Are you good at tracing images? Pshhhh, c'mon, everyone is!
I ran across this website the other day. This site has a massive collection of blueprints on cars, planes, humans, etc. Having these kind of references are very valuable for modeling because you can set up your scene to allow you to essentially trace your 3D model into exsistance.
With these images, you can create a series of planes that line up on the x, y and z axes of your scene and place the images above, on the planes in your scene and your results will be as shown in the image below:
From this point, you can model however you want using the blueprints as a tracing guide.
Here are the steps to set up your scene with blueprints:
Click on Setup > Materials.
Select a Category from the list on the left side and then click on Add Material.
Type in a Display Name.
From the Pattern drop down list under the Color area, scroll down to the very end and choose Bitmap Image (the blueprint).
Navigate to the bitmap image you would like to import and click Open. A preview of your bitmap image will appear in the Color area.
Click OK to close down the dialogs.
Go to the Material Gallery in the bottom right of the interface, click on the tab with the category name you saved the blueprint to, and you should see your blueprint.
Insert a plane primitive into the Viewport.
Drag and drop the blueprint from the material gallery to the plane.
Position the plane as needed to use it as a guide for modeling.
Just a little tip: If the dimension of one of your images are 800x300 in photoshop.. then the dimensions in Swift 3D should have the same aspect ratio. So set your Width = .800 and Height = .300 in Swift 3D, etc, etc...
Cheers everyone!
JFoley
August 4, 2004 11:00 PM
Comments:
SWEET find Jim! Found my Jeep Wrangler in the list, and am going to try to model that when i get some free time (ie - soon to never :D) Thanks for the link!
at first i was pleased to see this idea about blueprints on here for i had the same idea myself but couldnt work out how to do it i thought you could have explained it a bit more like for example how do i get those images into the advanced modeler in the first place. i tried adding my blueprint to a rectangle as a material but when i got to the advanced editor and went to "edit mesh" the material is no longer visible making it impossible to trace. i was wondering if you would be able to offer some help on this mayve by posting a tutorial aimed more at novices or maybe by emailing me with some details on how to be able to do this.
Syndicate the Erain Blog
