Cars Ford Anglia 1953

garyjpaterson · Jun 14, 2016

Album of progress from the beginning: http://imgur.com/a/h2wyl

After making reasonable progress with this in the last week or so, I decided that its time for its own thread, keep things separate.

This 1953 Ford Anglia has been in the family longer than I have, though for the past 15 years or so has been a bit neglected. Instead of doing the right thing and getting it running again, I took the easy route and started to make a digital copy

Inspired by some great Photoscanning projects in recent weeks, I gave it a go to surprising success; the scan allowed me to get a decent 3D blueprint, which I set about modelling.

I'm still a beginner modeller really, with the Transit being my first model, but with the help of proper blueprints I'm finding the exterior take shape much faster than expected.

Images up to date as of 04/05/17. In progress still.

I'll try and make a short video of the WIP physics, as its quite frankly ludicrous to drive (super soft suspension, lots of roll, no grip, no brakes, no power...

) If you have a request of a track you'd like to see it as, let me know

Mr Whippy · Jun 14, 2016

So how do you iteratively start with such a rough box, add polys, but not eventually get wavy surfaces?

Obviously there are oodles of ways and methods, but I'm curious how you do it.

Cheers

Dave

garyjpaterson · Jun 14, 2016

I'm still quite new to modelling, so forgive the poor 3D vocabulary and general understanding.

What I did for this one was start with like a 3 box shape (bonnet, cab and rear boot section), which started life as a cube. I then applied a turbosmooth modifier to round some of the edges, then start manipulating it to fit the blueprints. I just keep adding edges to corners to smooth it out etc.

I keep the polys unsmoothed to begin with, which I think helps me see how the curves work, you spot the odd poly that is out of sync with the rest. You can see that stage here;

I'm mostly making it up as I go along.

Mr Whippy · Jun 14, 2016

Haha, ok, well it looks nice and smooth.

I suppose smooth doesn't always = accuracy, but without some laser scan to reference against then that is impossible to really check any way.

I think I've just found my Z4 a real pain in the arse to do this way... too many curves kinda interact between chunks of bodywork, so if you move one bit all the rest of the car needs moving around.
I actually think building loads of interfacing primitives and cutting it all up is best, using turbo smooth to get each bit smooth and correct, then start new polys over the top of that and conform to the underlying 'correct' mesh.
Trying to do any other seems doomed to failure... for me at least

Dave

Jim Layee · Jun 14, 2016

Ooooh lovely can't wait!

Here's a thought for an S1 hot rod version; No bonnet or wings, Jag straight six, autobox and jag axle etc (narrowed?) . Very old school UK hotrod

garyjpaterson · Jun 14, 2016

Jim Layee said:
Ooooh lovely can't wait!

Here's a thought for an S1 hot rod version; No bonnet or wings, Jag straight six, autobox and jag axle etc (narrowed?) . Very old school UK hotrod

Not sure yet, I know @FlandreNien over at the AC forums did a Drag style Ford Popular, so not sure how similar I want to be to that.

I will however have a lightly tuned version; stock everything except a bit more power! Not sure how much, I want it to be either a realistic engine tune or modest engine swap, so maybe in the 70-90bph range.

I hate to say it but the 30bhp engine is just a bit underpowered to enjoy in a sim properly. Everything just takes too long!

I thought the Transit would be too slow to enjoy in AC, but it has some real depth and adjustability to the handling, so is very enjoyable.

A3DR · Jun 14, 2016

That thing should make for an interesting drive for sure! Looking forward to give it a try when it's done.
Very nice modeling btw, specially considering these are your first ones!

garyjpaterson · Jun 14, 2016

Wow, thank you, that's amazing to hear coming from you!

I should mention the model looks much worse close up

Just need to learn some basics to texturing, I haven't got a clue when it comes to UVing and such.

If anyone has any recommended tutorials feel free to send them my way!

A3DR · Jun 14, 2016

Well maybe it needs some polishing close up, but still a very solid base to improve on, proportions seem right on on both models, that's the most important aspect. Seen ppl with good skills overall but weak at proportions, that just brings the whole car down (look at the "official" AE86, can't watch a replay with that car because my eyes go straight to those ugly oversized headlights even when they're off!).
Can't really say where are the good tutorials nowadays, but I can help you out with any questions you might have on 3dsmax, uv's and texturing.

garyjpaterson · Jun 14, 2016

Quick pic of the model polyflow- about 60k tris at the moment, which includes shoddy interior+seats, mostly done wheels/tyres and the exterior as seen. The massive tri count includes the Photoscan model which is very high poly, but that can be disregarded.

Front grill looking a bit better

Rear in dire need of a clean up though :S

Mr Whippy · Jun 15, 2016

Looks pretty good to me.

Really all the matters is that you don't waste too many triangles, and that the normal flow and continuity is nice.

Try use one of those flowcheck type textures (black and white bands) to check the lines flow nicely. Also make sure to check your triangle flow is nice because Max can swizzle around with tri-flow on editable poly mods or edit poly meshes sometimes.
I've often been baffled to why my mesh suddenly looks a bit crappy in reflections and then I realise for some reason combining two meshes or something has swizzled half the triangles around

But in the end on this kinda car panels won't have been super perfect anyhow, so some waviness might really add to things vs completely perfect appearance.

Dave

garyjpaterson · Jul 8, 2016

Quick video showing how this thing drives - This is the S1 version though! Reason being, 30hp is just excruciatingly slow in AC

So its had an engine swap, now producing over 90bhp, and has a new 5 speed gearbox. Otherwise its all stock! That includes brakes, suspension and tyres

Honestly mega fun, hope it comes accross in the video.
Watch for some tom-foolery at the end

Also-

Mr Whippy said:
Also make sure to check your triangle flow is nice because Max can swizzle around with tri-flow on editable poly mods or edit poly meshes sometimes.
I've often been baffled to why my mesh suddenly looks a bit crappy in reflections and then I realise for some reason combining two meshes or something has swizzled half the triangles around

Really interested about this, but struggling to know what 'swizzle around' means

And what I can do to prevent against this?

Cheers,
Gary

A3DR · Jul 8, 2016

Wow, it even looks fast! there's something weird going on with the rear suspension I think, at least it seems like it suddenly drops down for some reason at times.
What track is that? it certainly suits the car!

AccAkut · Jul 8, 2016

A3DR said:
What track is that? it certainly suits the car!

Its Aspertham

garyjpaterson · Jul 8, 2016

A3DR said:
Wow, it even looks fast! there's something weird going on with the rear suspension I think, at least it seems like it suddenly drops down for some reason at times.
What track is that? it certainly suits the car!

Hah yeah, this certainly isn't stock power! The suspension isn't really designed for 90bhp, with the 30hp it looks far more sorted. The soft springs do allow for a huge amount of pitch under acceleration/braking, which might be what you are seeing. Its far from final physics anyway.

This track, mega fun, huge sense of speed, much needed in slower cars: http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/aspertsham-public-roads-in-bavaria.123087/

garyjpaterson · Jul 8, 2016

Managed to make a comparable video with the standard Anglia to show how truly slow it is

You can see its much more composed than the S1, as at no point can you overwhelm the suspension with power. Lap time is a 2:59 versus a 2:12 for the S1.

NightEye87 · Jul 8, 2016

Looks like a lovely drive, even the stock one!

This is "swizzling": automatic triangulation results in edges going |\|\|/|\|/|/|\| etc, rather than |\|\|\|\|\|\|\| (look at the doors, the rear bumper, etc). It's horrible for reflections sometimes. Usually it's fine to keep quads and let the programme triangulate it. Sometimes it's not

garyjpaterson · Jul 12, 2016

Been looking into getting my real life Anglia running (to no avail), and I've acquired a repair manual which has so much goodness that can be used for the AC version;

Really detailed diagrams of things like axles/brakes, which will of course will help when modelling. But the best thing is some really good data: King Pin Inclination, Castor, Camber (positive that is

), even damper stiffness (Bump and Rebound!).

Here is the real one btw, the in-game one is based on this except without the broken bits. Might leave out the number plate too...

Mr Whippy · Jul 12, 2016

NightEye87 said:
Looks like a lovely drive, even the stock one!

This is "swizzling": automatic triangulation results in edges going |\|\|/|\|/|/|\| etc, rather than |\|\|\|\|\|\|\| (look at the doors, the rear bumper, etc). It's horrible for reflections sometimes. Usually it's fine to keep quads and let the programme triangulate it. Sometimes it's not
View attachment 142902

Cheers for posting that, I'm not sure what the proper name is

But the triangle flow makes a huge difference to apparent smoothness in realtime rendering without normal maps (which also would need fixed triangles after baking, not potentially swizzable quads)

It's always worth collapsing to an editable mesh and setting triangles explicitly before export, because even exporters might deal with the quad > tri process differently!

Dave

garyjpaterson · Jul 12, 2016

Yeah, its still all new to me this stuff. I have noticed it before though, and was going to ask how to sort it. Collapsing to editable mesh does usually make things looks a lot nicer.