Okay Im looking for a program or 2 programs to do 2 things. First off I want to be able to take a car and change anything on the body or interior or whatever. Second I want a program that I can render drawings of cars that I have. If anyone has seen the show Inside West Coast Customs or Street Customs thats the kind of software Im talking about to be able to customize anything. Does anybody know what program I can do this with or what program they use on the show?
3D Modeling Program?
- Thread starter Superveloce6
- Start date
Your questions are confusing, do you want a program where you can take a car and choose premade features or do you want to make cars from scratch? Your title says you're looking for the latter but the message itself says you're looking for the first. Can you also eloborate on what you mean by 'rendering drawings'?
If you're talking about making a car from scratch, there are a great many programs that can do that. They often look about this complicated:
(Autodesk Maya 2011)
It would be a gross understatement to say that it's quite complicated to take drawings and turn them into 3D models.
Typically car designs that go from drawing to physical finished car go via the stages Concept Art to the design orthographic on paper (blueprint), to a clay and plastic sculpture, which is then scanned with a 3D CAD Reader and projected into NURBS in order to be cleaned up. (The NURBS model is then used to program manufacturing equipment). Cars as they appear in video games are Polygonal models which are usually modeled by eye and far less accurate than the real thing, but inso are far more flexible in terms of geometry customization. Regardless of the route taken to achive a 3D model of a car, Rendering them is incredibly easy once sharers have been set up.
But if you're talking about a program specifically made to edit the appearance of cars by presets, I do not know of programs that do that. I wouldn't say they don't exist, I just don't know what they are. It would be easiest to simply use the customization options in racing video games, such as Need For Speed: Underground.
Long story short, if you think you can convert a drawing on paper into something like this
The truth is, that single picture would take several weeks if not months for one person to make, presuming they already have lots of experience in 3D modeling, texturing and lighting.
(Autodesk Maya 2011)
It would be a gross understatement to say that it's quite complicated to take drawings and turn them into 3D models.
Typically car designs that go from drawing to physical finished car go via the stages Concept Art to the design orthographic on paper (blueprint), to a clay and plastic sculpture, which is then scanned with a 3D CAD Reader and projected into NURBS in order to be cleaned up. (The NURBS model is then used to program manufacturing equipment). Cars as they appear in video games are Polygonal models which are usually modeled by eye and far less accurate than the real thing, but inso are far more flexible in terms of geometry customization. Regardless of the route taken to achive a 3D model of a car, Rendering them is incredibly easy once sharers have been set up.
But if you're talking about a program specifically made to edit the appearance of cars by presets, I do not know of programs that do that. I wouldn't say they don't exist, I just don't know what they are. It would be easiest to simply use the customization options in racing video games, such as Need For Speed: Underground.
Long story short, if you think you can convert a drawing on paper into something like this
The truth is, that single picture would take several weeks if not months for one person to make, presuming they already have lots of experience in 3D modeling, texturing and lighting.
The only ones I've seen were custom code jobs for high end performance shops, either using pre-rendered images and Flash or, for realtime viewpoint adjustment and crap like that, built around game engines.Anarchemitis said:
Either way it's a HUGE modelling job.
There are a few programs and plug ins that can convert multiview orthographic drawings into 3D models but they have a lot of limitations and still require a lot of clean up work to turn into acceptable/usable models... and that's assuming blueprint levels of precision for the drawings. Anything less precise and you may as well have just attacked a cube with random modelling tools.
Blender is free and fairly capable.
The problem is that any 3D modeling program is immensely complicated and tricky to get used to. I've been using blender for 4 years, and the best model I've done yet is nowhere near as good as some of the things I've seen.
The problem is that any 3D modeling program is immensely complicated and tricky to get used to. I've been using blender for 4 years, and the best model I've done yet is nowhere near as good as some of the things I've seen.
If you have a lot of money to throw around, get Maya, get bored with it and give me your license.
Otherwise... Well, Blender's a pretty decent program, but its very confusing. Free, though. Just bookmark the tutorials page on its Wiki, and you'll get a hang of it in a few months/years or so.
Otherwise... Well, Blender's a pretty decent program, but its very confusing. Free, though. Just bookmark the tutorials page on its Wiki, and you'll get a hang of it in a few months/years or so.
Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya, 3D Studio VIZ, ZBrush...
The project you're talking about is massive though. It would take the better part of a month or more to do it if you worked on it everyday. Also, the programs I mentioned are very...very expensive.
The project you're talking about is massive though. It would take the better part of a month or more to do it if you worked on it everyday. Also, the programs I mentioned are very...very expensive.
If you've never used 3D modeling software, it shouldn't be that difficult to learn Blender, and it's free and it's AWESOME.
As far as CAD goes I like Solidworks because it's good and very easy to learn; I think there are plugins that let you convert Solidworks files to models compatible with other 3d modeling software (I haven't really rendered anything in Solidworks).
As others suggested, Blender is very capable, though still fairly complicated.
If you want a SUPER simple program that allows just about anyone to start pumping out less-than-grand models with very little tutorial time, I recommend Google Sketchup. It's a gem of a software, and really fun and easy to learn. But as I said you won't reach the same level of graphical detail as you might with Maya, or 3DS max, or even Blender, if you try hard enough.
If you want a SUPER simple program that allows just about anyone to start pumping out less-than-grand models with very little tutorial time, I recommend Google Sketchup. It's a gem of a software, and really fun and easy to learn. But as I said you won't reach the same level of graphical detail as you might with Maya, or 3DS max, or even Blender, if you try hard enough.
What is sort of unstated so far is the fact that Softimage XSI, 3DStudio Max and Maya are all industrial level modeling software that costs many thousands of dollars for a single copy, and if you plan on using it you're either able to prove you're a student and have about $500 to shell out for a copy (which cannot legally be used to make products or content to be sold), or must be pirated.
Blender 3D however is entirely free.
Blender 3D however is entirely free.
if you were up to this job you prolly wouldn't be asking this question... as a multimedia designer I'll be blunt your in over your head if you expect to have this done anytime remotely soon or in the next few months without even knowing the program you should be usingSuperveloce6 said:
These programs really do take a while to learn like Eric said. I'm currently taking an animation class for my graphic arts degree. We're 2 months into the class(we use maya) and finally learning how to make and blend human hands. It's such a pain in the butt but if it's something your greatly interested in you can get over some of the bumps and hic-ups the program can throw at you from time to time.Eric Huntinton said: