Modelling a Tyre and Rim in Blender

I've never been good at drawing - so now I get the computer to do it.

A few months ago, I stumbled across a website called Blender Guru. I've been tinkering with 3D for many years, going all the way back to using Imagine on the Amiga. I've never really got anywhere though, mostly due to a complete lack of artistic ability but also in part to the fact that 3D modelling is very difficult, the associated software quite pricey and there being a serious lack of tutorials on the subject (at the time anyway). In these enlightened times though, at least some of these problems have been solved thanks to the incredibly powerful (and more importantly, free) Blender, coupled with an internet's worth of tutorials, guides, etc. etc.

Now Blender is very good. Professional level good in fact. However, it also has one of the most unintuitive interfaces I've ever come across this side of a text adventure. On opening it up, there are buttons everywhere: most with cryptic names, some which produce more buttons and some that are hidden unless you know a particular incantation to reveal them. The learning curve can most accurately be described as a step function. Couple this with 3D modelling still being quite a tricky thing to do and I thought it would be another thing I'd play with for a bit and then bounce off.

And then I found Blender Guru. This site contains many cool things but mostly, it contains very detailed and easy to follow video tutorials (some just text) that take you through all sorts of aspects of modelling. It not only explains what and why you're doing things as regards the modelling, it also manages to get you through the crazy interface to the point where it even starts to make sense.

Currently, I've only followed one tutorial through to completion (this one), but here are the results:

It's not perfect and I still need to work doing the lighting (I'm hoping another tutorial will help me on that) but it's a start :)

One point to note: I modelled the rim and tyre separately but, when combining them, I really wanted to try 'linking' the tyre object into the rim scene so I could alter the tyre in the other file and the changes would be apparent in the rim file. This was not as trivial as I thought because, just selecting 'Link' from the File menu, navigating the Blend file to the parent Tyre Object and selecting this, but the object in but fixed the position and rotation. This wasn't what I was looking for. A swift prayer to the Google god showed me that you actually need to Group the to-be-linked object in it's file and link to that rather than the object itself. This worked like a charm.

As soon as I've set up a git repository, I'll upload all .blend files and supporting files. Next on the tutorial list is an 'Introduction To Texture Nodes'. Sounds swish.