Vehicle: Dodge Viper 2D

[aevium]

I've looked too hard to find CG elements in it, none at all, yet it passes as semi-realistic. Very nice work!:buttrock:

[qu2k]

incredibly realistic :D

nice painting

[surreal]

wow, that looks amazing, but one thing is bothering me
the front tire looks like it has been bent inside, so that if you were looking at it straight on it would look like this ) and not |
if you know what i mean :)

[PUREVIL]

I agree the wheels look a little off. Both front and back, I think its something with your perspective/angle maybe? Also the windshield looks to straight for a Viper. I have seen ref. pic somewhere once, but overall its really good, just gotta do some tweakin. Keep it up.

[Tommi]

I love this image :love: and I'd like to know whether it is easily possible to make the suggested changes. I'm just curious, because I don't know PhotoShop :shrug:

[Smeghead]

Thanks for your replies everyone :thumbsup:
surreal and PUREVIL: thanks for the tips, I hadnt spotted the problems with the wheels but i see what you mean, after my exam tomorrow i'll touch it up and post an update. I think that the front windshield is slightly off too, like you say.
Tommi: should take around 30 mins to fix it all

[stephen2002]

nice work. The material is very good.

There are some prespetive distorting issues along the entier car (such as the front tire, as mentioned).

[ahattemer]

nice pic if your simply honing your airbrush skillz, was this your ref?

http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~knutfy/gts1-2.jpg

[viper11885]

hmm, the proportions seem to be a bit off.. the car looks a bit "squished"... if u take a look at the pic that Ahattemer posted, the car seems to be a bit more wider...

the rest looks perfect to me, good job!!

[Holograph]

Okay, someone fill me in on this whole "digital painting" stuff. How does one DO that?!? I mean, it's only PhotoShop!! :) I can see if you rendered it, or drew it by hand, or altered a photo to look like a painting, or even painted it and then scanned it in, but to paint that from scratch in Photoshop using the tools in the toolbox??!?!? How is that DONE?! Please, enlighten me. I work in PhotoShop all the time designing logos for clients, UIs for application and web sites, and even know LightWave pretty well, but I cant conceptualize the approach to doing something like that in PhotoShop! :hmm: Are you guys just talented people with a strong art background with tablets instead of mice, or what?
how do you do that?!?

Any info is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Menge]

it's real, man!

i was going to say there was a little problem with your perspective... but once seeing the reference, i've noticed the reference's perspective ALSO looks weird... i can't say a camera got a wrong perspective :P hehehe

100%!!!

[Heber]

ahah busted!!! try actually doing the work this time before tryin to pass it off as your work :shame:

[Risibility]

rayfusion i dont know what your laughin at, thats legit. Either that or its the shittiest rip off ive ever seen. The car is squished in alot of places, the windshield is off, the tires are off, the end of the car is too "up" and the rearview mirrors are a bit skinny.

If someone was going to bother ripping off a picture, they would obviously do a better job. I say excellent work for a "from scratch" picture. As long as you didnt use the viper as your background, i think you did some excellent work, its very hard to achieve perfection on something like this.

If i think you shortcutted on anything, id point at the headlights, those are very realistic

You have lots of talent tho, even if people dont think you are for real, good work

[Smeghead]

Hi everyone, thank you all for your (mostly) kind comments :p

stephen2002: Thanks :)

ahhatemer: Yep thats the reference pic i used. I did this pic mainly as i have very little experience with the airbrush, and also because i wanted to get the reflections right this time (my last attempt at a photo realistic car didnt turn out so well http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40730 )

viper11885: I think i see what you mean, I know the left of the front bumper isnt quite wide enough.. I'll try to correct that tonight, thanks for the advice :thumbsup:

Holograph: I'll run therough the process i went through.. although i think the way i did this is pretty similar to how others do photorealistic pictures. First I sketched out the outline and proportions of the car as i saw them, using the actual photo as reference (and not tracing it). Then i created a Car Fill layer which i airbrushed in the paintwork and lighting. Basically this layer is only for the bodywork and nothing else. I then created layers for the lights, wheels, windshield, shadow, and car details, and worked on each of those gradually building them up. I used the polygonal lasso tool quite heavily to get the sharp edges when needed. I could post a tutorial if enough people are interested, but I know there are already a lot out there on this subject.

Menge: thanks mate :)

rayfusion: err I think you misunderstand... I wasnt busted, that was the reference photo that I used, but the drawing at the top of the page was drawn 100% by myself...


Risibility: Thanks for stickin up for me, though i dont agree with your comment on the rearview mirrors being too small, and the end of the car isnt too 'up', but you are quite right on the other details being slightly out.

Heres the initial scetch I did of the car, and a pic of the bodywork layer to give you a better idea of the process i went through..

http://www.flashfires.co.uk/images/viper_sketch.jpg


And this is a pic of the car with all the layers turned off apart from the Bodywork layer..

http://www.flashfires.co.uk/images/viper_wip.jpg

[Michael Chen]

20 hours of work amazing :eek:

I'll even be happy if I could produce an image like this in 20 days.

Great work :buttrock:

[slaction]

I would like to see some more WIP layers of the image.

The bodywork layer just don't convince me. I'm not saying you didn't make it, but there are some features on the body layer that are blurred out for no reason while other features are photo identical to the one in the ref pic.

Just post some more layer pics, like without the addons such as wheels lights and so on.

[Daniel]

Great Picture!!!

But please sketch the car better next time :p

Cya.

[De-Cypher]

i believe the painting was copied... just my opinion.

[slaction]

I don't think its a total copy, but I see certain things in the bodywork layer that are really close to the real image and he claims this was just the body layer.

Again, I'm not saying its copied but some of the features are well a little to close.

[dmcgrath]

Smeg, much better job this time around. Congrats!

But, now that you have done this. I suggest not doing it again.
My personal recommendation, would be to start from scratch. You are doing a much better job on the car overall, but I recommend drawing a car, using ref, from a completely different angle. You job now is to make as realistic a car possible, but also to remove all doubts about your work ethics and the origin of the photo.

You can take it either way you want to, judging by everyones replies. But you have done a good enough job to raise doubts about what "work" you actually did. And you'll never get rid of those doubts until you do your own interpretation.

Good job, now give us another. :) :thumbsup:

[Smeghead]

Thanks all for your comments, although the fact that some of you dont believe that i actually did the picture myself is really quite infuriating...

I have some more WIP pics i can show you with the various layers i used in the composition.

The first shows the car with all the layers apart from the Shadow, Background, and Colour Fill (bodywork layer) turned on:

http://www.flashfires.co.uk/images/viper_wip2.jpg

The second shows all the layers turned on except the Colour Fill layer. There is some detail included in these layers that shouldnt be, this is because i started touching up details that were meant to be part of the Colout Fill layer but forgot to switch to the Colout Fill layer before working on it.. silly mistake.

http://www.flashfires.co.uk/images/viper_wip3.jpg

The third pic shows a work in progress pic that was taken while i was still working on the wheels layer:

http://www.flashfires.co.uk/images/viper_wip4.jpg

Thats about all the pics i can possibly show that can go towards showing you all how i worked on the pic whilst trying to show that i didnt plagurise the original image in any way. If you dont believe i did the pic now then so be it. At the end of the day the only reason i did this picture was to develop a better technique with the airbrush, and to try to get reflections on a painted surface sorted, not to try to show off.

dmcgrath: Thanks for your advice and support, it was you who inspired me to try my best to get this picture as realistic as possible. Thanks once again for inspiring me to do this. I think i'll take your advice to work on a different angle, although im not sure ill do another car again..

[Menge]

once again: GREAT

u just re-assured another fan :P hehehehe

oh... u got a tablet right? i suppose so many ppl here do :scream:

[Holograph]

Hey, thanks for the quick run-down. I know I'd be interested in a tutorial. I am assuming you have a tablet and don't do this work with a mouse, right?:rolleyes:

[Daniel]

@Smeghead: nice ncie, but why aren't U use any folder for the layers? It's a ncie feature! Just drag your layers inside :rolleyes:
I always had a big layer tree, but now I use the folders.

@the other :p
Sure, we all have a tablet ;)
Not all, but the most of Us. They aren't that expensive. There is a new lowcost tablet from Wacom. The "Voltio" price under 50€ or buy a Graphire arround 100€

They are okay for the first steps.

Cya.

[slaction]

The fact that you have a layer in that psd file that has pretty much the whole car with certain features blurred out is what gives me the impression that it might not all be your work.

I'm not saying you didn't do it, I can tell you are a talented artists. It just seems to me that if some one where going to paint that picture or one like it in photoshop then they would have your basic shap on one layer with nothing but the shape, no detail. Then the wheels and tires would have a layer as would the lights and all the body work like the flares on the side doors etc etc.....

I could be wrong but I don't see the point in drawing the whole image blurry on one layer and adding detail to the blurryness on other layers.

[slice56]

to me, it looks like you painted some of the parts, but it doesnt look like you painted the interior or the headlights. they look like the photo, just blurred to fit seamlessly with your painting. actually, it kind of looks like the whole thing was just blurred and given some brush strokes to seem that it was completely painted by you.

[Smeghead]

Thanks for your replies everyone. Just let me say this one more time, yes I did paint every detail on the car, and no none of the layers are copied directly from the photo, including the lights and windshield.

I can explain why I had different parts of the car in different layers however; To make it easier to touch up the bodywork shading with the airbrush as i worked, i put the details that were seperate from the paintwork in seperate layers, this is so that changes to the paintwork underneath dont effect the details i have already done.. Its hard to explain but i hope you get my meaning.. I could just as easily have done the whole painting in one layer and not bothered with having the details in other layers but this would make it harder to make changes later.

As for the reasons for the blurryness, I started this pic by having the sketch i drew in a layer behind with the opacity turned down, and then used a large airbrush to fill in the basic colour for the entire car. This was done so that I can get all the proportions right in relation to the sketch. That gives me the blurry car you can see parts of in some of the pics I have posted., I then added in details on the various layers of the car.

One last pic I can show you is of the headlights of the original photograph, against the headlights of the car i drew. Its only when you zoom in that you can actually see all the imperfections in my painting, noticably the colours, shapes, positions, and lack of sharpness.

http://www.flashfires.co.uk/images/viper_closeup.jpg

The top image is from my painting, the bottom image is from the original photo.

Smeg

[slaction]

You can take this however you want. (I would take it as a compliment)

But your Headlight (to me) looks exactly like the photo, just blurred.

peace:)

[Neurotica]

It's the little things that set this apart from a plagiarism, like where the hood bodyline intersects the headlight, or how the reflections are in a slightly different place than the original photo. I'm convinced this guy is just really really good and not some hack. I thought I was good with photoshop but damn. Can anyone post some tutorial links from anything even approaching this quality of work?

[ahattemer]

Smeghead,
Sorry for posting that reference pic, it seems like I started something bad here. I, like some other people have said before, knew right off that it was a true airbrushing, and it wasnt just a blurred photo. I posted the ref pic to show how well you captured the viper. I think all those naysayers are just jealous, cuz that airbrushing is the sh**. Big Ups to ya!

[Smeghead]

slaction, Neurotica, ahattemer, thanks for posting

slaction: look closely and there are differences especially in the shape of the headlight, and the position of the reflections in relation to each other..

Neurotica: Cheers :) Im glad i managed to get my point across and Im pleased that you like my work. I have links to two excellent tutorials I had read before I started the Viper:
http://www.cardesignnews.com/studio/tutorials/vx220/index.html
http://www.3dfestival.com/story.php?story_id=85&page=1

ahattemer: Thanks mate :thumbsup: and seriously, dont worry about posting the reference pic, I was planning to post it at the same time as I posted originally but never got around to it. Next time i'll post WIP pics at the same time as well.

[De-Cypher]

i posted before that I believe the image was copied...reasons:

-There are some details that are dead-on and some that are not. Why would an artist be perfect in some areas and not in others.

-I took the post of the headlights into photoshop. If you make guides along the left and right edges of the "painted" image and resize the reference picture and change its opacity, then move the reference above the painted version, the details are very similar.

The problem with this post is the following. We have all copied, traced, manipulated, airbrushed an image to learn from the original. I traced comics as a kid, I have used magazine photos and posterized them to see how minimal colors work together, etc. but I have never called it a work from scratch.

Finally I do not believe that the image was completely done from scratch. I believe that is a lower layer in the poster's PSD file that reveals the car. (this was not shown)....

HOW DOES ONE DISPROVE THE DISBELIEF.

Pick another car or image, and show us that you can do what you say you can. If the car would have been in a different color, with a different environment casting a different ambient light on it, then we would have a winner.

If you do not want to accept my challenge to show this forum the truth then only you can tell yourself it was made from scratch but I for one dont think it was.

I have nothing to prove, or be jealous of, I am just very sincere and believe that one can grow more from honesty than from white lies. I have been a graphic designer/art director for to long and have seen work like yours appear on my desk during interviews... I am tired of the many hijacking designers in the world calling them selves designers...

Let the flame begin....

:buttrock:

[Holograph]

Damn guys, give it up! It is NOT a fake! What does this guy have to do to convince you? And even if it was, who gives a ****?! In the time it takes you to anal-ize the image and create bulleted lists of what's "too right" or "not quite right" about it, you could have made your own original work and posted it here for all to see what a REAL airbrush job looks like. What's that? You won't because you couldn't do it yourself? So THAT'S why you're giving this guy so much grief. Get a clue. It's a friggin post your work board, not a international corporate library of valuable "one-of-a-kind, all original artworks" that WOULD have a reason to be picked apart. Go make your own, post it, and see what others would have to say about YOUR work....*shakes head* Unreal...

Good work, Smeg.

Later.

[De-Cypher]

LOL....

This ends here with me.... I never said I could airbrush... but I have seen/judged/bought a lot of work... and that was my opinion... my "anal-lization" was to continue to disprove what is in my opinion not an image created from scratch....

Like I said and say one more time... it is the artist own integrity that will judged only by him, if I am wrong and the image was completely created from a white canvas, then the artist should be proud that the image has caused so much controversy.

And if you have need of my creditability you can check my site. I am not a traditional artist or even a 3D artist I am a graphic designer, and my eye has been trained to catch the smallest details in 2D imagery like the one posted here. Take it our leave it.

To the artist of the image, if it was painted all from scratch I commend you :thumbsup:, but my opinion stands and it is only my own...

Good day...

[Smeghead]

Holograph: Thanks i really appreciate your post and your opinions in fact i was going to post a similar thing myself

De-Cypher: Seriously you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, and im not going to bother to try to change it for you, but im telling you now I did this image from scratch and Ive posted what i finished with. Believe me or not I dont really care that much. I didnt do this pic to try to "hijack designers in the world" as you put it, I simply posted it to recieve some critisism based on what i had done. The only real reason i did this picture was to learn more about lighting and reflection on a painted surface so that i can start to produce my own images that arent 'photo-copies' of real life. I wouldnt even have posted this if i hadnt believed that some of you would want to see it. Come to think of it some of your replies are really quite antagonistic, so to be honest i would rather not hear your opinions in the future. Keep them to yourself if this is the way you voice them.

[Kaiser-BEST]

Fine-lowpolymore, but fine steel.
you canbairly tell. :airguitar

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