How to Build - A Next-Gen Game Carby Valentin Nadolu


As you may already know, the modeling process should be done by using 4-sided polygons, generally called quads, to avoid any artifacts when applying Smooth on the mesh. Triangles are to be avoided; in turn it is preferable to use polygons with more than 4 sides if absolutely necessary. Usually a 5 sided polygon doesn’t affect the smoothed shape too much, but checking if it does affect the mesh will determine if it is ok to use it or not. Here is an example of such a case (the selected polygons are five sided). The second image shows that area with one level of smooth applied. As you can see, the five sided polygons do not affect the topology too much so they are acceptable in this situation.





The Wheel

The wheel will use a polygon cylinder primitive as a base. This cylinder will have about 4 times as many divisions as the number of the spokes the wheel has. My wheel has 5 spokes so the cylinder will have 20 divisions. I only keep a „slice” of this cylinder and instantiate it to reconstruct the wheel. This way I can work on one segment and visualize the entire wheel at the same time.




To make the wheel look more realistic I separate the tire from the rim. Adding a “lip” to the rim will also help differentiate the two pieces.




Being a sports car, the rear wheel will have a “deep-dish”, accomplished by simply moving the center of the rim inwards. Small details like this go a long way to make the car look believable.