Blender Motorcycle Concept Project Part 2

The past couple of days I've put a bunch of hours work in on my Blender motorcycle concept project. Lots of good ideas have come up because of it and so it is and interesting thing to work on and also inspirational at the same time.  In part one I completed the wheels for the motorcycle which turned out very well.  I was not sure at that point if I was going to model a regular looking futuristic motorcycle or redo an earlier model that I had created years ago.  The second idea won out so here is how it all turned out. 

(Select any image to get a larger view)

This is the starting point for the Blender concept cycle redo.  I liked the idea of modeling a motorcycle that was fully enclosed with a clear bubble canopy.  Also with this idea would be that the motorcycle would be electric and be self balancing.  There is a real motorcycle currently under development like this from a company named Lit Motors.  A very interesting machine so I thought I would make my version of what I would like it to be if I could build one. 

I liked the bubble canopy but thought it best to have it be split so that access to the drivers seat would be a bit more believable.  I also did not know if this was going to be designed for one or two people. In the image above more details were added with side mounted video cameras instead of mirrors, single arm front suspension and a near complete interior at this point. 

At this point I also recessed the rear license plate and added small access panels on the side to act as canopy handles to open or close the motorcycle.  I had not worked out the rear tail or signal lights yet but the design was shaping up rather nicely.

To give my Blender model a better reference to it's size I imported a lady that I had created in a piece of software called Makehuman that I had on file and so she became the driver.   I did some quick reference measurements using the lady (I call her Kathy) and set her up to be 5 foot 8 inches tall.  This along with measuring the tires which matched my Honda Goldwing I was able to work out the full dimensions of the model if it were a real vehicle.  The real motorcycle the best I can figure would be 12 feet long, 45 inches tall and right around 2 feet wide.  This made for a tight fit for Kathy but I did manage to squeeze her into the cockpit.   I also worked out in the image above the front and rear signal lights, tail light and headlight layouts.  

In the interior of the motorcycle I originally had the steering wheel to high.  This caused an issue with trying to see the gauges on the dash along with the small video monitors that are used for the rear view as well as both left and right views.  

With the model being just a model I realize that a tremendous amount of actual design work would need to be done to make this Blender model and actual living breathing vehicle parked in my garage. As I said earlier I managed to squeeze Kathy into the drivers seat. Barely.   In reality the design would need to be taller and wider to accommodate a real person.  You need the vehicle to be closer to 3 feet wide not two and probably another foot taller.  It would give you a lot more elbow and head room inside.  Also to make it electric would be a real trick as this is a very small vehicle.  An interesting design study just the same. 

One thing nice about playing with this design is getting to see what It might be like to actually build and drive something like this.  The image above gives you a good idea of what the dash layout might be like and what you would see going down the road.  The dash could be a full computer screen to show the gauges that you would normally see and just above it are three small video monitors that give you a constant rear view as there is no rear view mirror.  It would be worthless as you could not see anything out the back of the vehicle with a mirror.  Also on both sides  of the rear view monitor are video monitors for the left and right views.  An interesting thought to have the video cameras instead of mirrors.  This could some day be the norm.  At least I hope it will be.  

Also the steering wheel could be replaced with a joystick.  It actually would be safer in a crash but might be more than a handful when trying to drive it.  Something the auto industry has been playing around with for decades.  Anyway this is my futuristic Blender motorcycle.  I hope it will give you a few ideas for you next Blender project or maybe a real project that will sit in your garage someday. We can at least dream and create our visions using Blender 3D.