Approach on modeling a car

[bravmm]

Dude, you ask questions quicker than we can answer them....

Just run a "Google" on car modeling, the approach with polymodeling or "patches" is no different in XSI, Maya, Max etc.
Start at http://www.cg-cars.com/ for instance. Car modeling tuts are all over the web. Just pick one and start modeling :thumbsup:

rob

[Pixelmech]

Yeah, I do ask questions, appreciate you all answering them. I try to research stuff first. I did search around but I was just wondering if there was a specific approach for XSI, having not poly modeled.

I've seen CGCars before I think (probably when I modeled the Mach 5) and I will check it out again right now. I think I am going to start with a rectangle primitive and go from there, at least that is what my intuition tells me. We'll see how it goes. :)

Thanks

[bravmm]

No worries, we all have to start somewhere and switching apps is difficult enough...

Have a look on XSIBase as well:
http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=10;action=display;threadid=25560
and
http://www.softimage.com/education/tutorials/tutorials_arch/webTutorials/XSI_2_0/SPORTCAR/the_car.pdf

rob

[Pixelmech]

After digging around in the CGCars forums I found an XSI car tutorial, it can be found here:

http://www.softimage.com/education/tutorials/tutorials_arch/webTutorials/XSI_2_0/SPORTCAR/the_car.pdf

It looks good, I will try that approach instead.

EDIT: :D We must have posted at the same time, I didn't see your link LOL. Just found XSI Base too, good resource, thanks! (And man, yeah switching apps is a trick retraining the brain).

[Sbowling]

When I built the mach 5, I broke the car down into certain pieces - the hood, the front fenders, the cockpit, the rear fenders, etc. Then I patched them together (or just moved them together and did not actually connect them - like the doors). But that was patch modeling, and XSI is poly modeling.

Would I be better off starting with say a flattened cylinder and then grabbing polys and pushing/pulling them into place? Or would I be better off making the individual parts and then bringing them together - or does it matter? The car I am going to model is very stylized - think of a lemans car that has lots of curves, etc. I do have reference material to go off of.

Also, is it okay for polymesh and surface mesh to live together in one model?

You should look through the XSI guides (help>XSI guides) in the "generating objects from curves" section. It may be more natural for you to use the curve modeling tools, such as birail, curve net, four sided, lofting, etc. All of these can be used to either generate surface meshes or polygon meshes and if you generate surface meshes, you can convert them into poly meshes later if you want.

While I don't use curves a lot when modeling, they come in very handy when you need more precise modeling than what you get with SubD surfaces.

[Pixelmech]

Thanks Sam, I found that section in the help and will read it before I start :)

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