Part 1: Setting Up Blender

When you plan on modeling a car in Blender, or any 3D modeling program, you should find your self some good reference images. For any reference images or blueprints I highly recommend www.the-blueprints.com. This site allows user to create reference images on almost every kind of vehicle out there—even ones from Star Wars and Star Trek—so if you have a certain vehicle in mind, that is the site I suggest. I will try to keep this tutorial general enough to work for all cars and possibly any vehicle.

I have chosen to create the Chevy Camaro. If you would like to create this car with me you can download the reference images at the site I provided above. When choosing a blueprint try to chose one that has all the sides of equal size compared to each other.

When you have gotten your reference images we must make sure that they are split up into four separate images all with the same relative size. When cropping your image you want the edges of the image right up against the edge of the vehicle in your reference image without cutting any of the vehicle’s edges out. This makes it easier to make the reference images all the same size. If the images are not the same size at this point you will need to resize them so that they will be the same size when you put them in Blender. The width of all of the images should be the same EXCEPT for the side view. The side view’s width should be the same as the height of the top view. You can see when the images should generally look like in the last image in this section. It is also good to take note of the ratio of the top views height over its width. So if the width is 500 pixels and the height is 1000 pixels we have a 2/1 ratio. I will explain why we need this later on in the tutorial.

Now that you have gotten your reference images we can set them up in Blender. First off split your Blender screen up into four viewing windows:

Now we need to set up the reference images in Blender. Usually we there are 5 sides to reference: Top, Bottom, Side, Front, and Back. To get our reference images into Blender we will use background images. To use background images all you have to do is go into "View-->Background Image" in each of the viewing windows. Then click on ‘Use Background Image’, ‘Load’, and find your reference images.

Just loading the images will not cut it though. The default size of all the images is 5. This is just fine except for that fact that the side view image will be much smaller than the other images. This is because the ‘Size’ of the background image is just the width of the image in Blender units. This is where our ratio comes into play. If you downloaded the reference images that I used then the ratio is 2112/913 pixels. Throw that in the calculator and I get 2.313. Take this number and multiply it by 5 (the default size of all of the background images). This gets me 11.566265. That is what the width or ‘Size’ that the side view needs to be. Assuming the images were made accurately you should be done with the background images.

Now we have Blender set up completely. In the next section we will begin modeling our car、

Part 2: Creating the Hood

Whenever I want to model something like this I go and make sure I make it in separate pieces. This way when I screw up I can only mess up a small part of my model and if I decide I want to animate it I will have a much easier time doing so. So I will start by modeling the hood of my Camaro and since cars are usually symmetrical I will just to the right half of the hood and then duplicate it.

Firstly I am going to add a plane in the top view of our scene. To make sure our plane is added correctly in the top view we want to use the space bar to add our plane. Personally I have gotten into the habit of hitting add in the menu rather that hitting space. So, if you are like me you may forget to do this sometimes. So, with your cursor in the viewing window in the top view hit space --> Add --> Mesh --> Plane

After adding the plane, just grab your plane along the Y-axis and pull it over the hood. Now grab the left edge and move it along the X-axis by 1. This causes the one edge to be directly in the center of our car. Now just scale your plane along the Y-axis until it covers the vertical distance of the hood. Now select all of the edges except for the left one. Delete them. You can see what I have done below.

Now we have the centerline of our car. Before we continue shaping out the hood we should subdivide our line. Select your line and subdivide it about three times. Now we have a line with a few vertices on it. In order to make the plane the shape of the hood we will work in sections. On the Camaro I will extrude the vertices along the X-axis to the right of my line until they hit the first line to the right. You can see what I mean here:

If you are doing a different vehicle these steps may be a little different. Basically what I am doing here is just making the hood in small parts at a time so that it does not get overwhelming. If you try and do everything at once you will just make it harder on your self. Anyways, let’s continue. Now that I have the extruded vertices in the correct position all I have to do is fill them in so we have a plane. Select the top four vertices. Then hit F. This should create a face:

Now do this for the rest of the vertices. When that is done we will do the same steps as before to the next line to the right. Extrude the vertices along the X-axis then fill in the faces.

If you try to do it again you may find that this method won’t work as well as it did the last few times. The next line curves too much for the small amount of vertices we have. So, what we will do is improvise. First I will just extrude the vertices to the right as we did before. Instead of filling in our vertices we will extrude from our newest vertices and follow the lines. Below I did this to the bottom right of our hood.

Now that we have the hood completed in the top view, we can now get it correct in the side view. So, in the top view select one of the centermost vertices. Then in the side view grab it along the Z-axis and bring it to the top point on the hood. Then do this for the rest of the vertices. You can do the same thing with all of the vertices just by matching them up with their correct lines. Here is my finished half of the hood.

To make the other half just select the entire hood in Edit Mode and hit Shift+D. This will duplicate this half of the hood. Now Press M with the new hood selected and hit X. This mirrors the hood on the X-Axis. Now you just have to grab the new half along the X-axis and align the centers right on top of each other as closely as possible. To join them select the vertices that are to be in the very center of the hood and remove the doubles. You can do this by hitting W and selecting ‘Remove Doubles’. If they do not join you can go to the Editing Buttons in the buttons panel and in the Mesh Tools box you will find ‘Rem Double’. Right next to it there is “Limit: 0.001”. Just make the limit higher and you should be able to hit ‘Rem Double’ to remove the doubles.

Now we have the hood. As I am sure you are finding out, this will take a long time. With the creation of the hood you have just found out how to do pretty much every part of the car. All you have to do is go piece by piece slowly expanding on the model.

Part 3: Front End Construction

Let’s continue by making the rest of the front end. Go into Object Mode and add a plane and position it over the top of the area right in front of our hood. We will keep the hood separate in case you decide you want to animate it. Below you can see the area I am creating.

Delete all of the vertices except for the one that is located in the center of the car. Then, just like with the corner of the hood we will make multiple extrusions and follow the line all the way around this section. When you have done that fill it all in by selecting vertices and hitting ‘F’.

Then just as before take your vertices and raise them to there correct vertical position. This time I will use the front view rather than the side view along with the top view since it is easier to see the lines in the reference image. You can see mine here:

Even though this piece is done, we will not add another plane to make the next one. We will just continue extruding from this piece to create the rest of the front. I do this because the front is one big piece and it does not move separately as the hood would. I used the exact same techniques for the small empty section between the hood and the newest piece.

I will now leave you to finish up the rest of the solid front of the car. Use the same techniques we have been using for the hood and this latest piece and you should be fine. My completed front piece is shown here.

Sometimes when you are going through the process of modeling your car you may find that some places look something like this:

To fix this press A until you have selected everything in Edit Mode and press Ctrl + N. A pop up should ask “Recalculate Normals Outside” click it and all of these irregularities should be fixed. Another setting that I used and have not talked about it the Set Smooth. This is fairly straight forward and you may already be using it. Just select everything and hit ‘Set Smooth’ and you won’t have all of those squares and triangles on your car’s shell. However, this will also get rid of the sharp edges that should been seen. To fix this, just turn on ‘Auto Smooth’ within the Mesh box.

Below this button there should be a ‘Degr: ##’ and some number where the number signs are. This is the max degree amount on an edge that will be smoothed. Mine is set at 20. This is high enough to get the sharpest edges that need to be smoothed out while the sharp edges that need to be visible are left alone.

Continuing on, take you completed front half and mirror it just like we did with the hood. In Edit Mode, Duplicate this half by hitting Shift+D, hit enter, hit M, X, then grab the new half and put it into place

Part 4: Continuing Down the Side

Before dealing with the details of the car, such as the grille and headlights and such I will just get the basic shape of the car or vehicle I am modeling. To stick with this routine I am going to start modeling the section right above the front wheel.

There are two ways we can go about creating this next portion of the car. One way is to just continue off of the front section we just made. However, if you go with that route you will run into problems if you mirrored the front as I told you to. The other way is to add another plane instead of continuing off of the first part. If you haven’t mirrored the last piece you can just continue off of that piece. If you want to go that direction I just want to warn you that if you mess up or something out of your control happens in which you have to delete the whole piece you are working on you will lost a lot of work. Personally I do it in small separate pieces just in case something happens.

Alright, why don’t we continue with our car? Add a plane in your side view by hitting the space bar --> Add --> Mesh --> Plane. Then move it into place over the area around the wheel then delete all but one vertex. You may not be able to see the vertex in the image below, but it’s there.

If you haven’t already, make sure the vertex is over one of the corners or at the very least on a line that is in your reference image. Then, as usual take that vertex and start extruding along the line that you put the vertex on. Keep going until you have outlined and filled in most, or better yet, all of the area around our wheel.

Before continuing you may see that some parts of the car are blocking your view of the piece you are working on. This will probably happen throughout the construction of the vehicle. The easiest way to fix this issue is to move the piece to another layer. Then when you want to put the pieces together (which we will do soon) you can put them back on the same layer.

Since my hood and the front of the car is going to be in the way when I am in the front view I will just move these to another layer. If you want to do this, just select the pieces you want on another layer in object mode and then hit ‘M’. A pop up should appear with twenty boxes and one of them (probably the top left) is already selected. To move the objects to another plane just select a different box. Then hit ‘Ok’.

Now whenever you are in object mode you can find the layer selection on the bar in each of the viewing windows. To see the objects you just moved, just select the same square you chose to move the pieces to. To view more than one layer, hold down the shift button and click the layer you want to see.

After the other pieces are out of the way, you can now go and shape the piece to the reference images. When you are done moving the vertices to the correct spot we can mirror this piece then connect it to our front bumper. Here is my finished piece for around the wheel.

Just like with the other two pieces, mirror our side and grab it to the other side of the car. To do this select all by hitting ‘A’ in edit mode. Duplicate by pressing Shift+D, hit M, and then hit X. After that, grab the new piece along the X-axis by using the G Key.

With both sides in place we can put the whole front three pieces together. First, we want to make these all one object. To do that, go into object mode and select the very front piece and the two new pieces we just made. Press Ctrl+J and select ‘Join selected meshes’ in the popup.

Next we have to actually put the pieces together. In Edit Mode, go and connect the vertices that should be in the same spot. In some cases you may find that you need to make more vertices for one side. The solution to this problem is to hit K with the edge that needs more vertices selected. A popup should appear. You will want to select one of the Knife options. Of these Knife options there are Exact, Midpoint, and Multicut. Exact and Midpoint will create one vertex, exact being exactly where the line you draw crosses the edge and midpoint creating a vertex in the middle. Multicut is used when you need more than one vertex.

You may notice that the hood does not look like it is in the right position compared to the rest of the car. This is true and if yours is the same way do not worry about it just yet. We will go over adjusting these separate parts later on.

Part 5: Doors, Windows, and the Rear

With this tutorial getting quite long, I will try to shorten this up a bit and give you more to do. For this section I am going to create the doors make the windows. Let’s start with the doors.

Once again we will want to go into side view, add a plane, and place it over the door. As before, we want to delete all but one vertex and place the vertex on one of the lines in your reference image. After that start extruding and follow the lines in the reference image. When you have gotten all the lines set up fill the whole piece in and then start moving the vertices into the correct position from one of the other views. I have my completed door here. I have also done the mirrors in this image.

While making your door, or even the mirror, you may find that some of the edges seen from the side view or another view may not be visible in any other view. “How are you supposed to do those sections?” You ask. Well, make your best guess. That may seem crude but that is all it is. However, I highly suggest looking at actual pictures of the vehicle you are modeling before making a guess. Once it looks right to you, then you are done. Since you have gotten your door done, you can mirror that to the other side. If you need a refresher on the run-down here it is:
Edit Mode, Select the whole door, press Shift+D, press M, grab your new mirrored door, hit G, press X, move your new door into place.

The next part and probably the easiest—along with the hood—are the windows. Just ad your plane, remove all but one vertex and move it over on of the corners of one of the windows. I’ll do the front window first. Windows are usually the quickest things to do on the car or any vehicle. So if you feel like everything is going too slowly, usually making a window can make you feel better. Here are all the windows except for the back one.

As of now the front window is not really attached to anything. This will be fixed when you create the rest of the car. Before moving on to the rest of the car I will finish the rest of the windows.

By now I think you should be able to make the rest of your car’s shell on your own. Use the same sort of techniques I have been using all along and you should be fine. Please don’t expect quick results, modeling takes time, especially if you want to get very detailed. If you have any questions or get lost somewhere, remember that you can go to the forum and ask any of your questions.

Part 6: Filling in the Rest

So, we’ve managed to finish up most of the shell of our car. Now is the time to fill in all of the gaps and holes we still have in our car. Some of them are fairly simple to do, as with the spot pictured below. You can even see how I extruded the mufflers.

Now you will want to fill in all the holes. As shown above a few only require an extrusion to make it appear complete. Other places, such as the grille are a little different. Some vehicles have solid big grilles that can easily be modeled. However, other cars have very small detail. If your car has a lot of detail I suggest just using a texture when you start coloring your car. In this situation you just want to make the gap as flat and smooth as necessary so that the texture will look good when it is applied. If your car has a bulky grille, like the Camaro, it is easier to just model it.

I have filled in all of the gaps here.

Now is time to adjust the edges of our separate pieces. These pieces are the hood, the doors, and the trunk. Maybe you have more moving parts depending on how detailed you want to be. Typically, there is going to be a small gap that is around the edges of these pieces. If you connect the pieces you will not see them and your car will not look realistic in the end. To do this we begin to connect all of the edges to the rest of the car like we have been connecting all of the other pieces.

When all of the vertices are connected go into face mode and select all of the faces that are part of the hood. Do not select any more or less faces that what is to be the hood of your car. Once you have done this, press Y. By pressing Y, you have taken the selected area and separated it from the rest of the car. Now that we have done this, the vertices match up perfectly. There is literally zero distance between the vertices. Now all you have to do is make a gap. To do this scale the hood down until the gap looks right.

Now you can just do this same thing with the rest of the pieces. If you want to go through the rest of the car and do the rest of the lines and gaps you can. The more you do, the more realistic your car will become. Here, I have just done the doors, hood, and trunk. Depending on how good you are with texturing and materials, you may be able to create the illusion of gaps. Personally I think a gap will be more reliable and easier to deal with.

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