Got a car, a digital camera and a bit of time?

...The digital modeling community requests your help!

Speaking on behalf of multimediaman of SMCars, the aforementioned community would like some create some "blueprints" of cars. These aren't "blueprints" in the technical sense, but rather, perspective-free drawings of the exterior - something along the lines of this.

To eliminate distortion, approximately 40 images are required - so yes - this is a big request and it will take some time on your part. No knowledge of image editing is needed however, just zip the images and send them to me ([email protected]). I'll do the resizing/conversion and relay them to multimediaman.

Follow the link below for details about this process.

PS: Any car you have access to will do, not just Ferraris (but Ferraris would be nice, I love 'em ).

If you're interested in participating, here's the link to the full post.

 

dm_n_stuff: Advice taken.
glh: Thanks, the first one is great but the photos aren't exactly what is needed. My fault though, I should've known that signup was necessary for that thread.

I can't figure out how to edit my first post. Usually the edit button is beside "quote" isn't it? I'll post the details here for now.


Quoted from SMCars:
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okay, I'm planning on getting a massive load of blueprints for donating to this site... however, I need your participation for that to be possible...


see, right now, I'm sure many of you are aware of my Motor City project ("Toy Car Movie Project" thread, in WIPs). Now, I plan on making blueprint renders from all my toy cars, and other vehicles, as some of you might have noticed my airbus A300 airplane blueprint, and SD40 locomotive, and TTX TTGX Autorack rolling stock train car blueprint...

so anyway, unless there's a real-car blueprint on site, I'm planning on giving you all blueprints made from the cars I make in 3d during this project.


However... I'm sure all of you are aware that hot wheels and matchboxes aren't the most detailed/accurate models... So now to get to my request.



If you've got a digital camera, and if you have a car, or cars, or access to a car, or cars.... then you can help me get more blueprints.

You might not need the blueprints to your own vehicle, but others out there would surely find your vehicle blueprints quite helpful....

so anyway, I say digital camera because that would be an awful huge request for someone with a regular camera, as it needs almost 40 pictures to properly work. I will start by showing the reason I need so many pictures.

This image,

shows the difference between an actual blueprint and a mere traced photo. The most noticable difference is on the front view, the shape of the car's edge is actually visible, almost no guesswork to get the profile topology along the side of the vehicle. Also the cabin of the vehicle is shaped dramatically different, as well as the lines running along the hood of the vehicle.


This image,

basically shows what I actually trace in Illustrator in order to get the blueprints. It's basically a compilation of all the photos in the same image file....


and now for the details. Basically for this method to work properly, the center of the picture has to line up with key angles on the vehicle.

Any angle that would be distorted from perspective would need a picture centered along that area. Say you take a picture of the front of a car.... well, that's going to leave everything but the very center of the front of the car distorted. So you've got to take a picture of the side of the car as well... but then the top and bottom are still distorted... so anyway, I've worked out a general theoretical "image targets" placement guideline.

so if you take the pictures of your vehicle with the camera pointed and aligned with the crosshairs shown in this picture,

and then I will be able to get blueprints of your vehicle(s)!


... so yeah, now for the technicalities.

Due to size issues, it would probably be best if you upload a .zip file either here, or onto your own hosting service. I will edit this post later, assuming anyone replies, with the current person's work I'm working on, and who's .zip files I've received, in case you want to remove them from here, or your web host, after I've received them, to save space. I will also notify people as to who's blueprints I'm currently working on, in a similar post-editing fashion.


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*tips for reducing file sizes, so I don't have to suffer through dialup torture*

-photoshop/paint shop pro/gimp users-

1) crop picture just a few pixels outside of the vehicle.
2) use the lasso tool to select around the car, which doesn't need to be precise at all, just as long as some background is removed. Fill the background you've selected with white
3) uniformly scale each image so that the width is 512 pixels. Height doesn't matter, since the image was uniformly scaled
4) save out images as JPEG format with the following options:
- Optimized
- Quality 50% (unless some details are noticeably not showing up, then raise quality just until that detail is visible enough to get the idea what it looks like

-ms paint users

1) The Gimp download should still be free from their website... go get that so you can finally use a decent image editor, then follow the above steps. You'll thank yourself later
2) if you really don't want The Gimp, then don't alter anything. If your camera saves out as .JPG, .PNG, or .TGA give me those files. If it saves as .BMP, and if your version of ms paint can save .JPG files, then by all means do so, but don't rescale the images, since uniform scaling does not exist on ms paint


... anyway, MUCH thanks to anyone at all who can get me pictures of their vehicles.

I don't have a preference as to what types of vehicles I get. If it's a vehicle, I'll be happy with it. So yeah, much thanks!! hopefully we can get some great prints from this!

.. oh yeah, also, please tell me the name of the vehicle, the manufacturer, and the date, or at least approximate date of the vehicle, either in your post, or simply name the .zip file something like 1993PontiacGrandAm.zip



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Here's an animation that should clear things up:

http://www.forumsigs.com/users/multimediaman226/bpexample.gif

And here's the end result

http://www.smcars.net/forum/files/1998_chevrolet_camaro_665.jpg

 

Sorry about any confusion over what is needed in this project. I'll summarise the key points.

To make one of these, around 40 photos are required. These photos have to be aligned with certain points on the car, shown here. What we're asking of anyone willing to participate is to take those 40-ish photos of your car (it doesn't matter what car you have), aligned with the said points. Here's an animation showing how it's done.

That's all that is required on your part. ZIP up your images and send them my way ([email protected]). We'll do the image processing to create the end result.

If you want to help but you're still a bit puzzled, please say.

 

Firstly, I am contributing to the project - that is, taking the ~40 photos. If you've read my posts, you'll see that the person who does the editing is not me, but the leader of the project. Connected to this is the notion that you also need to do the editing. Nowhere in my posts did I say that. In fact, I explicitly said that you don't have to do the editing (in my previous post):

"We'll do the image processing to create the end result."

Secondly, we're not asking for pristine, hi-res, flawless photos - these photos aren't for selling products. No tripod is required and the lowest resolution settings on your camera will do. I admit I haven't made that point clear, but hopefully it is now.

The reason I'm asking others is because there is a lot or work required. I have made no attempt to hide this. Right there in the first post I said, "this is a big request and it will take some time on your part". So that has been evident since the beginning. I only have access to a few cars, and by access I mean the ability to drive it to a relatively empty place where I can take photos of it from every angle about 5m away. If I had access to the same cars you guys have, I wouldn't be here asking.

It probably sounds like I want these photos for my own selfish benefit. Again I haven't made it clear, and again I apologize. There are many communities (CGTalk, SMCars to give a few examples) which rely on freely available "blueprints" to do their work. I, myself, will probably not use the blueprints created in this project, and I doubt you will either, but I assure you there are people out there who will.