I've burned a lot of midnight oil over the past week working on my Blender 3D Bugatti Type 35 model. This has been an interesting project to say the least and a learning process at the same time. Lots of photo images were needed as reference to create the complete model. To get as realistic look as I could without actually seeing this car in the flesh took some time online to find what I needed.
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For those of you who have never seen what Blender 3D looks like I thought I would include this image of the Bugatti before it was rendered to it's completed view in full color with reflections. I only added color to the tires, seat, and leather straps at this point in the model just for my own sake just so I could get a rough idea as to how the car would look. In the upper right corner of this image you can see a row of icons. Each of these icons when pressed open up additional menus to change everything in the computer model from lighting, color, reflections, what layer parts are on, and the list goes on and on. It takes some time to learn Blender but with what can be created makes the effort worth it.
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Here's a close up view of the dash in the Bugatti before the rendering is done. When you pick on a part of the model.... say the steering wheel.... it will highlight the part you choose. It makes it a lot easier to know exactly what you are modeling. Also rather than trying to make changes with at least a couple of dozen other parts in your way you can move your part your working on to one of twenty layers so that only that part is showing on the screen. Makes it much easier to modify something and rotate and move the part around quicker. Once the part is changed to your liking you can again move it back to the original layer with all the parts (for the dash) to place it exactly where you want it.
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Here is the dash for the Bugatti after it has been rendered with all of the materials that are needed for each part. I find that the little details in a computer image such as this make a big difference in how it all looks. The gauges on the dash for example I made using reference photos of a real Bugatti dash to see what looked correct for the car. The clock in the upper left of the dash took at least a half hour to create to get the level of detail that I wanted. Each black inner circle on the face of the clock is made up of 30 or 40 segments. Luckily Blender has a very good zoom capability so that a lot of detail can be created and then scaled to fit your needs. Another detail that I like in this image are the reflections and the little black knob in the middle of the dash. The reflections in this part and in the chrome rings around the gauges add that little touch of realism to the model to make it stand out.
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Here finally after over 80 hours of work is my completed Bugatti. I'm rather proud of how it turned out. This being my first complete car that I've attempted in Blender was a major task for sure. There are a lot of details that needed to be made to create this computer image. The hardest being the louvers on the front hood and body of the car. I had gotten the top louvers completed and continued on with other parts of the model only to find out days later in a reference photo of the car that the louvers were mounted backwards! So there were setbacks in creating this model but more than that there were also new things I learned along the way too. One being able to mirror parts in the model. This made it possible to model one side of the body of the car and have it perfectly match the other side. A must if your going to model something like this for sure.
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I really like the look of the rear of the Bugatti with the boat tail. When started this model I thought that the body would be the hardest part. Some of the work to get the look right took some time but with some effort and checking and rechecking my reference photos I was able to have it turn out the way I wanted. I still want to play around with putting the Bugatti into a real environment so it looks more like a photo that was taken outside rather than a car advertisement that you see here. Not that I am not happy with how these images look but rather that I want to learn how to make it look even more realistic. A tall order but something else new that I've been wanting to learn.
Speaking of which if you want to learn how to make images like this using Blender 3D there are a ton of tutorials online that will help you to get started. (Free open source download software by the way.) I recommend going to a site I use called The Blender Guru run by a young man named Andrew Price. He has some great tutorials that I constantly use and learn from. Andrew makes the process of learning Blender interesting and fun in a way that anyone can understand from the start. So check it out if you want to get into using this great free software. Have a good one and enjoy the Bugatti images.
Thanks Dave, the Type 35 has been a favorite of mine for many years so this is very cool to see.
ReplyDeleteAt one time I had an opportunity to buy a rolling chassis for an unfinished Teal kit with no body in the late 80s, early 90s during the Bob Jones Teal era with the aluminum body. I confirmed with Teal I could get the aluminum body from them to complete the kit but I was leary of being able to import it back into the U.S.. Especially at what I projected the final cost would have been to complete the car.
I was stationed in the U.K. while active duty in the USAF and ended up buying and building a Lomax 3-wheeler with a boat tail similar to the boat tail on the Bugatti. I sold that before returning to the U.S. but I've always kicked myself that I didn't get and complete the Teal.