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Posted by: Admin
on Saturday, March 10, 2007 - 05:14 PM |
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I was so excited I found my favorite blueprint link again, I decided to
write a short tutorial showing how I set up blueprints in Blender.
This may not be the best way, but to me, this seems to work
the best so far. Keep in mind, that no blueprint, that I've
found so far, is entirely accurate. The best you can do is
get them as close as possible and leave the gray areas up for
imagination.
http://www.the-blueprints.com/
Step one: Trim and Size your blueprint images.
Best case scenario, you want to have a side image, top image and front
image. Gathering extra photos of what you're trying to model
will help fill in the gray areas while you're modeling.
With this print, I also have a Back view, which will help with the
modeling, so I'll use it too. Using your favorite paint
program (The Gimp is becoming mine), cut and crop each view
into there own file.
  What I end up with, is 4 seperate
files. Each image is cut/cropped to the very edge of the car.
This is a critical for accuracy. Next, each image
needs to be sized correctly. The front, back and side image
need to be scaled so they have the exact same height in pixels.
  The
top and side, should be sized with the exact same length.
Finally, the front, back and top, should be scaled so they
have the exact same width. To do this, you'll need to make
sure you know how to scale the image selectively by the heighty or
width. By default, most programs scale the images height and
width together to maintain proportion.
In my case, the length of my car is 466 pixels, the height is 129
pixels and the width is 216 pixels.
...
Now, I'm ready to set these up in Blender.
I decided to start with 4 3D view windows and one Button Panel Window.
In one of your windows with the mouse cursor inside of it,
click 3 to switch to 'side view'. From the tool bar at the
bottom of that window, select 'View' and select 'Background image'.
You'll see a load button, click that to open a file window.
Locate your side image and load it up.
You'll see your image dimesions near the middle of the Background Image
window. Set your image size (width) to your actuall image
width / 100. In my case, I'll set it to 4.66.
Follow these steps until you load each image in each window.
Press '1' for front view, 'SHIFT-1' for back view, '7' for
top view, '3' for side view. Pressing different views in the
same window will display the same background image, so be aware which
window you're in when modeling and make sure you're in the right view.
Once you start modeling, it will be easier to keep track
which view you're looking at.
Before you start modeling, using 'left click', place your 3D cursor on
various parts of the car. Make sure it ends up in the correct
spot in each view port. You can see from my set up, I place
the cursor on the hood ornimate. As you can see from my
screen shot, I have a problem with my top view. The
cursor is not on the hood of my car where it should be, based on the
other views.
I'll need to go back to my image editor, rotate my top view 90 degrees
counter-clockwise, and reload it into blender.
I've rotated my image, rescaled it correctly so it matches the others
again (lenght & width) and reloaded it into Blender.
I had to change the 'size' in the 'Background' window since I
rotated the car. You can see my 3D cursor ends up at the
correct place on the car now. From here, I usually check the
extreme points of the car with the cursor. You can make small
adjustments to the scale of the car, shift the car left, right up or
down from the 'Background' window.
You're ready to go now. Just remember, I've never found a
blueprint that ended up exactly correct so far. You'll just
need to use some imagination to fill in the gray areas when you find
them.
Good Luck!
Scott
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