Hello everyone,
I am currently working on a futuristic race car and am modeling it by tracing a reference image with points and creating splines through those points to make a 3D cage which I then fill in with polygons. I am having a hard time making the different patches look smooth and flowing throughout the object. Does anyone have any tips or suggestions to make the object have a nice flow through?
For a spline cage workfkow you want to make sure and merge the points at the seams. Then select a row or more of polygons on either side of the seam and use Shift M to smooth the transition.
It would be a combination of that and using the dragnet tool with varying degrees of fall of to tweak the model to where you want it.
For cars however, an all around better workflow is to use subpatches. Spline patching will only get you so far. And in fact ( I have been jumped on for saying this in the past) but it truly is an older technology from when we did not have any real good ways to perform smooth transitions like that.
Spline cages have use.
But you get much more flexibility and control with subdivision surfaces (subpatches in LightWave)
I have a tutorial for this at likwiki. There is a link from my site.
Thank you for replying Richard.
I am kind of on a time schedule and do not want to completely restart my mesh so is there anyway to combine the two techniques? I am subpatching after I have inserted my polygons. I believe my problem is the spline patches are not doing exactly what I expect or want. For example, on a curve, that should be smooth, there is what appears to be a dent and then transitions into the next patch with what looks like a crease or puckering of the geometry. Do you know how these patches work so I can better predict and perhaps fix my problem?
You might improve your spline modeling by EasySpline
http://www.easyspline.com
The main tool is real-time spline patching previewer, which is patching & displaying final object as you model it using any tool either 3rd party and built-in (it’s working parallel to LW).
Thank you Cineartist and TrueArtSupport for replying!
Cineartist, I do not have the time to restart my entire mesh. I also believe that I have been using subpatches. I have been subpatching my mesh after inserting the geometry. I am simply looking for how to predict the spline patch so they flow to one another.
TrueArtSuport, your product looks really cool and probably would be helpful but I do not have $75 to spend on it sadly.
I can not really say without looking at some screen grabs as to what you have going on. There are a number of things that can be going wrong with the splines and your settings as to what the issue is.
You can use what you have done, but using subpatches requires additional edge loops and controlling the flow of polygons using tools like add edges, bandswaw pro, merge polys and so on. To do it right will require some study.
There is some general information you might find useful in this thread:
http://forums.newtek.com/showthread.php?83878-Subdivision-Modeling-Workshop
We did cover some topics about cars:
There is also the subdivision modeling tutorial in my sig there and a link to it on my site.
If you provide some screen caps I can offer more specific advise.
CGT
there is also a great one here, $40 >
http://www.foundation3d.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=9&products_id=77
CGT
There is also an excellent free tutorial by Lewis on F3D.
http://www.foundation3d.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2299
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