like this. So we try to give it some shape, more or less accomplished, using such “clever” manipulations.