Firebird/transam fender?

# 1 05-10-2012 , 06:23 PM

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Join Date: Mar 2012

Posts: 112

I'm modeling a 79 TA (trans am) and the front fender has me stumped. I have a 79 in my garage so you'd think I wouldn't have this issue..lol. The frt fender has an extrusion (bodyline) above the wheel well. I attached a pic of a "real one" and two snips of the fender I'm making. I'm after the bump out just above the wheel well. I've tried tried to pull edges, extrude faces, pull faces, and even making it out of a seperate plane and I just can't get it. Any ideas by chance? I just started it yesterday so I know it's a mess still.

When I grab faces or even edges I get a hardline on the ends of the pull, I don't want that. It has to be a smooth transition from the roll to the flat part of the fender. I'm reaching here but figured I'd ask..Thanks.

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# 2 05-10-2012 , 08:21 PM

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Join Date: Jan 2004

Location: Michigan, USA

Posts: 2,998

I am sure if you asked a dozen people you'd get a dozen different work flows for this problem.

I myself like using nurbs to create the base surface and then redraw the correct polygon topology on top of it starting from the holes and places that require specific edge loops.

For instance in the image below I created a nurbs surface by lofting, you could also use the birail. Then making the surface live I started drawing the polygons for the edge loop around the opening in the fender. I'd then create a loop of polys around the wheel well and then fill in the polys between them.

As you can see I also created a surface for the fender flare which I could also build onto.

It's a tedious process but gives a nice result with clean surface continuity and proper edge flow.

There are more sophisticated tools in some modeling packages that allow you to literally draw the edge flow on to the base surface. Applications like blender, topogun, 3dcoat, and zbrush come to mind to help retopologize.

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