MilkShape Modeling
5) Modeling a Car in MilkShape



STEP 1: I got a skin from my m8 Gusher from the Prefablab, and created a front, side and top view from it, I then right clicked in each view in milkshape and clicked "Choose background" for each window giving me refernence to work from, all the pics are the same scale as well, then using the vertex button I began building points around the edges and basically anywhere that faces will change direction, ie corners and wheelarches etc.


STEP 2: Now I basically block in the whole side by building it triangle by triangle, thinking about them carefully as well, so that the shape of the arches etc can be formed correctly, make sure all tri's are facing the same way. ie grey, if not, select it/them and reverse the vertex order from the face menu, this will face them in the opposite direction and its best to do it as you go along instead of getting further in and finding holes all over the place.


STEP 3: As you can see I have now created the whole solid side of the car, checking in the 3d view shows all the faces are facing the correct way.


STEP 4: Now select all the faces, click on the extrude tool and deselect Y and Z restricting extrude to the X direction, Now in the front view drag/extrude the faces across to give the model its depth. The inner faces are not filled, and thats OK because will be flipping this side once its done to create the other side :) STEP 5: Now I start to select vertices and move them in/out etc to form the shape of the arches, and curves of the car, no way I can explain all this really, just takes lots of time. I also hide all the vertces I dont want to get confused by, ie the vertices along the centre seam so I can work on the outer body without affecting other vertices etc. I use it a lot, CTLR H to hide and CTRL U to unhide all, very useful!


STEP 6: This pic is wrong I figured out later, damn, Miss out step 1 :) I selected triangles as shown the clicked on a smoothing groups number this created a group of faces that are all smoothed seperately from the others, this is how I defined the sharp edges of the arches and skirts. Make sense heh heh? I was actually regrouping them at first then I realised that I didn't need to.


STEP 7: OK, now after many hours of pushing asnd pulling vertices about I duplicated all the faces, the duplicate is in eactly the same place as the original so you see nothing, now click on vertex, and mirror Left<->Right and you now have 2 sides, woohoo!!! Now select all the centre seam vertices and click weld together, then select all faces and Regroup it into one mesh .


STEP 8: I actually built the wheel in GMAX and gave it cylindrical mapping then imported it into here, above you can see the wheel that I broke into tread and sides groups, mapped it and aligned it over the texture map, then regrouped em, you see the slignment above..duplicate em for the other wheels and mirror them for the other side, material must be assigned to each new duplicate.


STEP 9: Now comes another long part, I selected all the triangles that make up the sides, regrouped em, aligned over the texture map, and then did the same for the front, back, top, underside, interior, steering wheel and seats. Once I was sure that was all done I regrouped it all into a solid mesh.


STEP 10: Here you can see the whole mesh once regrouped laid out over the texture map phew, thats it, easy wasn't it. My advice would be to start off simple and learn the texhniques, it also gives you an idea how long all this stuff bloody takes :) then take on bigger and badder projects, any questions, drop by the forums and ask away!

Heres a pic of the model from a few angles.