Not really sure why you had difficulties making the rest of the car as it seems you did the hard part (hood) really well. I'm very interested to see how you progress from here. I'm most interested to see if it is possible to create a realistic looking Audi with nurbs. If possible it would be great if you could post some of the problems you experienced creating certain shapes. Perhaps others can help or offer suggestions which would speed up your learning curve.

Mike, Thanks for sharing how to model this car
from the beginning. Excellent, total pro work.
Helps the newbies!

Hey guys,
thanks so much for the comments!

Okay, so here are 3 images. I scrapped the body I did just before this because I wanted a single/simple surface.
In the first image, I created wires to be used with the network tool. In yellow. I did the roof seperate.




Here is the result:




I used wires to Trip the body detials and here is what I have so far. I will shell each piece and round next.




Will post more as I go. I will be using Electric Image to render the car when done.... just fyi:)

thanks for looking!
Mike Fitz
www.3dartz.com

Great start there can't wait to see the finished product. Take care.

Gorgeous work!!

Don't give up Mike ! (I have tried this TT exercise a lot of time, but never finish it :/)

Hey I built a Wheele!

Moi3d Really slowed down once I added the tire treads.
even after I turned off inflection and hidden lines....
anythoughts, or is it just what happens with all the little tread details?

Nice one !

Well I suppose that all the fillets from the tread details generate tons of geometry. I would suggest to fillet them at the end of your project, otherewise you will have some huge trouble to duplicate the wheels inside MoI :)

I was on the same boat few months ago, trying to fillet every single edges, but it's a no way to go actually. I don't know what will be you rendering engine, but for example in max, lightware and maya, there are some cool shaders that creates micro fillets at the rendering.

The same thing happens when you have a lot of threaded fasteners for an assembly. I've found it better to keep things like that in a separate file that you can import if you need to have everything in on file for some reason. I would leave your wheel model as a separate file and then import it.

Hi Mike, it's a great looking result!

> Moi3d Really slowed down once I added the tire treads.
> even after I turned off inflection and hidden lines....
> anythoughts, or is it just what happens with all the little tread details?

If those are all a bunch of little teeny fillets, you've also got to adjust the "Mesh angle" parameter as well as the inflection setting.

Try setting Options / View / Meshing parameters / Mesh angle to 25 instead of the default 10, in addition to unchecking "Add detail to inflections".

Does that seem to help any?

Currently those little tiny fillets get meshed with an equal density as the larger surface, it just cranks out too huge of an amount of polygons.

It is definitely an area that I'm going to be working on improving.

Once you switch back to a more regular density model without a ton of little fillets, you will probably want to revert those settings back to the defaults so that you get a nice smoother display on regular density stuff.

Also just generally a ton of tiny fillets will drive up your file size and just general model weight quite considerably.

If you can use a render trick instead, that can help or you may actually want to try using a chamfer in small numerous spots like that instead of an actual rounded fillet, that will put a kind of bevel there but with a tiny flat piece which is not as heavy and if you are not zooming in real close to those spots it will probably look pretty equivalent, especially after you put textures and whatnot on the render.

- Michael

Hey everyone, thanks for the information on handling the larger file with tire treads...
I have seperate files for them now while I build everything.

I decided to make a new rim as the other one was a bit out there:)

heres a screen grab.
thanks
Mike Fitz

Hi Mike, it's looking great!

If it is possible, can you please send me (moi@moi3d.com) the heaviest one that you made that had the most slowdown problem?

That would be a good test case for me when I get a chance on doing some tune ups to this area.

- Michael

just a note. What are your video card specs. I had this happen while I was on an older ati 64 meg agp card. upgraded to a better (512) card and had significant improvement. Only dream of what a nice new pci express, top line card would be like!

FYI.
Burr

Hey Michael,
thanks for the comments.
I will send you the wheele tread when I get a chance.

I did a quick render in EI to see how it was coming in from MOI3 - No complaints!
Oh, the ThunderCats logo is just temporary, for fun:)

looking good so far mate keep it coming

Hey guys,
I had sometime to work on the car and did some quick render tests.

there is stil A LOT more to do! But wanted to post the progress.

Let me know what you think!

Mike Fitz
www.3dartz.com

getting there mate. keep at it

Beautiful and nice render, too
eric

Looks really clean !

(the metal shader is a little bit too plastic, probably because of the specular you have mixed in)

Hi Mike, wow looks great! Really clean and clear shaping throughout.

It would be cool to see some wireframes too!

- Michael