Car engine made from Unity primitives - your opinion on progress made?

Hi,

I did not want to pay a lot of money for a 3d car engine model/mesh, so decided to try make one just from Unity's primitive shapes..I'd like your opinion on my attempt so far on my car engine made from Unity primitives:



It's still simple still but would like to ask for your input on what can change, should all of it change
Still have to add more to materials.

I'd really appreciate your input. Does it look like an engine so far?

 

A labour of love congratulations

You do realize It's not practical though?.. no UV map control , higher than needed poly count , an excessive amount of overlapping objects etc. Normally you block out a shape using primitives like this as a starting point to a 3d model in a modelling application and then refine it from there. The problem with doing this in Unity is that its not a modeling app - so you cant refine it now. Blender is a free modelling application. IMHO it would have been better to block it out in Blender based on the reasons above.

 

Thanks for replying and thoughts, I realise it would be better done in a modelling app, I have used blender for other projects but wanted to see how it could be done in unity.. I suppose it looks OK, after some more details and materials I hope to improve, but the question: do you think it looks like resembles to be a car engine?

For my purposes the engine does need to be super detailed but wanted to ask others if you can recognise what it is
I could use mesh combine to shave off a few vertices too.

 

Imho this workflow is entirely impractical and should not be encouraged.

For things like this you should find a reference image and work with that. I'd go for a detailed highpoly mesh and bake a normalmap onto a lowpoly mesh. Modelling in blender, baking in xnormal or something similar. Both are free. The term you'll want to google if you need tutorials is "hardsurface modeling".

 

I understand your view on this, also thanks for your helpful insight on how to do it properly
Making a detailed highpoly mesh takes time I think.
I realise that Unity is perhaps not designed for modelling but it is possible, be it with some limitations.. for me I find Blender ok to use but sometimes it confuses me to when things get more complicated because there so many options shortcuts (which you'd get if you use it a lot I suppose), I find that Unity keeps it simple with it's primitives and easy to use shortcuts like WER keys.. anyway just to share my view on this, hope you don't mind. I wonder how customers/users of Unity would receive a built in option of more powerful mesh editing options like extrude? I guess this has been discussed somewhere else.

 

Yeah, blender really isn't an easy tool to learn. I've used it since before it had a proper undo function and believe me, it has come a long way in terms of accessibility, interface and documentation. Of course that doesn't make it any easier for you. Blenderguru and Blendercookie are great sites to find Blender tutorials by the way. It's all a matter of practice and perseverance. I'm not too thrilled about unity as a 3D editor, even for just moving around cubes I would prefer blender, but that might be because I'm used to blender. What you did here looks like it took quite a while and I think it is very possible that if you had practice in a proper 3D workflow, using tools designed for modelling (no matter if Blender, Modo or whatever), you would be able to get a better result in shorter time. Adding more modelling tools to Unity imho would be setting people up for failure. Blender has way more than 10 years of development behind it, even if they really tried, imho Unity couldn't have a comprehensive modelling toolset for a few years. And it would enforce the incorrect impression that some people have, that they should do any 3D modeling task in unity. It's ok to build something from boxes for prototyping, but only if it is quicker than to do a quick mockup in blender or another modelling tool, otherwise you are wasting your time. Practicing to model complex objects in unity imho is nothing but a waste of time and you'd really profit immensly in the long run if you invest in learning blender. Or maybe give Modo Indie or Maya LT a go if you really can't deal with how unintuitive blender is to you.
For the primitive tools at your disposal I think your engine model looks pretty good. But I really feel that hammering home the point that you should not use unity this way is more important, both for you and other beginners stumbling upon this thread .

 

The car engine looks fab .. and you can even blow it up into hundreds of pieces

Shame most of Unitys built in (or worse total lack of) features are primitive though.

 

Thanks for looking, hadn't thought of blowing it up but nice idea, for a future game perhaps..

 

I've had some 3dsmax experience but that is not free, I actually liked to use that program many years ago. Is there a free version of that thesedays? I'll need to check.

 

Not anymore, there used to be gmax, but afaik that is no longer officially supported and too outdated to still use it. If you are a student or teacher you might be able to get a really cheap (or free?) educational version. I don't know the details on how that would work out.

 

Updated it a bit more:


I admit, water tank is a blender model.

 

I was an ASE Master Mechanic, before I was a game Developer for 20 years, I still have my license and rebuilt and built many engines, this looks very good for basic shapes. /Clap

 

Thank you for the compliment and looking, I have achieved what I wanted, it's not intended to be scale or technically super accurate but it resembles an engine, for me that is what counts, to show something under the hood without having to pay a lot of money for a model
Now I want to animate a human changing the oil/check water/cambelt etc.. wonder how I can get that done easily, maybe with final IK?

 

Considering the resources available I think it looks good for an untextured object.

You can create this engine in Blender in the same fashion as you did here and in the same amount of time:
- Manipulating primitive shapes the same way you did here but then you would be able to merge all those primitives into one object. Thus, allowing you to properly unwrap and texture and/or paint and end up with a viable asset.

There are a f***ton of shortcuts and tools in Blender but I still only use a handful on a regular basis for specific tasks (box modelling, sculpting, rigging, animating.. etc). First look is definitely intimidating but it's really not that bad.

 

Hey there, I might look into doing that to get it textured nicely, give it a used/oil look..