FreeCAD Curves Workbench [Bonus] Trace a car body from images / photos and create a Nurbs surface

hi viewers and welcome to the channel and welcome to another episode of the free cad mini series for the curse workbench now this is a bonus video the reason why i've released this a bonus video is because i went to social media and just messaged out about what i'm up to at the moment and i'm creating this car model in freecad using the curse workbench and i've had quite a bit of feedback coming back from social media and people have been messaging me and also emailing me regarding this and they've asked me how it's done and i thought it was only right to release this early and to get people using the curse workbench and understanding how you would create something like this quite easily with the tools available this was aimed for episode 10. the timer speaking i think we're on episode seven but i will be still going through the golden surface for episode 10. this is just a demonstration of using that and it'll be released as we speak because i don't want to keep people waiting for that so i hope you're enjoying the series and let's have a look how we will create this model if you like this video please hit like and also subscribe to the channel i also have a kofi site where you can actually donate to my contributions to the community and that's at ko hyphen fi.com mang0 i'm going to show you a demonstration of tracing something from a number of images and we can see how we're going to be using that golden surface and also look more deeply into the freehand curve tool so i'm going to come over to the curves workbench we're going to be looking more deeply at this one and i'm going to switch my show keys on for this so now you can see what keys i'm pressing because there's a number of keys that you can press when using this we're not going to be using the sketcher we're going to be mainly using this tool to do all the spline work there is a reason for that and it's because we can control a b spline in 3d space i'm going to pop over to the image workbench and i've already got a number of images that i can import into here and we're going to be using this and extracting out the whole of this object to use as the model we're going to do part of it to keep this tutorial short i've put a link to this website from where this is from this is totally free image you can download those plenty of free images on there i've always find it hard to find images on the web that are free you always find royalty free images and you have to pay for this site you don't have to pay a penny you just backlink the image you'll see a license agreement on there what you can do with the image and how to attribute the artist for that one so i'll place a link in the description for this one we're going to be using the image workbench so i'm in the image workbench at the moment and i'm going to create a planner image in 3d space and go to that image the first image we're going to pull is the top along the xy plane that's fine so this is the top of the image you can see at the moment it's turned black this is a png so this is transparent png and it's i don't know what we can't really see anything on there we can see look at the top you can see the outline there so to fix this come over to the image plane go to view character bounding box and set that to true and now we can actually see the image and it's also transparent so anything behind there will actually show through which is good because when we flip this over you can see that's the same on the other side let's just click on top and position that on screen let's jump over to the curse workbench we're going to start with just the top and i'm going to create a number of curves across here now there's going to be a small issue when we start doing this which i'll show you how to solve so we're going to be using this b-spline tool here and at the moment we've got nothing selected there's nothing selected on here and we'll drop that in there it places it at zero zero so it will place three dots at zero zero can't really see that because that's behind there and we're going to get into our first problem in that i've picked this up i can't drop it and the reason why that is is actually just moved from those control points those notes and picked up that green line there the reason why that is is if we come over to our image come down to selectable make this false and then we can drop that on there it's just that the image was interfering with the selection there so i can move this you can see that when you hover the mouse over the points my pointer is bigger for demonstration purposes so people can see where the pointer is when i'm demonstrating stuff and if you just hover over those points you can see those are highlighted your pointer will be a lot more accurate than mine so we can highlight it holding down the mouse button we can drag it same for this point as well just make sure that's highlighted and then drag we can also highlight the line and drag and we can also highlight the line hold down control click this line keeping control held down we can drag the whole lot okay we can move it and we can drag it let's move this into position now what's happening is this is only being placed along the top so the plane that's on the top is being restricted to that plane because it's all to do with projection if i moved the projection say tilt so we're halfway between the top and the front if i move this now you can see that's moved along this z axis i don't want to do that just yet that will come next i click top and keep this in that position and what i also like to do is click on the freehand b spline it's in edit mode at the moment i'm just going to change the color so line width i'm going to bring that up so we can see what we're doing pressing that arrow keys as you can see from the key show that's showing up and i can change the line color and change this one to yellow okay that so we've got a nice yellow line there to use it's in edit mode at the moment so if i double click this it'll come out of edit mode and your node points and controls will disappear double click it again goes back into edit mode and you've got these lines that can move and these points here so i'm going to place this point somewhere over here now you're not just restricted to free points we can add points as well so i'm just going to place this into position and i'm going to highlight and just move this up so you can see what we're doing this line that's highlighting click it and hit i now insert a point there and we can move that point into position so if we highlight this line and hit i nothing will happen you have to click it so that line is selected hit i and we'll just move this into position you can see the other nodes are responding as well let's bring this one down as a case of moulding this into position that's in position now one thing is if i click this line and click i and i don't want that there then we can delete it's not actually on the list there so just click your point that you want to delete and hit the delete key and that will remove it from there so this is the first edge of the car so we double click that freehand b spline and that's it in there the next thing i'm going to do is bring in the other image so at the moment we've got the top let's rename that and we're going to jump over to the image workbench and import a planner image create a planner image in 3d space and we're looking for the side so this side here and first of all i'm just going to position this plane to find out where i want to put it so we're going to place it along here look at that handler this is the zx plane you can see that's pointing straight up x is pointing to the right zx xz and we import planner image on the side open that and zx okay again we're gonna have to come in and change the bounding face to true and also change the selectable false that's in there now now if i have a look at that it's positioned that in the middle and we've got our line behind this image i'm going to bring the side image up so i'm going to join up this point here this the bottom of this bumper this car with a point here so just raise it up so it's in line to do that i'm going to click on the image come down to the data we're looking for the placement looking for position and we're going to be looking for the z-axis to actually bring this up on there we just increase the z-axis and bring that up to about there do we need to bring it forward let's have a look it's more or less on there that's fine if this was smaller i'm just looking at where the bumper sits sometimes it's hard to tell and we may need to do a sketch to actually position this it looks like click on front the bumper sits there and this goes up and it's more or less in position so now we've got the car in there the side of the car we can carry on with our sketching what i want to do is take that sketch and raise it up and follow the contours of this car to do that i'm going to come over to the curves workbench i'm going to stay on the front and i'm going to double click that freehand b spline i'm also going to rename the image plane there to side hit enter and we double click freehand b spline and we can start adjusting this so i'm going to leave this one here and move each of these up now you can see i'm having problems highlighting those points i like that one can't highlight this one these are all okay and you can see these are poking out the bottom of the image and the ones that are inside the image aren't being highlighted and that's because this b-spline sits behind this image to solve that click on the side and we'll just move that along the y axis so it's outside so that sits outside now that's why that line and we'll be able to get to those front and we can get to all of these now if you do have problems trying to get to those note points from this front view then if you flip over to the back view you can actually get it from there so just experiment between the two views to see where those node points lay and which view is actually easier for you to select those node points so let's start moving these into position so i'm going to click on front and if we still have some problems with these lines then once we move them off of that top because it may be that they're embedded in the top as well we can get to them so let's move this one up and just position it somewhere and let's move that up i'm going to follow the contours of this car the same the other one i'm not adding any more b-splines actually with this one i'm going to come down here i'm not worried about the window not adding any more b-splines i'm just following the contours of that car there i'm just going to do this quickly if you have problems you can bring it around the other side click rear and move these into position there as well so we're actually doing it through the image so it's that's not perfect in us so just come around the other side if you do have problems if your image is not a transparent png then you may have problems trying to slip through the image so you'll have to move the image back beyond that line so that's all in position now so that's our first b spline in position double click that and if i bring this over and look at it from the top you can see we have got some movement there that has moved i'm just going to double click that and reel to that because we moved this up this point up here so i'm just going to bring this back in just check with the side and that's fine so that's absolutely fine so let's have first b spline done double click that and we'll just zoom out and we're going to add another b-spline i'm going to add one down here and just follow along here i'm not going to worry about the wheels i'm just going to follow along here so again click to add and this one is going to be quite simple because it's going to be virtually along the straight if i want to i can click and press x so i've held down and press x i could take my finger off x and that will restrict it along the x axis so i can pull that right along there so we come in i like that one hold down i still got finger held down just press x once and that will move along the x-axis and my show keys have stopped working so don't send see if we can start that again so click hit x and we can move that let me just move that into position and see that line there i to add one and just bring that in so set off of spline double click it and i'm going to change the color view point size line width and line color we'll set that one like the roon color there so that's those two done there and we're going to be needing to move this this line over to that side there so click top and again come in double click the b spline and we're just going to move this along the y-axis so i'm going to click one hit y and move that up so i can't move it this way click and hold hit y and move this up we've got to decide where it's going to sit as well we can alter this after us if we so desire i'm going to bring this one in that's it so that's sitting there that's good so that's two splines done we're next going to do a spline along here so from the top again clicking on the freehand b spline come in and highlight move and we're going to be doing this one here i would add some more in here but i don't want to keep you all this time so i'm just going to add just some simple ones in here i'm going to bring this down to the front iron there bring that in to change the color of that as well so we can see what we're doing line color and line width and just following this curve here so all the way around i'm not worried about this bit because this is framework which we'll use a different technique to build up and click this line here you can see the two points have are highlighted that's fine hit i now place that in there now we come over to the front or the side and we're going to move this into position so now we've got recurves there now i'm going to double click that b-spline to apply it we can see how that's taking shape so the next one we want to do is the center because what i'm going to do is place the center line along here and then i can either build this using one side and mirror it over or i can mirror all these lines over and use it that side as well to make this one solid surface rather than two split down the middle so i want a center line now b-spline let's place it in the center which is quite handy click looking along the x-axis let's move this up to there and the same was this side x let's move it across and we'll bring this in click x to make sure it snaps along the x okay it's in position and that one's going to be line color off white on that one okay that and bring out line width that's our center line let's bring this over and we need to do some modifications of where that's going to lie so i'm going to basically follow this line here more or less so we'll bring this up and click in along the zed and this one bring this up we can hide these b-splines as well so let's get rid of those two and that one we can see what we're doing now so we can see through that so now what we've got is bring these b splines back by pressing space we've got a number of b splines there let's get rid of the top and also the side i'm going to take all these piece lines once again control so taking them as they've been created so this one this one this one and this one come over to the part i'm going to mirror that across this we can use this mirror tool here we'll come out the part mirror and along the x z plane okay that and that flip that over that side now we may have an extra b spline in here let's have a look so we've got this one here don't need that so we can delete that if we say desire hit delete on there so that's gone and we've got that b-spline there brilliant so next we need to do is the ribs so we've got our surface that goes across there and i'm going to connect these up so we've got all these here see this vertex on the ends i want to clean those up so i'm gonna control click all these because i want to change the size of the points so come down look at the point size just increase those crease those by eight do that for the mirrors as well increase those two eight that way when we select them so that's come around come over to the curse workbench and we're going to place a line across these so i'm going to click this one control click this one this one this one click this one and have a look control click this one and this one and then using the freehand b spline that places a b spline all the way along those you can see the size of the car there and the curvature let's come over to the back and do the same and bring this up i can bring in the back of the car to make this more authentic if i so desire if i if i wanted to get this shaping right but we're just going to do it for two with time being so we're going to click make sure we click them in order so this is the path of the spline and we need and it's over zoom in where am i i'm just using shortcut keys to move this about but i haven't clicked on anything because that means i can control click that one as well so i've made my selection through those and use the freehand b spline across those like so we've got the back the side and the front of that shape next i'm going to place some lines across here to help with the curve so i'm looking for the peaks of these curves and we're going to go rubbing the red ones down the bottom so click the red matter of fact let's get ourselves position on the front there we go click the top and this is where the coloring comes in handy because i don't know what color this one is this is the bottom so i'm going to click this one change that one to red so line color change that to red so we know what that is there we go so now i can click looking along this curvature which is about here i can click along the red ctrl click and this will place a curve along these peaks and ctrl click and use the free hand so that places a curve along there you can see it going along there and we can do the same for the other side so desire click off so we can see what we're doing and click control click draw click and just keep going those are now in place so we can make our surface across those to make our surface we're going to be using this tool here and we use the ribs so ctrl click all the ribs as we go across we've got one in edit mode there click that let's try again click control click there's a roof selected and control click these rails as well working our way along in order like so and then click create a surface that skins a network of curves and because they're all touching we should get a surface across here if we go into error then you know that the surface is incorrect and we're now we've created that surface of that car if it doesn't look right we can come in and edit this and to me it doesn't look these curves here are not as aggressive as i so desire so i'm going to come in just hide all of those and these so that's how i look so from the left yeah these parts need to be higher and what i'm going to do is look at the top and side and go to images let's bring in another image so we're planning our image looking along the z and we want the front on the y z and okay that and that front transform that on the data the transformation position along with z let's bring that up and see where that sits yeah we can see that the top of that car sits above so those that's needs to be more aggressive those parts there you can see how that's taking effect so i'm going to come in have a look at that bring back all these b splines so i'm going to click one click the other and press the space and we want to alter i think we can get away with altering just a couple actually click left and i'm going to alter this one here first of all that's in the b-spline mirror so this one here is the bottom next one is that one which i'm going to double click bring this around you can see from where that is you can see how higher much higher that is so let's come in and just bring this up click that and you'll see the other side's gone up as well and because we mirrored it and that has changed click and flip this around you can see we've got more aggressive edges there and it's looking more like the car that we're trying to model and do the same with this one make sure you do the one that's being mirrored if you want to you can come in and go to the corner surface and press space to hide it so we can get that much easier now so let's click that because these are snapped to these these will be absolutely fine they will move with the b-spline let's click it and that one we want to find three-hand b-spline two this one so the one that sits inside the mirror this is the one we want to change click it and let's see where that sits we're going to hide that one keep that one there hide that one get out of the way and that one see what we're doing bring that one back this one come in and let's add to that so i've added another one there so i can move this up moving the whole lot there rather than the actual point place that back grab the point move this point up and point in there and move this one across so click it i'll take effect and let's see what's happened let's bring the golden surface back in that's better we can see how we're molding that now so once we've got the surface down we can bring in other sides and change those and to get them into shape so we can alter that and do boolean operations with it so i can come in come over to the part and we're going to make a offset on that so you can see how that's offsetted already two millimeter offset on that one and fill the offset okay and that's been applied there we can do some boolean operations against this now for so desire for instance i can come in create a circle in here for the wheels so let's create a cylinder in here once that place that cylinder align the cylinder side of the offset and make sure golden surface is hidden as well there's that cylinder there to make it a bit bigger now we've got that there we can set the one we want to keep control click the one we want to remove and then use cut between those and that's cut that through there like so and that's bringing that cylinder back and i'm going to ctrl c ctrl v that outside right click transform and move that over to the back as well and then do the same i've just created a strewed out here let's sketch goes around there and i've extruded that sketch up this strewed and i've used that to create a cut between the body and that's true to make that move that part from the center there so we can put some modeling in there let's get in there so i hope you enjoyed that bonus video please look out for the videos i'm releasing throughout the week regarding the curse workbench and i'm also going to be releasing videos on sunday with working in python from the ground up so this is a free cad python tutorial and it takes you from python from a beginner's perspective but with a free cad twist so that's running at the moment also i won't just be doing stuff with curve workbench i know that's the focus at the moment with my channel the curve workbench is taking up the majority of that time at the moment because it's quite an extensive workbench there's quite a lot in there now i really want to push that workbench because nurses is quite a complex area it's quite a useful area that you see in blender and lightwave maya studio max i just want to show you how you can actually do those types of surfaces in freecad so i hope to see you again i'll say bye for now if you like what you're seeing please subscribe to my site and also i have a kofi site where you can actually donate a few pence or a few pounds dollars whatever your currency is and that's at ko hyphen fi.com ming0 and there you'll be able to help me fund my site and all the money that i actually get from any funds will actually get pushed back into the channel thanks a lot for watching and subscribing i'll see you next time

Channel: MangoJelly Solutions

Views: 5,241

Keywords: CAD, three, 3D, CNC, Printing, solidworks, autoCAD, 0.19, 0.18, FreeCAD, Free CAD, Arc, Curve, wb, work bench, nurbs, N.U.R.B, 0.20

Id: SjjMdUsGBsE

Length: 39min 9sec (2349 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 13 2021