Hello guys!

Lately I'm looking forward to design my own assets for a game that I'm developing, but I'm totally lost because coming from the programming world, 3D design is a complex and big world that scares me a lot...

I want to design cars and scenarios, but as I've seen in many websites cars seem to be the complex thing is the whole project, so I would like to hear from you some tips when designing cars or any other thing, that make your life easier when modelling.

The cars may not be based on real models but more on fantasy ones made from scratch, so blueprints from the existing models are not an option... Should I design the car with its views in paper, and from that make blueprints and start from there so I can add details later? Or maybe just start with a real car, take the blueprints and learn from that?

And also, I was looking for some online 3D design course with Blender so it helps me out a bit with that also, or maybe some good tutorials that you may know.

:)

Have you found a free car model so you can look at it inside a modeling program? Then you could try making one that looks a little different next to the first one. That should give you enough practice that you could try making a fancier one from a drawing.

Start here: http://www.3dtotal.com/index_tutorial_detailed.php?id=530#.VbwgjPkiqM8

However I advice you at least know the basics of 3D modeling before attempting your first car.

What modeling software do you want to use. Blender.org is good and free however the learning curve is steeper for a beginner. If cost is an issue I suggest Wings3d for modeling the cars mesh and get DAZ 3D Studio (DS) (free at daz3d.com) to rig it, and export as FBX for your game. DAZ also has decimator (poly reduction) and texture atlas (formats all material group & layers to one) plug ins to help make the figure the proper size and format for your game. Animations can be created in the DS timeline and exported as BHV. You may need a tool like Ultimate Unwrap 3D to help with file format conversions (.fbx to .x say) and UV layout and animation loading. If you have some cash to spare suggest Poser Pro Game Dev over DAZ because its a bit easier to learn and more flexible in terms of compatibility and such. Just this week I made this Peashooter airplane figure rigged for game action with Poser and ZBrush modeler. http://www.vanishingpoint.biz/productdetail.asp?productID=2754