2010 Camaro Tutorial

[shift1313]

After you create the surface you can trim the rear window out. I used convert entities on my original top down sketches for the curves to define the roof. Then I used the edge to trim it as shown.

 

 

The roof of this car also has a sunken feature down the middle of the roof so I setup a front view sketch to trim the roof.

 

 

 

 

 

From the top I draw a spline that will trim a nice broad arc into this as well.

 

 

 

 

 

Then on the Right Plane draw a spline that will be a guide for our new roof line. This should be tangent to the front and rear edges of the roof and be below the current roof line.

 

 

 

 

 

A boundary surface will fill in this area with one important note. You want the surface to have a direction vector influence at the 2d curve. This is for the same reason we add the horizontal relation to our splines. We don’t want a hard edge here on the car even though the rest of the car has hard edges. My influence was 40%.

 

 

 

 

[shift1313]

Then you can simply make a boundary surface to fill that small area between the roof and the new panel.

 

 

 

 

Then knit those together with the rest of the roof. At this point the body is nearly complete so I start adding some fillets. I start with a variable fillet at the back edge of the trunk.

 

 

At the middle of the car I used a 0.5” radius. Each point from there is also 0.5 until the last point which is 0.75”.

The rear fender fillet goes from 0.75” at the back corner to 0.

 

 

 

The door edge all the way to the front is 0, 0.75 (at the seam between the bumper and fender) and 0.75 at the front.

 

 

 

Then I add a variable fillet to the tag area. Radius is 0.6 at the center out to 0.

 

 

 

The bottom edge is the same as well. The inner edges go from 0.125 down to 0.

 

 

 

[shift1313]

Next I make some wheel wells so we can’t see right through the car in renders. I do this using a Rule Surface. For type I use Perpendicular to Vector and use the Top Plane as my reference. My surface was 7”. Because our rule surface is going to have the same shape as our body I make a vertical line on the Front Plane that is 10.50” off center and trim the wheel well.

 

 

Same procedure for the rear and use the same sketch to trim it.

 

 

 

To fill these in I make a 3dsketch and draw a straight line to connect the bottom edges. Then I use a boundary surface to fill the back edges in. You can then knit the rule surface to the boundary surface and apply a small fillet to the edges.

 

 

 

Next thing I do to add a little more depth to the model is create some Ruled Surfaces around things like the windows. I made my window surfaces 0.25”. Where the meet in the corners I ended up extending them and trimming them to fit each other. I added rule surfaces to the front and rear window as well. These were 0.125” and I used the Front Plane as my direction reference. Again some of these need to be extended or trimmed or both.

[shift1313]

 

Here is an important note for you. I am having issues knitting my pillar surfaces to the rest of the body. Why I am not sure but the issue is a problem since I want to fillet these edges. Since this is my first shot at modeling this car, these are the types of issues that you run into and plan for next time around. I left the Pillars separate from the door/fenders early on because I thought I needed to, I should have knitted them back then. If I were to roll the End of Part line back up and try to knit these together I would produce a bunch of errors/issues that I don’t really want to deal with. There are a bunch of little things that pop up along the way that will help you the next time you are modeling and this is one of them. For the same reason I fillet edges early to test how they work, I should have knitted this back then and delete the feature if I didn’t need it. Now I’m left with an issue pretty far into the model.

What I am left with at this point is 5 surfaces. Once I start splitting the body for seams I may find that everything will be fine. My first set of surfaces that are knitted together are these.

 

 

 

All the rear bumper pieces.

 

 

The roof and hood.

 

 

 

And then both wheel wells are separate.

To make this thing a little more realistic we need to add seams to the panels so it doesn’t look like it’s all one big piece. I start with the door. I create a sketch to signify the door seam and then use it as a split line for my body surface.

 

 

 

Now that looks good here but for it to show up in a render we actually need to remove a small amount of material and use rule surfaces to create a drop. So I make another sketch and offset the edges 0.125”.

[shift1313]

 

After I split all my surfaces for the door edge, I make an offset surface of the section within the trim lines and then use delete face to remove the outer face. Now since we have a few different surfaces here (or at least I do) I had to split each one, then offset each surface, and delete each one. That’s 3 splits, 3 offsets and 3 delete faces. Also note that you will have to extend, trim and knit these offset surfaces.

After you have deleted the faces connecting the door and surrounding surfaces it should become its own surface. This will make it easier to work on the seams. How you make all these seams is really up to you. If you want to try and draw a sill, floor pane and door pillars more power to you. While that would be great, but I don’t have any reference photos or the car to figure this out. I am going to use a combination of boundary surfaces, ruled surfaces and trim/extend to get a decent faux door gap. You also have the option to thicken these surfaces to create solids. That may be a much easier way to handle something like this. Each method has benefits and draw backs.

 

 

After my door surfaces are alone I can go ahead and knit these pieces together. One thing I noticed is that my door surface at the front edge has some unwanted edges. This is because it was split with a Right Plane sketch, but the surface rolled so it’s nearly parallel with the top plane. So from a top view I make a sketch to trim the door a little bit more.

 

 

I also can now go ahead and add a few fillets.

 

 

 

One thing to keep in mind is that if you want to thicken this surface into a solid, these fillets just added above will give you errors and you should add them after it is a solid.

Here is a shot of the types of issues you will get when thickening a surface into a solid like this.

 

 

 

I am going to continue on with surfaces. I will go through adding these surfaces and seams to this door, but the rest of the parts will be up to you entirely. After all the whole point of this is to show you how it’s done, not exactly how to do it.

Using Ruled Surface type Perpendicular to Vector I select the Top Plane, then make my way around the door edge. There are a few that gave me problems so I just skip them.

[shift1313]

 

I leave the top edge and fillet along because of their direction in relation to the Top Plane.

 

 

For some reason this fillet edge game me issues so I skipped it. Make sure you turn on Trim and Knit in your options for the Ruled Surface.

 

 

I go back after the surface is created and fill in areas like this using Boundary Surface or Loft.

 

 

 

I knit all the surfaces together then concentrate on the top two edges I left out of the Ruled Surface.

A Boundary Surface from one edge to the other using the filleted edge as the Dir2 fills it in nicely.

 

 

 

 

Now we have a door that appears to have a little thickness to it.

 

 

 

 

It won’t stand out as much once we have a body color piece behind it.

[shift1313]

We still need some surfaces around the door on the body. Then we have to split the side skirt, the trunk, the hood and the front bumper. First I am going to split the side skirt. This is an interesting case because we don’t actually need a gap here. The side skirt will actually lay over the sheet metal hiding the factory edges where the sheet metal is combined and welded together.

 

 

 

 

 

Once the side skirt is split, use the offset surface button and offset it a small amount. Once offset you can make lofted or boundary surfaces back to the original, then delete the original with delete face. What you are left with is a side skirt that is just slightly outside of the body so in the renders it will really look as though it was an addition and not part of the body.

 

 

 

 

Now through a combination of Ruled Surfaces, some Boundary Surfaces and planning I have made a door seam.

 

 

At the bottom I made it a little higher and made sure to only knit the surfaces together that I wanted to be the Side Skirt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also just as I suspected after splitting the body up a few times it let me knit the C pillar to the rest of the body so I will be able to fillet this a little bit down the road.

Before I get too carried away with knitting things together I think it’s a good time to split the hood and trunk from the rest of the body. Then split the front bumper. This will let us break the body up into is proper sections.

For the hood I used the hard seam I left there previously and offset it away from the hood a small amount. After the split, again I used Delete Face to remove the area. I also split the hood at the cowl vent area. The image below shows what the hood surface is now.

[shift1313]

 

From this point you should have all the info you need to split the rest of the surfaces and make the call on small details. There are a few more details that need to be handled on this body before its “done”. Fog light holes need to be cut in the bumper and marker light holes need to be made in the front and rear bumper at our seams. For the marker lights for the time being I just split the front and rear bumper, then changed the appearance of the faces. What we should do is make an offset surface just below, the body then trim a little bit off of this. It will give us a small gap around each light and separate it from the rest of the surface around them.

 

 

[shift1313]

It's a lot of info there and nearly 400 pictures. If anyone has questions about any part please let me know. I tried to start it out with all the info you would need then slowly taper it off so you had to experiment for yourself. I spent the last 6 hrs uploading photos and moving this stuff over so i didnt get any farther on the model.

 

I plan on doing other posts on the details as I do them.

 

have fun.

[bhamze]

Not nearly enough pictures . Thanks for all your hard work and posting this tutorial.

[shift1313]

Not nearly enough pictures . Thanks for all your hard work and posting this tutorial.

 

 

I dont care to count how many times i had to use Ctrl C and Ctrl V to copy pic links and text!!!!!!!!!!!! I had to stop a few times cause my pinky was cramped

 

I was really hoping to do more modeling today but getting this online was more of a priority.

 

Hopefully it sheds some light for someone. I can't tell you how many times over the years I wanted to model a car but never could find any tutorials to show the procedure (except for 3ds max).

 

I did notice that the number of times this thread has been viewed since I finished uploading this an hour ago has jumped pretty high.

 

You know bill, you could write something on making those rims for the car:D

[nukecad]

Thanks Shift 1313

 

But there is a thing called too much information.

 

All of what of what you have posted is very iinstructionak; but looking from a newbie's point of view it may be just a bit too much.

(For more advanced users it will be useful).

 

I dont want to put anyone off sharing work that they are proud of; but we should remember that not everybody has the same experience.

[bhamze]

I dont care to count how many times i had to use Ctrl C and Ctrl V to copy pic links and text!!!!!!!!!!!! I had to stop a few times cause my pinky was cramped

 

I was really hoping to do more modeling today but getting this online was more of a priority.

 

Hopefully it sheds some light for someone. I can't tell you how many times over the years I wanted to model a car but never could find any tutorials to show the procedure (except for 3ds max).

 

I did notice that the number of times this thread has been viewed since I finished uploading this an hour ago has jumped pretty high.

 

You know bill, you could write something on making those rims for the car:D

 

I know what you mean......there are a ton of 3ds max tutorials, I viewed a few before modeling my car. Although the software is different, I learned how to approach a project like this.

 

I'm not much of a writer. I hunt and peck when I type:). If there's enough interest, I might consider. I prefer you to do it, your writing skills are proven:lol:.

[shift1313]

Thanks Shift 1313

 

But there is a thing called too much information.

 

All of what of what you have posted is very iinstructionak; but looking from a newbie's point of view it may be just a bit too much.

(For more advanced users it will be useful).

 

I dont want to put anyone off sharing work that they are proud of; but we should remember that not everybody has the same experience.

 

 

I agree nuke. Something like this isnt a novice project and that was the first paragraph of the document:) I felt (when i was trying to figure it out) that the procedure to follow wasnt real clear. Honestly I didnt think it would be as much work to write it all down as it actually was. I dont think ive ever typed a 20000 word document before Also the only car tutorial out there on the net for SW you have to pay for:(

[shift1313]

I know what you mean......there are a ton of 3ds max tutorials, I viewed a few before modeling my car. Although the software is different, I learned how to approach a project like this.

 

I'm not much of a writer. I hunt and peck when I type:). If there's enough interest, I might consider. I prefer you to do it, your writing skills are proven:lol:.

 

 

You kidding me:) Writer I am not:wink:

[waybay]

I can't find the blueprints anywhere can you please upload a link to where you got them from?

[shift1313]

Sorry waybay. Here is a link from bills thread.

 

http://the-blueprints.com/blueprints/cars/chevrolet/23175/view/chevrolet_camaro_2008/

[waybay]

Thanks shift1313, i was being lazy and hoping for seperate images as i don't have photoshop

[bhamze]

Thanks shift1313, i was being lazy and hoping for seperate images as i don't have photoshop

 

Waybay,

 

You can use Microsoft Office Picture Manager to edit,crop and export images as jpeg. This is how I generated the blueprints when I modeled my Camaro. Don't forget, once images are placed in SW then need to be scaled/re-sized and aligned correctly. This is a very important step. If images are not sized correctly your projection curves will not match blueprints.

[lauraengdept]

Looks good!