In this seven-part tutorial I will be explaining how to build a Bugatti Veyron car, from scratch. This tutorial is aimed at users of Cinema 4D who have a basic understanding of the 3D tools, but haven't modelled a car before. I am using Cinema 4D R10 studio edition and have not used any third party plug-ins to create the car in this tutorial. You will be able to follow this tutorial with earlier versions of Cinema 4D, but there will be limitations with previous tools and workaround can be found.

In this section of the tutorial, I will be covering how to set up the reference planes and begin modelling the Bugatti Veyron body. I will be explaining how to model in detail so that you can understand the techniques and tools used.

1. I can't stress enough how important it is to gather good reference materials and views from every angle, as you cannot rely on the orthographic plans found online being 100% accurate. Fortunately, the plans for the Bugatti Veyron are extremely good, as you can see from (Fig01) (please visit www.the-blueprints.com for blueprints). I've set them up in Photoshop and used guidelines to check that sections of the car line up.


2. I cut out each view and saved it as a separate .png or .jpeg file in a folder called ‘tex', in the same directory as you'll be saving your cinema file. Open up Cinema 4D and add a plane object and a new material. In the colour channel, add one of the views. Note the resolution of the image. Change the height and width of the plane in the viewport to match the resolution of the image, and then apply that material to the plane (Fig02).



3. Click on the material and the illumination channel, and change the texture preview size to that shown in Fig03. Continue to do this for the other three views.