Car Trim
Trim - Crest - Page 1
I wonder if everyone is sick of spline projection yet... what's that you say? No? You want more?!
Well, alright then... putting these crests and logos on will call for a lot more of the same!
This image here is a little sketch I made of the crest plate I want to put on the front of the car, right below the hood ornament.
Naturally, because the area I want to place the crest is rounded, I will have to take extra steps to position the crest correctly and model geometry that conforms to the base object.
We will be using the same old projection techniques we've been practicing for the past five or six steps, but with a twist... we will go from polygons to splines to projection, back to polygons again!
Notice also, I only drew half of the crest... this is for the same reason as I only drew half the car reference image waaaayyyy back in the first steps. Cinema 4D is capable of much more accuracy when it comes to mirroring objects than I am when drawing freehand!
The first thing to do is to set up the reference image on a plane object, with textures enabled so you can see in the editor view...
I made the reference plane editable and deleted half of the polygons so that the object axis was right down the very edge of the plane where I will want the object centered with.
Here I have positioned and resized the plane so that from the front view of my car it lines up on the front of the hood exactly in the position I want it.
It is very fortunate that as a texture, you can alter the scale of the reference image in any direction as you are working in Cinema 4D. As it turned out, I had to lessen the Y dimension considerably from the initial picture so that the object when made would still fit well on the front of the hood below the ornament.
Once the reference plane is in position, copy the plane and place the copy directly in front of the reference plane (so that only the Z position changes and it is still perfectly aligned with the spot on the hood we will project to.
Delete the texture from the new plane.
I apologize if this is difficult to see... I am working with isoparm display on the front plane, and reference image visible on the reference plane.
Place the front plane into a HyperNURBS/ Symmetry parent group. The rounding becomes apparent. The rounding is going to be useful in some areas but not so useful for the sharp edges... so now is when we begin to shape a basic model that conforms as closely as possible to the crest shape, without become too complex in structure.
A few knifecuts in strategic places will increase the level of control we have over the shape of the basic crest object. You can see I made three vertical knifecuts spaced relatively evenly. The only one that needs precise placement is the one that defines the edge of the top indentation on the crest shape. Likewise two horizontal knifecuts are made. One at each significant change in edge shape (sharp curves or corners).
Now, switching to point mode, drag certain edge points in the X and Y directions in such a way so that you can see the underlying subdivided mesh begin to conform to the shape of the crest in the reference image.
For having only a four or five point grid in each direction, I think I got pretty close!!!
Now select the bottom row of points on the polygon object (in my case this was only five points). Copy and paste these points into an empty spline object (linear, no intermediate points), and a spline appears.
If you are lucky, you won't have to reorder points. If you DO have to, just drag them into correct sequence in the structure manager! Repeat this process for all four horizontal rows of points on the polygon object.
Now select the four splines that you made from the planar crest object, and project them to the XY plane.
They will jump to the front surface of the hood...
Select all of the points of the splines and copy and paste them into an empty polygon object using the structure manager.
From there, select the polygon object, and in point mode, use the bridge tool to reconstruct polygons from the grid of points.
This object should also be HyperNURBS with Symmetry.
Select all polygons and make sure the normals are aligned and facing outward from the hood surface.
I added a knifecut horizontally to divide the top row of polygons in two. I also added a vertical knifecut right where the indentation at the top of the crest should begin.
That left a couple polygons in place of the indentation that, when deleted, actually allow for the shape of the crest to become a lot more accurate.
Now, Select all polygons and begin to extrude them. First, extrude to just about the thickness you want of the crest object... then top that off with a tiny extrusion to sharpen the edge at the crest's maximum height.
(Here I've just applied a texture that you can see the edge geometry better with...)
Use the extrude inner tool to create a border around the crest, and then extrude the polygons back towards the surface of the hood so that an indentation is made and the border appears raised.
Delete the border ridge and other excess geometry in the middle of the crest shape that was caused by using extrude and extrude inner tools on a symmetrical object.
Repair any holes that were created by deleting extra geometry by selecting the new edge points and using Set Value so that the X position of these points equals zero (the plane of symmetry).
Now to complete the shape of the crest, there are a few places that need sharpening, as far as corners go. Select all polygons.
From the side view, use the knife to make cuts just inside the very top, and another where the indentation on the top of the crest reaches. Finally, make a cut right beside the corner where the curved bottom portion of the crest meets the more angular top portion.
You can see that the end result is a lot sharper in several key areas. The mesh now is still not overly complex, but we would have had a lot more trouble achieving this shape beforehand and then trying to project it...
As it is we kept the shape simple right up to the end.
However, I'm a nut for modeling, and the tutorial has nothing else to do but try to get you to flex your modeling muscle... so let's get on with it!
This shape forms the basis for the main crest. We are going to add some more detail to the crest itself in the next step. Keep in mind, that adding detail to certain things is best done at your discretion. If you were not going to have a good close shot of the front of the car, you might choose to forego the next step, or even this step - electing to have absolutely NO geometry but instead to fake the whole crest with a decal maps...