Car design is harder than I had thought... help please

That's one of those,"it all depends" kind of questions.Everyone,designer/sculptor has their own favorite way of working.Whether you develop the hard creases first,then the surrounding surfaces last,or whether you develop your major surfaces first,then scribe the edges/lines,is usually a personal preference.A lot depends on the design as well.A Ferrari 275 GTB,doesn't have a preponderance of hard lines or edges,so I would guess the sculptor would work all the forms as a large piece of sculpture.A Hyundai,on the other hand with all the design lines and creases,one might want to establish all the lines early on,then develop the surfaces between the lines.
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Absolutely- as someone who has been drawing/designing cars since he could pick up a pencil (and flirted with going to ACCD at one time) I love all of the contributions to this thread. Thanks guys!

 

The biggest problem is that your model should be wearing a bikini w DDs

 

Those two cars provide a great contrast in making your point! Thanks.

 

For the studios using polygonal modeling for surface design/development, which software tools are popular?

 

Most studios do not use any polygonal software for design/development. The resultant models are too limited in their usefulness. That said, some studios are trying to develop processes which would have designers creating rough proportion models in poly software. To this end, there are some softwares which are developed to simulate clay modeling, which have virtual clay tools, that allow the surfaces to be moved around like clay. One of these is called Mudbox (from Autodesk) and I know one design studio that was trying out something called Moto? (I am checking to find out what it is) Which I have no knowledge of.
The studios want the simple solution, the software that makes instant cars, and the poly route may be the best solution for simple. The problem is that cars are not simple. It requires in depth knowledge of surface to make high quality automotive surface data. Designers generally do not want to be making their own data because it requires too much time and requires them to spend a lot of time learning software. Designers want to sketch. So someone else will be making the data and that someone is expected to make very nice data, so the poly software will not work for them. So the poly software sort of needs to be forced on the designers (as part of their process). But the designers, that just want to sketch, aren't just sketching, they are researching, creating documents, creating presentations, presenting and going to meetings. So they really are too busy to be making models.

 

It is actually Modo, which I have no knowledge of but at least I can find their website. http://www.luxology.com/modo/index.aspx
I am going to check it out but they promise too much, I fear.

 

As promised :






As you can see,the line is put into the clay to "hold" the edge
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Here,the "gut" is used to control the wheel opening feature line.Hope that described the process.
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Thanks for posting the pics. So if a steel is drawn over the surface the gut prevents it from cutting any deeper into the edge.

What scale of models do you typically work with at the school?

 

Yes,that's correct.

Usually 1/4,but this semester we are working with 1/5 scale because of the competition with Art Center in Pasadena.

 

So if polygon models are created I presume they are a supplement to sketches for the clay modelers to work from? Have you ever heard of them being used to drive a CNC mill for doing a preliminary clay?

It's common to see polygon models that when rendered look stunningly realistic, but I suppose in the time it takes to prepare them most designers could create a stack of sketches.

 

Out of curiosity how do you get such accurate wheel openings and edges in the clay...especially on the smaller scale models. I'll have to start paying tuition for all this guidance ;-)

 

It goes back to what I was saying before about the designers not having the time or learned capability to make the poly models. You can use the poly data for CNC milling and you can make nice quality poly models, but they do not fit into the information flow currently in place, which goes from sketch to clay/digital surface model to surface engineers to engineering. The people trying to push for the use of poly software are thinking the same thing you are thinking, have the designers create a model of what they want so the people making the next model (clay or digital) will have more info to go by, but, like you said, the designers could make a ton of sketches in the same time, and they know how to sketch already. Some designers will create 1/10 scale clay models to help themselves understand their designs in 3D and I think in the future, they will make poly models instead. If they got good at it, they would get the extra benefits of being able to use the data for visualization purposes.
To your question of whether I have seen poly models used to mill clay, I have, many times but the poly models were created directly from the scan data of a scale model as opposed to being a poly model created by someone. I don't think I have seen it from original poly data but I know I will someday. I also do work for movie companies and they come to me particularly when they need to build a real model from data. So even though they have the best poly modelers, they know for building real things, making surface data is the way to go.
I think it is somewhat difficult for the studios to get behind poly modeling as it adds an extra technology, that no one is using, into the studio. Currently, if a designer wants to learn surface modeling, they have access to very experienced surface designers who can teach them and help them with problems etc. If they want to learn poly modeling, they have no support, no experts to help them.
I presume you do animation and make poly models, what software do you use? I have been asked to develop a work flow for designers utilizing a poly modeling software as a design tool, and teach it to the studio designers. So I have spent some time playing with some options but not enough to know what I am doing. I will be looking into that Modo software to see if it can be useful.

 

Thanks for the thorough reply. I'm a mechanical engineer and my interest here is to learn more of the studio workflow. I've done technical animation with 3ds max, but mainly using CAD models from engineering software. I'm not at all predisposed to poly modeling, just trying to gage whether it's an effective tool within the studio. I find alias heavy for exploring ideas....but perhaps I just have to get better at it.

When you use Alias, are you typically laying surfaces over scan data, or do you also develop models based on the designers sketches? Also how far do the Alias models go up the engineering process. Are they used for tooling, or taken into Catia, NX, etc. before that point?

BTW, you can take polygonal models from 3ds max into Alias to use as a basis for proper surfacing, it's like a crude version of scan data. I'm sure you're well aware of this but it's my attempt to give a little bit back in this conversation!

 

I use Modo, along with Rhino for my work. Modo is a sub division surface modeler which uses simple quad polys to form a low res poly surface which is then converted to a smooth sub-d surface. It is used mainly in animation applications because you can have a poly model with a fairly low poly count to save resources, then convert to sub-d for a smooth, high res model with a level of detail chosen at render time. The high res models can be frozen at a high level of detail. These high res models can be used for CNC routing or converted to STL format for rapid prototyping.

 

Absolutely fascinating!

How long does it take to learn these software packages?

Are there any prerequisites to learning them, besides being able to get around in Mac/Windows OS?

 

Sorry coming to the party late but like it's been said here before by guys at FChat that know their stuff take the advise given. If you can't draw you are limiting yourself. Good luck and have fun.

 

That's 35-40K/yr for 4 years!

The models are larger than you might think.But Interiors are also modeled in clay,and that work is even more detailed and very small in places.The "gut" holds the edges well enough that it's not a problem.
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Working a consulting job at the moment,and the surfaces are being developed in Alias from sketches,sections,and photos of a full size clay.We are then taking the Alias data and milling the clay,then going back and making corrections.We are also hand modeling some areas,scanning surface data,handing that to the Alias guy,her develops math surface,gives it back to us ,and we mill it in.Whatever process works,given your resources.Varies by company & skill sets.

 

I think people can learn to push the buttons on most software tools in a 2-3 months. The bigger problem though is learning how to apply them to surfacing. That skill is quite separate from the software. As for how long that takes ... I'd like to hear that answer too!

 

You hit the nail on the head! Just because you know & understand a particular program,doesn't mean you are skilled enough to execute good design/surface.That,I'm afraid,takes some time & experience.Like most thinghs in life..........some people are better than others.

 

There is still no substitute for getting your hands into clay.In a computer program there is a disconnect between the software and the form you are making.

 

Yes,and that's been debated for the last 20+ years!

 

Went scrounging around in some of my stuff to find these.
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