Still No Resolution

[Anonymous]

I posted a while back about trying to figure out a way to attach my headlamp assemblies to my car....... I, unfortunately, have yet to meet a resolution and have watched many tutorials and played for hours on end with various tools...... can anyone please offer something other than links to more videos?????? Or should I take my project somewhere to someone who can physically show me the answer somewhere?? (I'm not trying to be sarcastic especially if that's the best legitimate way to figure this out.... I'm almost at wits end!!!!)

I want to learn the program but it doesn't seem like anyone wants to share any information to help me do so..... it feels like this should be a simple question to answer........ but even the staff here just links me to more videos... how frustrating is that? Like, we don't feel like helping you use our comprehensive software so we're just going to get paid to pass the buck and send you to another youtube video..........

Then, of course, I get countless emails asking if I found my resolution but can't answer that question (to which I WOULD say, given the opportunity in the appropriate place, that NO I have NOT found the resolution). So not only have I not found a resolution I can't even share that I haven't found a resolution without having to repost and now without intentionally sounding annoyed I probably sound annoyed..... 

Any actual help is appreciated....... although I seem to be rightly losing faith in the so-called community here...... because the only assistance I've gotten is just a buck passed on to youtube..... and, by the way, the rambling video offering tips on designing a car on here/youtube doesn't seem to offer the most efficient way of doing so..... 

I will definitely learn how to do this one way or another but I am hoping it could be with the help and guidance of the "community" and not by traveling down long aimless roads to nowhere land.... 

again... actual help is appreciated...... more video links are not necessarily appreciated unless they actually provide the tips and tools to RESOLVE my issue..... 

[jeff_strater]

Hi @Anonymous,

I had our modeling kernel guys take a look at the problem I was having with using the headlight to cut a hole in the fender.  They found that some of your surfaces were stitched together with a very large tolerance - up to 5 mm in a model that is only 200mm from end to end.  Here is a closeup view of one area of this operation:

The red line here is the surface edge that is displayed in the model, but the yellow lines show the range of the "slop" (not a technical term 🙂 ) in that edge, which is leading to the modeling failure.

So, as a good guideline, you should not use large tolerances when stitching together surfaces.  As @michallach81said in an earlier reply, modeling the body as a single surface body is a good approach, thereby getting rid of the need for stitching altogether.  A single Form feature (Sculpt workspace) is a good way to approach this, from what I've seen.

Jeff

[Anonymous]

VERY interesting and VERY helpful!!! Thank you!! 

This leads me to a question.. should I then, go and remove all the stitching so that I can correct from there?? I was thinking that I would remove the stitches so that I can thicken and then attach the pieces..... the lights are all done and I've been reworking the symmetry because as you clearly can see it's not symmetrical just mirrored.... if that makes sense... then I feel like once I have thickened the pieces I could theoretically cut and attach the lights....... also the 20mm isn't necessarily the intention... this is literally my first project so at some point I will want to learn how to scale that to real life proportions so that I can play around with its size to print scale models and eventually a real car.....

thank you again for this.... SO MUCH just started to make sense.... 

[PhilProcarioJr]

@Anonymous

" I was thinking that I would remove the stitches so that I can thicken and then attach the pieces....."

Although you could do it this way it would be more work and could lead to a lot of problems...Your trying to build individual pieces to make the body....this isn't normally how you build a car body. As many have said before you should make it all one piece then cut everything out of that one piece. It's a much smoother work flow and is a lot less prone to errors.

[Anonymous]

Awesome....... so by doing this one piece sculpture (because I started to do the stitch removal etc and you are too right its a lot of what seems unnecessary)..... I should be able to keep the pieces I've made to simply use as a guide of sorts and trash it once the body without stitches has been created and keep the components like the headlight assemblies, grille, wheels, and mirrors?? Of everything that's there I love those components most and do not want to trash the lights wheels or grille... the mirrors can be reworked if necessary but the lights and grille seem to be where I am moving forward at a more sensical pace using these new skill sets you all have been effectively teaching me and I feel like the wheels might have been the first place I got things right prior to all of this..... I put a couple of screenshots showing the grille and headlight assemblies... 

[PhilProcarioJr]

@Anonymous

Yes you can just use the old pieces as a guide, but BE CAREFUL you don't reference the new parts to them. Otherwise when you delete the old pieces later you will get the cached geometry error. The reason for this is because the referenced geometry no longer exists in the file. When I started using Fusion I boxed myself into the corner with this.

[michallach81]

Phil I've seen Ryans model, and I think he should do all bodywork in tsplines (in his specific case it means, he have to retopologize whole model), becaus tsplines are non parametric there's no point to stay in parametric environment. Now Ryan struggles with errors he don't have to. His brep surfaces are just dump translations from non parametric tsplines.

I would start in Direct Modeling environment and build whole body in tsplines, with all transitions. Ryan can even add apearance to tsplines for rendering. Jumping back and forth from tsplines to breps will only cause errors which he gonna have problem to debug.

Ryan thats my last try... Swith to Direct Modeling, you need to remove history:

Remove (delete) all bodys and surfaces. You should left only with t splines. As I've seen, some of your t splines have symmetry, remove that also. What you need is only a half of a car. Don't bother about details like lamps or bumpers. Now you need to "weld" t spline surfaces together, one by one. That will require to match number of faces on edges you would like to connect. That's a lot of work (that's way I suggest at monday, to start for blank page) but In the end you will have single body (a half indeed) that will represent main shape. Now you can add symmetry and start adding details, while staying in sculpt environment all that time. Now it's up to you, you can keep working in direct environment or turn on capturing history.

[PhilProcarioJr]

@michallach81

I have seen his model too, trust me I am not disagreeing with anything you have said. I would dump the old model all together and start over using T-splines in direct modeling mode myself.

Remember he is the one fighting starting over, even though it's going to take longer to fix what he has and is a lot more headaches. I'm just offering what he asked for, help with his current file without starting over. I don't think working with his original file is the best course of action, but in the end it's his time and his headaches. I'm just offering him the help in the way he asked for it.

[Anonymous]

Thank you very very much for this!!! So I took the suggestion to use a much more simple method and have since spent the day working on that and basically restarting the model.......

I was only hung up on ditching it because its a design.. I'm not just playing with the program to make a neat car I'm actually going along with something that is already a paper sketch and clay model.... so I wanted to make sure I didn't lose the integrity of what I have already captured.... I have not.. thankfully.... 

By doing so it has been MUCH easier and MUCH more efficient... moving forward not only will this be helpful for finishing this car but doing the many others I plan to do with this program as well and in a lot less time than I anticipated. The help and suggestions have been invaluable and I can't thank you enough!! 

My only concerns moving forward so far is that it seem the color schemes are going to be a bit different and sculpting an interior view doesn't seem like it will work but I'm hoping that I'm wrong and will be able to render an interior and resume the color schemes as planned.... 

I've attached a screenshot of the sisters... one who will inevitably be put to rest after she's no longer a reference point. I feel like this is a MUCH better direction to travel.....

[PhilProcarioJr]

@Anonymous

You really should ditch your history for the body. History should only be used for the mechanical bits and not organic forms. Another thing, are you using seperate components now for each part of the car?

[Anonymous]

In the original I was yes using individual sketches to create individual curvature on the body. I'm realizing, now, however, that after everyone's suggestions a better way to do this seems just to sculpt out of one single piece and cut into it.

The gray body in the screenshot in the last response is a single sculpture and I cut out the grille holes just out of curiosity but have to finish sculpting the exterior before I move on. I've kept the other next to it just so I can mirror it, again, as a self-portrait style recreation and my intention is only to use the headlamps and wheels on the new one.....

I realize this leaves the questions again of how:

1. I will cut out the individual shapes so that the paint schemes will remain consistent with the original paper/clay design including pieces that are meant to be separate like doors, the grille itself, hood, and trunk lids, and windows.

2. I will cut an interior with the same attributes allowing for color schemes to be presented as well. 

So to answer your question I don't mean to keep the history. In fact, I intend to dump it once I have the new body completely sculpted by day's end hopefully and that way the history won't affect anything that it shouldn't..... if I'm understanding this all correctly, that is. Again I only kept the other one that has tons of separate components just as a reference point so I can mimick it with the other, new, sculpture. 

[PhilProcarioJr]

@Anonymous

You misunderstood me, the amount of sketches is not what I am after, (I want to know if each body is in its own (component). 

Using the sculpt environment is what you want to be using so your on the right track there.

Don't worry about how to cut it yet we will show you that when the time comes. One step at a time...

Don't worry about the colors yet, that will come after we cut the body into pieces. Your putting the cart before the horse.

Stay focused on the task at hand...get the body done.

Once you have the body done save ONLY the body in one file and save your headlight assembly in another and I will show you what to do next.

The interior will be the same way, we will show you that when you get that far.

[Anonymous]

Awesome... sorry for the disconnect and thank you for the clarification. 🙂

The headlamp assembly has a component for each piece so there's a total of 6 in the front and 2 in the back and the wheels are separate as well so of course there's 4 plus there's 4 discs for the start of the brakes but those can be ditched if needed. 

It's been lots of work but I'm having fun learning new stuff!!! I'm looking forward to the next steps..... Right now I'm working on getting that body sculpture the way I designed it back in 97 and am QUITE pleased with my new results.. I'm a bit sentimental about the original and even SHE has changed over the years 🙂 

At any rate, I will update accordingly as to when I'm done with the new body so I can hop on that next step. I can't express my gratitude enough for all the help!!! 

[PhilProcarioJr]

@Anonymous

Your welcome, thats why I come here to help people in the community and interact with the dev's.

Keep me posted on your progress and stay focused.

[Anonymous]

Ok I've gotten the piece sculpted but it doesn't let me exit the edit form....... it did before with these pieces that are in red in the screenshot...... but I went back to tweak some imperfections that I noticed as I have done along the way and now it doesn't let me exit the edit form and I can't move on to the next step for some reason...... I haven't the slightest idea what it is...... I've tried to play around with a few different things like reshaping those pieces but it doesn't seem to do anything...... grrr..... anyway I attached a screenshot with the errors and the pieces that seem to be keeping me from moving on..... and I even tried playing with it again to see if I could resolve it..... but all I did was make another error..... so I'm just going to stop for now 🙂 

[Anonymous]

Then I noticed there's another one over there.......... I did at one point when I felt like it was done before I noticed these imperfections that I wanted to fix copy and try to paste this into another file so that I could get moving forward on the next steps and create a file with just the wheels and lights and another with just the body....... and that probably has to do with it......... ughhh..

[Anonymous]

It seems to have let me exit the edit form screen when I unwelded the edges.... but I only did that so I can save and shut down....... otherwise I don't know that unwelding things is exactly what I should be doing? Anyway I look forward to feedback.

I have saved and now there's only one of the bodies and I have not saved in a new file yet because it seems I oddly can't figure out how to do that either..... perhaps in the morning. 🙂 

[PhilProcarioJr]

Post the file and I will take a look at it.

[Anonymous]

Here she is. 🙂 

http://a360.co/1TellTO

[jeff_strater]

That's coming along nicely, @Anonymous!  I think this approach should work well for you.

Jeff

[PhilProcarioJr]

@Anonymous

Ok I got the chance to look at your errors in your body.

It's because of the way your using T-Splines.

Your creating 5 sided surfaces and folding the fifth point back into itself.....I will try to make a video of what I mean.

Also I don't think you fully understand how T-Splines work.....

Honestly if you were to watch videos on (SUB-D) SUB Surface modeling it would help you so much... Anyways I will try to make a video...

Another thing thats causing errors is the way your using the crease edge function in T-Splines.

While looking at your file it still feels like your putting the cart before the horse. Your still trying to finalize the entire body in one step.

By that I mean your trying to add all the details into the body. What you really should be looking to do is get the basic shape first.

Instead of smooth flowing lines your points are all over the place with high and low spots...this creates a very bumpy surface instead of a smooth body curve.