Howdy. I was just wondering if any of the vehicle artists or modellers on here could advise me on the best way to go about making thin bodywork panels so that they work best as flexbodies. I'm working in Blender to model bodywork, and a lot of the bodywork on my vehicle is boxy and is mostly flat, thin panels (think Land Rover Defender). For instance, the front wings: Can I model the outside faces of the panels and use 'solidify' to give them a little thickness or is this considered bad practice? Should I be making the panels much thicker than they are and aiming for a chunky geometry on the inside of the panels? Thanks
Just model them usual way, don't add thickness, you use jbeam to make them more robust or weaker, model is just for visual appearance. How small/large your quads are, will have some effect to how it deforms as it will crumple only from edges because vertices are what moves when deforming, but how strong part is will be defined by nodes and beams you set in jbeam file.
Thanks for the reply I know that the the physics are handled in the .jbeams, I just wondered if there was an accepted 'right way' to model thin panels for flexbodies and props