Beyond The Exterior

Chassis

 

 

The level of detail I'm looking for on this model requires the chassis to be made up of nothing more than a simple surface that covers the open area at the bottom of the car body. This is probably fine for most purposes, but if someone needs all the under workings of an auto, you're in an entirely new realm of car modeling! I suppose that too is possible with HyperNURBS, but no one here is that ambitious, are they? :-)

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By selecting the points along the interior edge of the bottom of the car and copying them to a new polygon object via the Structure Manager, you can define the entire edge of the chassis as it precisely meets with the car panel edges. Now, if you copy and paste the same points and use Set Value so the X value of the second copy of points equals zero, you've got the identical number of points in the middle of the chassis on the plane of symmetry. What does that mean? It means by bridging the points with polygons, you've just made a perfectly fitting, perfectly symmetrical chassis surface!

Now, you'll want to work on the wheel wells to ensure proper fit for the surface around the wheels. Of course it's easiest to do this with the wheels visible! This adjustment is just a matter of basic point & poly manipulation while keeping an eye on various angles to make sure the surface goes where it's supposed to.

 

 

Well, that takes care of about two thirds of the bottom of the car. Of course, there is no surface beneath the engine compartment, but to avoid having a big empty space there, I put in a cube as a proxy for an engine. I haven't yet decided, but I might render with a reflective floor, and I don't want the floor reflecting a big hollow void and the bottom of the hood...