Hello guys.

I'm modelling a camaro 2009, just for practice. I started out with the bonnet, but things are not going right.

Following on the Ferrari tutorial posted on the forums, I made the curves following the blueprints, and tried to add a network with weird results. I then traced some more curves to maybe help the tool see better and got the same result. Here it is:



I'm attaching my file here as well.

thanks, I plan on keeping this thread alive posting my progress.

Hi Daniel:you got this curve divided in 3 pieces
you have to union all 3 pieces to get one single curve,then select all and you'll get your network surface

M

Hi m-dynamics, thanks for that, it worked ;)

Now I have a nother question. There's a gap between the surface created and the curve, they dont match up in some parts, check it out.

Deleting that one surface and then re-doing the network surface for that part fixes it here Bdaniel

Martin Spencer-Ford

got ya I tried it and it worked, thanks TpwUK. I'm getting around on how to troubleshoot things.

Did you do anything in particular to network only that surface?

I trimmed or separated the curves around it so that I could select the edges that surround it and hit network.

You might want to try sweeping the 2 outer surfaces, then using a blend between them.

Nahhhh, just deleted that one surface and used your curves that were already there. Network surface is a cool tool, it will effectively take intersecting points on curves and attempt to fill the outlined area. If you are playing with version 3 beta, there is now an added 5th curve which can be used to excellent effect on car bonnets (hoods) and trunks etc where you can sometimes need that extra curve to bring the height into effect.

Your next problem will be mirroring that bonnet and the sharp seem it will produce, again in v3 beta there is the trim with isocurve option, use that and then blend the two together with a minimal bulge.

Martin Spencer-Ford

thanks guys.

How can I bring up the command prompt in V2? wanted to try that merge command.

Just hit tab and type.



How are you handeling the outer left edge with network?

You got another option to do the bonnet:

1-mirror your curves and do the network for the complete hood (not only half)
2-network in V3 gives you more surface's options(lighter-normal-uniform)
3-hit on the surface then show points
4-choose which option(point density and distribution) match your shape to do the central bulge
5-you can move the points(pull-up in Z direction)
6-also if need,you can move your points to do a conic shape for central bulge like in picture:
use-scale one direction tool-
hit central point as start point of -one direction scale-
select just side points from central one and move them (on top wiew)
do the same for each row of points
now select all points for central bulge
pull up in -Z- direction
in this operation use-direct snap-ON to force moving just in orto directions,to avoid wrong movements

here is a bonnet i recently modeled for my car,i did this way,hope you understand..it's an alternative method,maybe don't match what you need but show others " MO-AI hidden tools"






M

thanks m-dynamics for the alternative method.

Another question, still on the bonnet ;)

I've redone it and found the best method for me to get the shape right was to sweep the curves and then blend the edges to form that center ridge there. It's looking great here, but I would like to add some small filleting to the edges of the ridge, when I select them the fillet wont work, sometimes it will even loose the edge selection and nothing happens.

I've noticed that some edges are broken separated as well, should I use the join tool or the merge command to make one single edge?

here's the file.

Why filleting??
I've redone central ridge using G2 Blend:try to play with the bulge slider to see when it match kind of filleting you want
see my screenshot

That's great, got ya. Way simpler, but I would like to know why I can't fillet on those edges, just so I know for other projects.

Hi Bdaniel,

> That's great, got ya. Way simpler, but I would like to know why I can't fillet on those
> edges, just so I know for other projects.

It's because the surfaces that you were trying to fillet were already meeting up smoothly to one another - you can only apply fillets to edges where the surfaces are sharp where they come together at that edge.

Also when 2 surfaces approach very closely to being smooth but are only just barely not actually smooth that becomes a pretty difficult situation for the filleter to deal with, because part of the fillet calculation involves doing an offset of the surfaces and then an intersection between those and 2 surfaces that meet at a shallow angle usually have more of a sort of "area of overlap" rather than distinct clear intersection curve between them. Filleting needs to find a clear intersection as part of its calculations.

Also 2 surfaces that touch sharply along most of their common area but are smooth just at one end are also difficult for the filleter to handle as well, that's a "disappearing fillet" situation where the fillet starts to get tinier and tinier as it approaches the smooth area and evaporates to a single point at the actual smooth spot, the fillet engine that MoI uses is not very good at handling those kinds of fillet situations either.

- Michael

Hi Bdaniel, or another way to put it is filleting means "build a rounded surface made up of arcs of this specified arc radius along these edges".

The way that is specified (being defined by an "arc radius value"), makes stuff like this work, like if you have 2 surfaces meeting up like these lines here (imagine these are surfaces as seen from the side):



Then you can apply a fillet of radius = 5 between them, which will build a connector arc of radius 5 that is tangent to both lines, like so:



But now imagine that instead of having 2 lines that meet at a sharp corner we instead have 2 curves that are already smooth where they meet like this (here I've selected one of the 2):



In this situation there does not exist any arc of radius = 5 that can be placed in between those 2 pieces, basically the mechanism of how fillets work is for applying the arc rounding onto sharp features and the way that they are specified just does not apply to already-smooth-meeting areas.

For smooth meeting areas you can instead cut back some space between them and use Blend, it's a different construction method.

- Michael

Great explanation Michael, thanks.

Bdaniel,

Do you have the blueprint images available for others to practice?

You will find those blueprints and more at http://www.the-blueprints.com/search/camaro/

Martin Spencer-Ford

Thanks!