All together now...

Time to finish the modeling process. Of course, many finer details can be added, and we leave that to your imagination and skills. As you know, the car is now half modeled and half mirrored, using an instance level. Let's have a look at the merging process, so you are able to create a whole car from two halves.

Select the Lamborghini directory, and open properties at the Gen tab. Check if the directory is at X coordinate 0,00.

  
Select the Lamborghini directory and see if the translation X value is 0,00

With the use of the Instance, the objects with points at the mirroring axis where the modeled and instanced objects meet, are not automatically connected or merged. If left unfixed, this causes all kinds of minor irregularities and artifacts when rendering. This means we must manually mirror and connect all these specific parts. All other parts, which are not at the mirroring axis, remain mirrored with the use of the already mirrored instance.

To distinguish objects that need manual mirroring from the mirrored instanced objects we create a new level directly under the Root level. Call it 'Lamborghini-Murcielago'.


New level added

This new level will contain, besides the Lamborghini and the Instance level, all objects that need to be mirrored manually. Don't worry, it's not that many objects ;-) 
Set the X coordinate for the level at X= 0,00. Drag and drop the following parts in this level:
•  Hood
 •  Front Spoiler
 •  Roof
 •  Rear bumper
 •  Side Rear
 •  Windshield
 •  Rear Window and Lamellae
 •  Trim_2

Now we can merge the parts at the mirroring axis. Let's start with the Hood. First thing we do is move the transformation handles exactly to the mirroring axis.


The hood with transformation handles roughly centered


 
Apply the Move command, with target set to 'Handles'


And move the handles to the mirroring axis

Next we duplicate the Hood and apply the Transformation -> Mirror tool with the 'About COG' option set.


Mirror tool selected and the 'About COG' option set

Next, multi select both objects (original Hood first) and apply the 'MergeO' (Merge Objects) tool. If you would render the Hood now, you would still see irregularities along the mirroring axis here and there.


The Hood duplicated and mirrored. The arrow points at the seam,
which is clearly visible.

The tool to use in situations like this is the JoinF (Join Faces) tool. We mentioned this tool before in this tutorial so you know how it works ;-). But, just to be sure, you need to set the Distance parameter and you must use a low value, like 1 or maybe even less.


The same Hood, after we applied the JoinF tool

Repeat these steps for all other objects along the mirroring axis of the car.

Now it becomes obvious why we asked you in the beginning of this tutorial (modeling the Hood) to set the vertices along the mirroring axis exactly at X coordinate value 0,00. You are about to join/merge several complex objects and you want the JoinF tool to only merge the vertices (points) along the mirroring axis. If you set a Distance value too large, also points farther away from the mirroring axis will also be merged. The results can be disastrous, to say the least.

This concludes this chapter, when you have done all the mirroring and merging don't forget to save your project.

 

Home