WIP - Mercedes Engines

[Patrick]

I'm modeling the Mercedes series of engines & will eventually wrap some planes around them. All modeling is done in Amapi 7.52 using nurbs to generate the final meshes. I plan to import the parts into Carrara 6.0 for rendering.

Many thanks are due to Franzkait for providing me with the information needed to get this far.

I started with the basic cylinder, which is a blend of two distinct profiles at 90 degree angles. This is best modeled as a Gordon surface, so I constructed a profile network --



and then (many trys later ) got a nice hull --



Here's the basic cylinder unit completed in nurbs --



And with some shading on it so it looks a little more solid --



With that much done, it's easy to rough out some top ends to get an idea of what they'll look like; here's a Mecedes D.IIIa --



Continued in the next post.

[Patrick]

Another shot of the D.IIIa --



And here's the eight cylinder Mercedes D.IV --







The cylinder has a lot of commonality between the different engines in this series, so it'll be easy to build any variation of the D.III-D.IIIa-D.IV engines.

More to come.

[Flamingo]

Hey, that's looking really good!
I tried a bit with the free Amapi version but somehow it never did what I wanted it to do. Now I try to get along with Rhinoceros.

[Patrick]

Hi Flamingo, & thanks! I hear good things about Rhino nurbs so you've got a good tool -- and that's half the battle right there

For Amapi, the only version that's really full-featured is the current release - Amapi Pro 7.52. And if you really want to get the most out of it, you'll need to lay out another $90 and get Marc Berry's training videos from VTC. There were large parts of the workflow that were a total mystery to me until I spent several hours watching Marc drive it. Now when I use it it's like putting on a glove -- I'm even starting to remap Carrara 6 keystroke commands to match Amapi because I keep hitting the dang things and nothing happens.

One drawback to Amapi is that you have to find another rendering environment and import to it -- Amapi is strictly a modeler, what rendering it does is only for test shots to see how the modeling's going. I'm using C6 because I've been using it ever since it was Ray Dream Designer 3.0, I'm used to it's quirks and it's actually pretty powerful and can produce a very photorealistic render.

Just last week I snagged a discount copy of the new ViaCAD Pro package, which also seems to be a very powerful nurb modeler. I'm thinking of tackling one of the Mercedes crankcases with it to get a feel for how it works.

More to come soon . . .

[1998328is]

Hi Pat,
Very nice.
I never could get Amapi to work.
Very nice so far. I myself am trying to do a BMW engine in Carrara.
Can't wait to see it finished good luck.

Paul-web.mac.com/ocicatgraphics

[Patrick]

Hi Paul, if you really want to learn Amapi -- both as a polygon and nurbs modeler -- you've got to get this:

Amapi Pro 7.5 Tutorials

You can watch the first three chapters online for free. It's expensive, but well worth it. Once you understand the interface, Amapi is very easy to use. I no longer model anything in Carrara; I use it only for rendering by importing the parts I modeled in Amapi as OBJ files.

[Tim West]

Why not use the program Becco uses, similar in price and features but has a render engine?

Looks cool btw, nurbs confuse me Well not really, I just dont use them that much. You seem to have a handle on them.

So wheres the rest?

[Patrick]

Hi Tim, unless he got them on an educational discount, Becco has laid out quite a bit of cash for tools. Cinema 4D Core is about $900, BodyPaint is around $800 and the Maxwell rendering engine is $1000. C6 bought new is $550 (my upgrade from C5-C6 was $149). Amapi is $749 list, but if you own any other e-frontier product it's $149 (go figure).

I use the toolset I have because I already have the licenses, they work well and it costs zip to upgrade whenever an update comes out. Basically, I'm into cheap . My next major investment is in hardware -- time to go quad core and 8 GB memory with a 64-bit OS.

Amapi may not have another release, although it appears that 8.0 is finished and ready. But it really doesn't matter. I'm less concerned about using a particular tool than I am about developing geometry in an interchangable file format. I figure if I build a parts library in OBJ format, I can move it into anything. Tools change all the time -- you don't want to have to redo good work though. It's hard enough doing this stuff once. Someday I may abandon Carrara and Amapi altogether, but so far I just don't see a good reason to do it now.

Nurbs. I think you're either a nurbs guy or a poly guy. I have drafting/CAD experience and nurbs make total sense to me. My attempts at vertex pushing often wind up looking like wadded-up tinfoil . Nurbs are utterly precise. They're lousy for organic modeling, but for machined parts they're ideal.

More is coming -- those shots I posted earlier are quick renders in Amapi. The next batch is going to be out of C6. I'm working on detailing the parts that hang off the cylinder, and the cam tube and rocker boxes. It's alot of stuff

[Tim West]

Hi Patrick,

I thought that Cinema out of the box came with a render engine. 900 hundred seems fair.

Your right about the steep cost of his set up for a non professional. I often wonder how so many people just starting out with 3d are able to spend thousands of dollars for software they dont even know how to use. Weird.....

No worries about being cheap. My first 3D program cost me like 30 bucks and had no render engine. I used to use flight sims as my engine And did the whole open source route for a while. There were a few great free programs back then. Then I entered a contest and received a 1 year use license of my first real software and at that point I decided to save my money and give this ago. The investments have more than payed for themselves over the years.

Your right about getting new hardware. I'm at that point too. Every couple of years my skill level starts to exceed my hardware capabilities.

Keep up the good work.....

Polys forever!

[1998328is]

I'm sticking with Carrara.
I got a deal on Amapi 5.0. It looked like it might be good for modeling ship hulls. About a month later I hadn't figured it out and went back to Carrara. I figured out a pretty good way of doing ship hulls with it and haven't looked back.
All the short comings with Carrara are I think simply the operator. I have a lot of problems with lighting, and now in Carrara 6, camera production frames. Most of my time though I spend on modeling in the vertex modeler. I really haven't sat down and played with the cameras, animation and lighting.
Theres a lot to learn.
Iv'e tried Amapi, Shade and even poked around in Maya.
Unfortunately I'm one of those people who doesn't have the patience if I can't jump in immediately and start making things happen I go elsewhere.
I'm not sure if there are huge differences between Hexagon-Amapi-Carrara.
Carrara just works for me and when I try a new program I just get frustrated.
I have switched from Quark to Indesign. It wasn't a big deal. I'm happy playing in Illustrator and Photoshop and It's great when I learn something new.
Iv'e seen some of Becco's stuff on Renderosity but I can't recall if his Triplane is up there yet.
All in all theres just no way in Hell that I can justify spending $1000.00 on new software (I'd get killed by the wife when the bill showed up anyway).
She might let me get a new computer though

Paul-web.mac.com/ocicatgraphics