First car project

First of all, this is my FIRST blender/3d project ever. I basically started with a single plane and watched tutorials on how to do certain things.

I have been working on this car for about a 3/4 of a year. The bodywork is nearly finished and i’m going to start focusing on the interior and finishing internal structures, so basically i’m asking for (help), opinions and feedback about the overall style and shape of the car, and also the actual rendering itself.

I measured the car to have a drag coeffiency of about 0.45 with flow design. Though I lowered the nose line a bit afterwards and haven’t measured since.

If you have any tips or tricks about cars and how they should be shaped i gladly accept them as well :slight_smile:

Current look:


Latest render:


Under work:


Today i have some spare time to work the underside of the car. My plan is to separate the internal structures from the body itself and to create a “shell” around the structure where needed.

Here is a picture of the structure at its currents state:


A quick placeholder for wheel wells with ports for exhaust:


Screencap from behind:


Turns out i don’t have that much time today. (going to get some beer with friends :spin:)

However i managed to make some progress with the structure. Obviously there is a lot of work to be done, but i’m quite happy with what i have now. Though the mesh is a real mess (no pun intended) in the front wheel walls… Probably going to rework it next. After that i’m focusing to strengthen up the beams in the roof and make the structure a bit more convincing around the b/c-pillar. Note that the engine is a v12-twinturbo placeholder to see how everything fits when its crammed full.

Here is a quick sample:


Also on a second look i notice that the turning radius is not going to be good with this front setup… :no: Rework is a must

Even though there haven’t been any responses yet i’ll keep this thread going for a while just in case if someone is interested in what i’m doing.

Some advancements have been made:

Fixed some of the front mesh and turning radius problem:

Before:

After:


Also made some general strengthening to the structure by adding more continuous flow to the pillar placement and size


Fixed the rims, they looked a bit weird to my eyes.

Before:


After


Also i looked at an older rendering that was rendered in 3ds max with corona-render plugin.
I like the look of the paint in the corona more so i’m gonna try to imitate it in cycles. Obvious difference is the lighter highlight areas in the roof and hood.

So today I did a bit work on the car paint material. Added some new nodes to make the paint behave more like a real car paint: Get’s darker when you watch straight on and lightens up when watched from an angle. This effect happens because light reflects from the clear-coat over the paint back to the paint and so forth. Kinda like how a fiber-optic cable works.

Screenshot of the material:


Here’s two example sphere renders:




The blue one is a bit shoddy because I was lazy but you get the idea. Hdri is a free sample from www.hdri-locations.com. I have to mention the name so there you go.

May seem a bit overcomplicated but gets the job done and adds some nice fake flakes in the paint. The flakes are from some tutorial but i can’t remember the name of it. I’ll soon post a rendering after I fiddle with the scene a bit.

If someone is interested in the material I can explain what ever you want to know about it.


Pretty plain but I wanted to show the new paint. Also thank paint for horrible jpg artifacts, i’m too lazy to open photoshop :eyebrowlift:

Made some quick textures for tail-lights :eyebrowlift2: Also my first UV ever.


Looks decent enough for a hand painted texture. I’ll try enchancing tomorrow.

not bad! the inner framework looks really good.

The car is looking really good. Does all the pink mean you have edge weighting on those edges? I’ve yet to try and use that as the tutorials I’ve seen sort of cautioned away from it. You asked for tips and tricks, I don’t really have many but I recently found a tool in the mesh loop tools add on called “space” that works great for cleaning up geometry by evenly spacing the verts along the edge. It even works on curved edges like the wheel wells for instance.

Keep up the good work, looking forward to seeing you finish this car.

I like it! Could very well be a mix between a Jag and the modern (good looking) Kia’s :slight_smile: .45 cW is not that great though. How did you measure that? Math or a proggie?

Thanks a lot!

Yeah the pink is means edge-weighting or crease, I’m not sure what’s the difference but I use creases with auto smooth set to 30 degrees. I see a lot of people saying that you shouldn’t use it and I agree with them in some cases. But I personally think its really handy when you are still processing the shape of the car. Before I knew it existed I was frustrated when I had to move three individual verts in one spot just to do minor changes in sharp edges.

Also that space thing sounds really handy. I have to check out if it helps with the tricky parts in the mesh. And I’m pretty sure that it will help me with the roof :wink:

Thanks a lot for positive response!

Thanks! I’m a huge fan of the modern Jags btw :wink:

And I agree with you about the cW. I have been thinking that lovering the car and tip of the nose even more could help with that but I haven’t tried it yet.

I measured the flow with autodesk’s FlowDesign program. I’m an car engineer student so I got it for free from their website :cool:, but I think the scale of the model was a bit messed up and that effected the whole cW thing. It’s pretty tricky because I have to import the model as “.FBX” to 3ds-max and then import it again as same file format to FD. For some reason it doesn’t work directly.

Also i’m a bit confused because Bugatti Veyron has a cW of 0.43 in normal mode and 0.35 in top speed mode if I remember correctly, and I know that its not good. Many cars today are starting to go under the 0.25 mark. Maybe it has something to do with the rear spoiler and downforce. But that’s just a guess.

Cars have been reaching under .25 cW for some time now. If I remember correctly the 1990 Opel (Vauxhall) Calibra already had a cW of .26.

I think you could improve airflow by giving the nose less surface. It’s pretty flat so air will have trouble finding a way around. By the looks of it you’re pushing air under the car so it must be able to go somewhere.
If lowering the nose (and thus reducing it’s surface) is not an option then maybe you could pass air through the car. That would mean some rigorous planning and mods when it comes to the monocoque.

Lastly, a flat floor and a splitter help to cut drag and add stability. Maybe you flow-tested the shell without it’s floor (or with an icomplete floor)?

Actually your idea is really good, I already began to improve the nose line, and it looks like I have enough room to tunnel some of the flow straight from the front to the sides of the car, through the car. I’m exited to see if it works if I tunnel flow to go behind/above the frontwheels to reach the doors. I’m pretty sure that I have to redesing the monocoque a bit anyway because I made some serious improvements to the roof too.

I’ll post some meshes and screencaps from flowdesing too when I get to that point.

Also if I remeber correctly my engine area was completely open from the bottom when I tested. That propably explains something. There is no way there could have been any good pressures under the car when I measured… :o

Lol, yeah … especially with the engine in the back you’ll get enormous amounts of turbulance and drag that way. Consider adding a diffuser to the flat underbody (most cars have 'm now … and if not they get the diffuser-look). It’ll help to manage airflow leaving the bottom-rear of the car and add downforce. :slight_smile:

Just noticed : The rear has a lot of Bentley Continental GT going on there! I especially like the tail lights.

I hoped no one would notice the resemblance :smiley: I really love the Bentley tail look.

Anyway I did some work with the body today in attempt to fix the drag issues. I’m not 100% sure that it works but i’ll test it out when i get the windows etc to place. The door looks a bit off to my eyes but its definitely a good start. The door shape had to be changed quite radically but for some reason I actually like it better. The upper part of the door looks really good. Thou the bottom looks too plain now when compared to the top.

New look:


I’m trying to get as much air out of the front as possible, so I might end up making the tubes even wider.


Also here’s a simple cut, the wheel is too close at the moment but it’s an easy fix:

I very much like the door game that’s happening there! Somehow you’ve got the design element of the taillights reflecting in the side of the car now … very kewl!

Airflow is a different matter though. With the new design you created very square “hips”. Air will have trouble finding it’s way around that, I reckon. Air might vortex in square cavities but designing a car with intentional “dead-air” zones might be a tad too ambitious for standard CFD programs.

You mentioned a twin turbo v12. Maybe you could use some of the redirected air to feed the engine. You have 4 gaping holes on the front of the car and the engine (which LOVES to breathe) in the rear / middle. Redirect air from the from via the doors to the engine? Or use the corner inlets to cool brakes and find a way to redirect air from the main (middle) inlets through a tunnel in the cabin to feed the engine?

nice work keep going :slight_smile: