this looks great man! lots of great models i see like this just get given up on, so stick to it so i can wrap it round a tree!
Yes, the jbeam of the car should only be 5 nodes wide, and the roof 3 nodes wide. The pillars don't need precise jbeam work; they can be part of the same n/b structure as the windscreen, windows and roof. For a vehicle this size you should not need more than 600-700 nodes, including the wheels, suspension and chassis. The bodywork will probably account for less than half this number, so be conservative with your node placement.
So more like this: It's currently sitting at 347 vertices so slightly less than half of 700. Is there anyway that exports the Model as Jbeam with corssbeams in place? I tried using the blender one but it skips out on cross beams. If I try doing it with NodeBeam editor it might work but It'll take some time and I'll probably miss something.
yes, it should be a little more basic, more like this: You should aim for around 100 vertices (nodes) for the bodyshell. Also, the front wings should be separate to the bodyshell, unless the Simca's front wings are part of the bodyshell and not detatchable.
If I read the workshop manual correctly then yes, the wings/fenders should be attached to the body. Are you referring to the last picture I uploaded or the one before that, because I have made some significant changes since the last one. EDIT: Now down to 300.
that last shot is looking much better although there are still a few redundant vertices. The more even you can make the distribution of nodes, the better the deformation will be. I've circled a few vertices which should be merged because they're too close together: (imported from here) And I'm not really sure what's going on with those vertices under the bonnet - they are probably not going to be very useful.
Did most of your ideas. Some I skipped because of other parts of the mesh relying on them. Anyway under the hood is the luggage compartment because this is after all a rear engined car and if there weren't any nodes the deformation would be weird. I have now managed to get the mesh down to 266. EDIT: This really makes me think about the pi = 1 thing this physicist talked about on the internet.
Deformation should still be OK if you leave out those nodes in the luggage compartment, since the flexbody will be deformed by the nodes around it and unless you're planning on loading items in the front, coltris won't be needed there either. On the topic of exporting Jbeam structures, you will need to create the crossbeams manually prior to exporting if you're using rmikebaker's Blender JBeam script (Blender-Script-to-Export-Nodes-and-Beams), because the script ignores faces. My personal approach is to split the model into several objects, each containing homogeneous beams of the same stiffness/strength. You can export jbeam files separately and merge them in notepad ++, using Find&Replace to manage the node prefixes. The benefit of this method is the ability to easily add or move supporting beams in your modelling program, without losing all the jbeam fine-tuning you've done on the rest of the car.
I can change that for you but I won't. You're a decent modeller and we need to get ahold of your soul first so for some reason you keep giving us free stuff.
I generally agree, but I think there should be maybe 2 nodes in the plane of the luggage compartment. It doesnt need to be completely boxed if its not a major structural plane like firewall. Otherwise the vertices will be too far away from nodes and may get spikey in a major collision. The Jbeam is supposed to function like the real thing, not look like it, but sometimes there needs to be compromise. For example I had to make a 6 node structure to represent a steel dashboard so it would deform realistically. My personal method was 100% manual in Notepad++ First I started with placing nodes for the suspension, firewall, and the floor pan. I left the beams rather low in stiffness and didn't worry about overall rigidity, just made sure the suspension worked in its basic form. Then from there I added the front structure ahead of the wheels, and the quarter panels and rear structure. Then I stuck a roof on it, and then spent months grouping and tweaking beamSprings and Strengths
Sorry for not really updating this for 3 years. I got into the texturing part and the interior and I am terrible at unwrapping and terrible at actually making textures so gave up, pretty much. I tried a bit to do some JBeam stuff as well but it was way too complicated for me. I'll try and give it another shot soon, got holidays coming up and a lot of free time to either continue working on this or otherwise my 1501 station wagon model I've been doing for a while: I am very slow at making progress though, so I wouldn't really get your hopes too high. Just thought I should update this since I felt sad abandoning it.
