Modelling A Wheel using splines.

Modelling A Wheel using splines.

Hi All,

So my Car modelling is going pretty well, and Im about to start the tyres. My polygon budget is up to 6000 tris for each tyre approx, for the Unity engine, and so I did some searching online for tutorials. It seems to me the nicest way to model the tyre tread would be to create some flat splines, representing the tread laid out flat, then extrude from those splines, to make 3d tread, and then bend the whole thing into a circle. to make it tyre like instead of flat.

I dont know tet if this methad will fit into my polygon budget, but it should look good if it does work/is possible.

Now can anyone see these steps clearly executed in cheetah? its the bending of extruded splines into a circle that Im not sure on.

Cheers

You could use the wrap modifier to make the extruded spline into a cylinder.

However, 6000 polys for each tire seems quite a lot for a game. I would model the tire flat, and make the tread part of a normal map or the texture instead. But perhaps you're not making a game?

I got there with polygons as it turned out,

Unity's "Sweet spot" as I understand it is between 3500 and around 6500 polygons per object, as the wheels have to move, they are seperate objects and therefore they can afford to be in that sweet spot .The theory goes that theres no benefit from having lower res mesh because the performance doesnt change.

So We'll see anyway, Thanks for the how to for the splines version. I love Cheetahs spline tools.

AaronC