First
of all I had to find some Lotus Elise
blueprints... but although I search
hard all the web I didn't find them.
I only found the Lotus Elise mk2 blueprints
and I studied them carefully and found
they are somehow similar in shape as
the lotus Elise 1. So my idea was tot
make a primary mesh of the car after
this blueprints and them modify the
mesh after the images of Lotus Elise
1 ( I downloaded I think 30-40 of images
of Elise 1 in all positions)
Of
course the blueprints were white with
black lines. So I had to modify them
in photoshop by replacing the white
with a light blue ( I didn't want the
blueprints to interfere with the object
(white when selected).
After
that I created 2 boxes as the same ratio
as the blueprints and placed the bitmap
on them. Then I started to create lines
in the Right view corresponding to the
shape of the car. Then I moved the vertices
in the Front view and Perspective corresponding
to the blueprints. I didn't try to make
the lines bezier or smooth, I only worked
with corners (not like in my first car
tutorial) because my goal is to create
a low poly mesh and then edit it with
mesh edit and mesh smooth.
Notice what configuration I made for
the headlight:
I
didn't wanted the spline network to
be very complicated but only to have
the major lines of the car. The rest
well done with edit mesh. Make sure
you have splines to that are making
surfaces of 3 or 4 splines. We do that,
because will use the Surface modifier
that will create a patch where it finds
3 or 4 splines intersecting each other.
So,
I applied a surface modifier with
0 steps and then a Edit mesh modifier
:
Now
you can forget about splines and surface,
from now on I only used edit mesh.
I created some faces like in image (selecting
the outer edges and extruding them inside)
:
I
also created 2 additional faces (with
3 sides) after I extruded the edges.(E.g..
in the picture above the last face from
the right is created, the left one isn't
created yet)
The
same way I worked with the others outer
edges of the car :
This
is how I made the air wing (hmm sorry
I don't know how to call it :)
You
probably notice that I already started
to work with a true picture of the Elise
1 and trying to correct the differences
between the mesh I made after the blueprints
and the images of the Elise 1.
Next I created a mirror reference copy
of the object.
The
headlights:
I
selected the faces from the headlights
and I scaled them:
With the four faces selected I extruded
them inside (-5) and then outside (+2):
Next
I selected the edge near the headlights
and chamfer them (the faces will result
will be the smaller headlight):
I
extrude the faces inside, twice :
Next
, I deleted the reference I made earlier
(after tweaking the mesh and when I
was sure the proportions were correct).
Then I created a mirror copy (not reference)
and I attached the new object to the
older one (in edit mesh). Then I selected
the central edges and I welded them:
