'3D Studio Max'

Introduction:

I decided to work on the Ford Fastback because I love the classic look of the car, and that is what I wanted to achieve – a feeling of class and style. I had a rough idea in my mind of the final image, the colours, and a studio render with maybe some different camera angles. But it was really the process of creating the car and trying out different things that led to the final result that I am talking about today.

I hope you will like this making of, and perhaps you’ll find something interesting in it for yourself.

Getting Ready!:

The most important thing when doing a car model is to collect as many reference photos as possible (Fig.01). Finding the correct blueprints is very helpful and setting them up is pretty straightforward (Fig.02). Someone once asked me about good image reference sites. There are many good reference sites, but for this particular project I used photos found on the web just by searching on the different car selling sites, and searching on Google. These photos helped me a lot in my modelling and texturing, because of some great perspectives and close-up shots (Fig.03) that cannot be found on reference sites. The search for good reference photos can take a long time, but believe me it really pays off in the end.

Modeling:

When it came to modelling this car, I used a classic approach: polygon modelling. I started from the exterior of the car and worked through to the interior. Most of the objects and elements of the model were mesh smoothed, and I used symmetry for most of the elements of the car, with some exceptions for a few of the interior elements.

For the body of the car, I started with a plane from the side and worked my way from there (Fig.04), always checking my reference images (I think there were about 400 in total!). My approach was incremental; making a basic model (Fig.05) and then adding details. After finishing the basic body I moved on to the tyres (Fig.06), which I modelled separately (starting with a part of a cylinder for the rim, and an array of tyre segments with a bend modifier applied to them for the tyre), and then merged into the scene. Then I added the side vents and the front and rear bumpers (Fig.07). The front and rear lights followed (Fig.08), which I modelled from a box and then applied extrude, insert, connect etc. In Fig.09 you can see the rear emblem, along with the front and side emblems, which were made using a basic mesh from Max, with some features of the emblems added in ZBrush. At this point I added the underside for the main body and I also started to add details to the body and doors, and to the exterior of the car in general (Fig.10).