Need guidance to make a fully interactive CAR model

News & General Discussion
1

Hi,

I’ve an idea of doing something like shown in this video :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMWgu9viW3c

Problem is i’m a newbie in this field and have a very little idea about 3d model development.

Doubts i have :

  1. How much time does it take to make 3d model of a car , as shown in video? And which will be the
    best tool to use for this project?

  2. Can you people suggest me some links to tutorials for it?

There’s a link for it’s .exe installable for windows on it’s official site . Looking at it i came to know that it is being made using Unity 3D.

Help me out people . How to proceed .

Thanks

2

Also i just want to make the interactive animation for the car to be stationary i.e i won’t be running the car around in the animation.
Just like it’s shown in video.

3

Time depends on how good you are at modeling and how much detail you need.
For tool choose any 3d modeling program. If you want free then use blender.

4

What do you mean by fully interactive? Do you mean with physics etc?

5

Hi miksumortti,

Will i be able to get the same result as there in video using Blender tool ?
What about 3ds Max?

Thanks

6

Yep, just model all moving parts as separate objects so you can move them in Unity.

7

Hi Metdown,

By fully interactive i mean :

  1. All Doors open and close
  2. Car headlight/taillights/brakelights/indicators/foglight ON/OFF
  3. Wiper Control

some of these things have been shown in the mentioned video.
I know being a newbie it will take a lot of time to complete this. But i’m very eager to learn this.

8

Ok good luck then, it is certainly possible.

If you do start looking at writing your own vehicle physics, that is another story.

9

Hi miksumortti,

Thanks, i’ll try with Blender tool then.
I have blueprints of the car and will try to create a 3d Model using it.

10

Hi Meltdown,

Thanks .

11

Hi Vick,

just wanted to comment cause I would love to see the project, I’m running a similar system in my game, not concerning changing colors and materials, but concerning opening doors and sitting down and flipping switches to turn on light and wipers. Here’s a link to a post in my WIP thread, it contains a build so you can check it out if interested, as well as two timelapse videos of me creating a car model in Cinema 4D, just to give you a basic idea of how you should be setting up and cutting apart the car. The basic principle applies to Blender, 3DS Max, Maya, whathaveyou. You will note the quality of my cars, they’re far below the official VW player. I’m guessing the VW car has close to 500.000 polygons. Maybe more. Mine has 5.000. It took me 11 hours to make.

As for programming the function, I set up colliders for all parts that are interactive, and raycast against them on mouseclick, then send a message to the hit object which executes whatever function that object has. Just rotation for doors, animations for wipers, enabling objects for lights, switching materials for materials and colors. The same post I linked contains a link to the GitHub of my project, feel free to check out the source of my EnterCar.js, Doorhandle.js, Wipers.js and raycaster.js.

Anyways, feel free to ask anything else you need, and I’ll be watching out for a WIP thread ;D

12

A good place to start with the modeling would be http://www.smcars.net/

13

Hi Divinux,

I looked at your WIP thread. It will be very helpful for my project.
Once I have understood everything about modeling then surely i’ll put a WIP thread for it.

Thanks a lot for your help.I’ll be following your thread.

14

Hi nukeD,

Thanks. I’ll look into it.

15

I personally recommend Modo for modelling.

16

hello guys,

I’ve started making a basic model of the car in Blender.
I’ve made different objects for whatever parts of the car i want to be moving.
It’s almost ready but i am in confusion that should i do the car rendering (i.e adding paints and light effects) in Blender or in Unity 3D.
Will it be possible for me to get same effects as there in the mentioned video using Unity 3D or not?
I couldn’t find good tutorial on car rendering in Unity 3D.
How should i proceed next?

17

You do that stuff in Unity.
If you mean by ‘adding paints’ the color and how the surface looks that’s shader thing. For free metal/car shader you can check this www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNkzV2jWYzU then change the color value from script.
And for light effects just enable/disable lights and maybe lens flares with toggles.

18

Thanks for the link miksumortti. I just came to know that for shaders i’ll have to write a shader script in Unity.So, i’ll try that.
Also, because car will be stationary so all the reflection of the car surface and etc… will have to be done using lights effects and lens flares on camera angle change.Is this understanding right?

19

Well, for reflections you just need a cubemap and the shader will take care of reflections (and if you have Unity Pro then you can use real time reflection instead of static cubemap)

20

Thanks miksumortti. I’ll see some tutorials on how to write Shader scripts.