Create a Suspension Bridge

In this tutorial you will discover:

How to model a complex, curved suspension bridge
How to model and texture a road with street lamps
A realistic outdoor lighting setup

Hello again! It’s been a while since my last full tutorial, and I wish I had a good excuse for my absense, but I don’t. So let’s just get into it

I sent out a poll on Facebook recently, asking what tutorial topic you wanted next. The top vote was a street scene. However after attempting to create it, I realized that modelling all the surrounding buildings was far too ambitious for even a one hour long tutorial. So I did the next best thing… a suspension bridge

Finished Result

Perfect as a backdrop for your car model

At a Glance

Screenshots from the video:

Textures used in this tutorial are:

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial!

About Andrew Price

User of Blender for 9+ years. I've written tutorials for 3d World Magazine and spoken at three Blender conferences. My goal is to help artists get employed in the industry by making training accessible and easy to understand. I'm an Aussie and I live in South Korea ;)

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Joe

The bridge is the Humber Bay Arch bridge in Ontario, Canada…just Google or Bing it and you can get all the images you need of this bridge.
Great tutorials by the way!!
artist

THIS WEBSITE IS THE BEST ON THE INTERNET TUTORIAL OF BLENDER,thanx alot, by the way..do you know how can i make reality dinosaurs skin ?
http://www.facebook.com/007agentjames Agnivesh Sp

I need help rendering an animation of 954 frames in cycles at the frame rate of 23.50 .I dont have a gpu card so it will take about,let’s say 2 days.Any one intrested please contact. “007agentjames@gmail.com” and i will send you the blend file
Ananda Holland

to unconnect stuff hit v.
http://www.blenderguru.com TIM

great tutorial i had a lot of fun modeling the bridge, hope you like my result! =)

http://s1154.photobucket.com/albums/p536/TGamer1447/?action=view&current=Suspensionbridge.png
Karl Parks

this has happened to me before… the video will pause itself half through the tutorial… why?
Barath

hi good job frnd. your modeling style very nice but you have little problem in leg modeling. this object is end part shape is pipe shape so clearly watch that object and do…………..thank u frnd bye see you next tutor……………….
TonyC

Loving this tutorial so far , its the first 1 I`ve had a real go at on any site without giving up when something got tricky. Im actually very pleased with the render results so far . I even managed to get the curve modifier to work Thanks Andy great job.
Rich

Seriously, you go insanely quick in this tutorial. I know you have like an hours worth of content to get through but I can’t even get past the first two minutes. How the hell did you extrude the plane like you did :S I can’t keep up.

TonyC

Rich what I do is stop the video after something has just been explained, do it, then continue the video. I have to keep back tracking to make sure I get it right but Im a beginner trying an advanced tutorial, maybe its the same for you. Sometimes Andy says extrude when he means scale and vice versa so you just have to sort it out yourself until you get it right . Try saving very frequently also, it can save a lot of heartache. Hope I was of some help Rich…happy blendering !

Shawn

What settings do i have to have turned on for all of my layers to show in the render?
http://hotmail bill

y r u such A FREAKING RETARD YOUR MOM IS SO FAT THAT WHEN SHE GOES IN AN ELEVATOR SHE WILL ALWAYS GO DOWN!
Anthony

at the begining when you only got one side of the foot path and barrier its because you were just in edit mode(TAB key), box select only selects vertices behind if you’re in wire frame mode(z key)
Ryan

Im done with the bridge beams but when i render i get a checkerboard like grain effect along the whole thing from the light but everything else is fine. I need help please go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUaDEMDA6yI&feature=youtu.be so you guys can help me fix it. If the link doesnt work just go to theryan96 on youtube.

-Thanks

- Great work Andrew!
Jeremiah R

After i do the compositing effects for some reason it wont add it to the render any ideas what im doing wrong? In the compositing screen it shows the effects added to the render, but when I switch to the workspace to save a render the effects are not there. I’m using 2.57

Jeremiah R

nvm im a noob i got it Happy New Year by the way keep up the good work on your site man! Thanks for the tut by the way its good! cyas

Jeremiah R

you can see my result here http://cgcookie.com/portfolio/jeremiah%20r/ i added a couple cars on it cyas

Nick

I too am having a problem with the texture, at least on the cables and overhead part. They are blurry and meld together in a pixelated fashion.
Josh

I am having a problem with the textures, the color is alright, but they appear choppy and have no smooth moving texture.
Israel Raizer Cruvinel

Hey, where is the image you used as reference?

Israel Raizer Cruvinel

Hey, where is the image you used as reference?

Detail: I’m from Basil.

Israelisterrorism

Stupid Israeli terrorist. Get off this site.

Aaron

Fantastic! Thanks for this. As an aside, quite often the street lamps will be deliberately offset so they are not mirrored or equidistant from each other on a bridge to minimize the hypnotic effect on drivers at night (random tidbit for future tutorial). Thanks again – learning lots.
Montigny34

I love your tutorials, I learn a lot each time I watch one and they are all easy to follow and understand. By the way I live in ONTARIO!!!! Thought I’d just point that out there…lol
Montigny34

I love your tutorials, I learn alot and their very easy to follow. By the way…I LIVE IN ONTARIO!!!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/norvman norvman

Fresh_Nell … really is pronouced Free-Know… what can I say it’s a French word…

Great tutorial… keep up the wonderful work

norvman
nicnak

great castle in napoli italy

http://maps.google.ca/?ll=40.8387,14.254761&spn=0.004497,0.030899&t=m&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=40.838777,14.254796&panoid=QrgjH3wYGBU8p-tOJSDFdA&cbp=12,252.77,,0,-11.69&z=16
nicnak

Martinelli Building in sao paulo brazil, would be great to make in blender

new link
http://maps.google.ca/?ll=-23.544907,-46.635225&spn=0.006039,0.01545&t=m&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=-23.544984,-46.635287&panoid=zFoupO0aoeG5LqiJMBT38A&cbp=12,172.89,,0,-50&z=17

older link
http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=google+map+sao+paulo+Martinelli+Building&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=-23.544957,-46.635643&spn=0.002616,0.01545&sll=-23.548943,-46.638818&sspn=1.530813,2.90863&gl=ca&layer=c&cbll=-23.544969,-46.635275&panoid=jt-CbXUYnWjp58m2-CNFQg&cbp=12,181.14,,0,-47.24&hq=Martinelli+Building&hnear=Sao+Paulo+-+S%C3%A3o+Paulo,+Brazil&t=m&z=17&vpsrc=6
nicnak

check out this old run down house that looks like a castle, google streetview even updated that, last time i looked was 90 days ago i cant believe that they can go through the streets and update everywhere in sao paulo.

old cool pic from the street
http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=patriarca+sao+paulo&hl=en&ll=-23.53528,-46.6523&spn=0.001495,0.003862&sll=-23.547779,-46.637242&sspn=0.00598,0.011362&gl=ca&vpsrc=6&fll=-23.534995,-46.651538&fspn=0.001507,0.003862&z=19&layer=c&cbll=-23.535343,-46.652398&panoid=w-7EXTa-3znyDls4fN-VlQ&cbp=12,355.17,,0,-19.61

view from the highway looking down
http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=patriarca+sao+paulo&hl=en&ll=-23.535433,-46.652391&spn=0.001495,0.003862&sll=-23.547779,-46.637242&sspn=0.00598,0.011362&gl=ca&vpsrc=6&fll=-23.534995,-46.651538&fspn=0.001507,0.003862&z=19&layer=c&cbll=-23.535387,-46.652472&panoid=NVwO3H523YWPRW42ghC9BA&cbp=12,358.39,,0,22.26

newest pic
http://maps.google.ca/?ll=-23.535347,-46.652402&spn=0.002725,0.01545&t=m&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=-23.535343,-46.652398&panoid=W8Ngea4uZ9Gy5A12OgZDqg&cbp=12,357.92,,0,-9.76&z=17

if you look around you can even notice lots of homeless people
nicnak

make a tutorial using these 8 buildings

this is when the were just building them
http://maps.google.ca/maps?q=patriarca+sao+paulo&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=-23.466396,-46.843879&spn=0.012007,0.030899&sll=-23.547779,-46.637242&sspn=0.00598,0.011362&gl=ca&vpsrc=0&fll=-23.467399,-46.841583&fspn=0.005452,0.030899&layer=c&cbll=-23.466976,-46.843445&panoid=_Mawc1V0M44pIi8RyvsOSQ&cbp=13,259.69,,0,-16.78&hq=patriarca&hnear=Sao+Paulo+-+S%C3%A3o+Paulo,+Brazil&t=m&z=16

recent shots
http://maps.google.ca/?ll=-23.46734,-46.843214&spn=0.021809,0.123596&t=m&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=-23.467241,-46.843262&panoid=9n1Z5EHoWNfv3EuKzKQd1Q&cbp=12,277.69,,0,-12.75&z=14

dont forget to use fullscreen
http://maps.google.ca/?ll=-23.466002,-46.844244&spn=0.021809,0.123596&t=m&vpsrc=6&layer=c&cbll=-23.466054,-46.844175&panoid=po0wDqT36SSLXWYvzbA_Lw&cbp=12,197.75,,0,-23.25&z=14
Konstantin

Hi Andrew, again a great tutorial

Although i follow your instructions my lightning is totaly messed up.
I need to reduce the enviroment lightning down to 0.2 otherwhise the concretewalls will be totally blue and the streettexture does not seem to be affected at all or at least very very less by the sky lightning.

It looks very different from your results (much darker and unbalanced)

What could be the reasons for that ?

RandomUsername

I know this is off-topic, but it seems all the sites that were using vimeo can’t play the embeds, I have to go to vimeo.com and search for the tutorial there. It also seems I’m not the only one with this problem since blenderguru started using YouTube for their video hosting. But y u no change all ur previous tuts? It’s so annoying when you have to go to vimeo to watch 90% of your videos…

Petr Šír

Its amazing tutorial Adrew Thanks for it

Petr Šír

“Andrew” sry my bad

Create a Suspension Bridge

Finished Result

At a Glance

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