Yeah I agree. I think we've been down this path before haven't we, and if I recall correctly, we came to the same conclusion. Each car is a sculpturing job in its own right; they don't lend themselves to recipe-style mass production (unless you think that flat-sided blocks with a car-like profile are any good).
Having said that, there are a few general strategies that I learned the hard way when making vehicles. The bold highlights below are specific gmax terms for the mesh operations you need to master;
- If starting from a side extrusion, specify enough width sections to allow you to shape the mesh as viewed from the front/back and from the top. I usually found that I needed 6 to 8 sections across the width of the vehicle (ie. 3 -4 sections on each side of the centre line) to curve the roof, hood and trunk. Don't overdo it though, because too many vertices will drive you nuts as well as inflate the poly count.
- Take advantage of symmetry. Make only the left or right half of the vehicle first. When you're satisfied with the shape, clone and mirror it, then check for and correct any flipped normals resulting from the mirror operation. Join the two halves by first attaching them together then welding all the vertex pairs along the centre line. The benefits are that it will automatically halve the number of operations needed to tweak the shape, and it will ensure that not only the vertices, but also the pattern of polygon edges (both visible and invisible) is the same on both sides. It means that further operations such as texturing and especially bevelling and Boolean cuts will not produce unsymmetrical results (as sometimes happens when you make the whole mesh in one hit).
- Don't always try to make the whole vehicle from one 'block', some are too complex for that to work. For vehicles with anything but the most boxy shape, it's better to assemble them from separately made sections. For example, you might make a car's body as a lower and upper half, then put a canopy on top - this allows you a bit of freedom to curve the sides of the car. The various parts have to be attached and/or welded together to ensure texturing works seamlessly over the whole vehicle.
- Things such as wheels, side mirrors, fenders and so forth are better done as separate objects but they don't have to be welded or even formally attached to the main mesh, just placed in the right position.
- Remember that good photo-textures will make up for lack of detail in the mesh. Reproducing everything to the nth degree with the 3D mesh is a big mistake and will cause you, as a modeller, and the end-users a lot of grief.
olara
