gallardo car render

[deltaindigo]

just as a starting point: you may check ON cast shadow on your lights OR check ON final ghater,bring a hdr image in the IBL node for reflections and lighting , and maybe some bouncecards.Anyway, there are many methods for achieving that... hope this is useful!
and try this : http://www.jupiter-jazz.com/wordpress/wp-content/data/tr4kv2/html/chapter1-FG.html

[ghostlake114]

I take notice to the sample image and it seems use a dummy object for reflection, not a HDR one
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If you like a realistic with environment affect, use HDR image for reflection and IBL_tool from http://www.thereisnoluck.com/plugins_iblTools.php for extracting the light from HDR for exactly lightning. You could also use the light emission in HDR option but I myself prefer the IBL_tool
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The shader of car, the car_paint_phen is great, just play with it and got best result. I think the default setting of this phen is good enogh, just replace some color by your color
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This is a fast test image I made with this method, HDR for reflection and lighning by IBL_tool
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d152/ghostlake114/cargoc1.jpg
and the environment like this
http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d152/ghostlake114/hdrrr.jpg
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By the way, I do not have much experience to work with bright, beauty car like in the show room :)... My method is for real lightning car with environment

[Nerevarine]

thanks for your replies,

i already use final gather & gi & mental area lights with physical lights attached. these 3 are the things people say we need to achieve photorealistic results, but no matter what i do i just can't. i've been playing with this thing for a couple of days now. i cannot get that smooth reflections on the car, if i happen to do that, then the light shines too much on the car and the body paint starts to bleed, i cannot even make the yellow color same with the image, it's either too dark or too bright..

about hdri lighting: i know how to use it, and it seems a rather quick way of getting good results without any effort at all, that's why i dont want to use it here. i don't want to have clouds, buildings, a kitchen, or any environment around the car at all. just those superb highlights.

if i use the mi_car_paint_phen, yes it's a good shader, however it just doesn't give what i want. it has specular, that's why the car shines like daylight when something to reflect is around. it produces kinda cartoony results IMO. the reference picture's body paint doesn't even seem like a blinn or a specular material, it seems quite diffusive, it only has 2 or 3 speculars where the long white lights are, other than that, it doesn't shine by itself.

anyways, i'll keep on studying lighting until i get this right. any ideas and assistance is welcome. thanks again.

[pingupingu]

I have some suggestions...

1.Have you check your render globel that the "enable default light" is no on??

2.The reference image you post is not enough good on lighting I think, it is too exposured on the ground and the shadows have not detailed fall off.

you can see this tutorial that show the nice shadow fall off (area light or fg bouncing card)
http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials/3d__and__animation/rendering_better_cars

3.about light setting you can think it as "ambient intensity from environment" + "key laght for shadow and another assistant lght for other purpose"

That means in a dark enviroment (like your scene ), you might need no "ambient intensity from environment"
All you need is just apply "key light for shadow and another assistant lght for other purpose" and care about intensity fall off and shadow quality. (maybe use GI to generate indirect light bouce from ground)

I think you can just creat a hemishpere or flat bouncing card on top as key light to create nice shadows, and then some additional light to assistance.


If in a light environment, you might care all light emmit from all angle.

For "ambient intensity from environment" , you can
1.Set up a lot lights with shadows on(about 20~50 maybe) to creat a dome light and soft "amient occlusion shadows".
or 2.Use ambient light and ambient occlusion (to darken the cavities and seams).
or 3.Use HDRI or "enviorement color on camera" whth FG to lighten the object from all angles.

and then apply key light and assistance light to create nice shadows and emphasize materials.

good luck!

any comment is welcome:)

[Nerevarine]

thanks for your reply pingu, i really appreciate it..

i have been working on this non-stop for the past 3 days, i was about to go insane. anyways, i lack the experience and knowledge about rendering and lighting and material properties. first i thought the scene was so complicated and custom shaders were used etc.. i kept on practicing almost every custom mr shader on the net but it just didn't work, at the end i have arrived where i was at the beginning. after another couple of hours of tweaking and getting bored, i coincidentally managed to get the color tone right.. well, not right, but the exact one on the ref picture. it was all about really really fine tweaking the material properties.. actually it's a simple blinn, nothing more. there's no GI or HDRI or physical light. just a main basic area light which only emits diffuse, and several point lights around the car which emit speculars. fine tweaking the eccentricity and specular rolloff i managed to get the yellow tone right while allowing it to turn white where speculars are (instead of a very bright and ugly yellow). a narrow but long plane above with bright color value is for the reflections (which also fit exactly like in the ref pic). one of the main key things is light linking (the light that lights the ground should not light the car etc) and disabling "visible in reflections" for various objects around (like the ground plane, which is not visible on the car paint)..
anyways, paying close attention to the details on the ref pic, one can easily say that it's not realistic and would be right. however it just looks cool IMO. this has been a real experience for me to slightly improve my lighting skills and knowing what to do to make the scene look good. i've always thought that if a scene looks realistic, then there's a virtual realistic world there, and anything which would enter this scene would also look realistic. that's clearly wrong. one should divide the scene into smaller parts in mind, and work on them seperately to make the whole picture's color balance etc be in a harmony.
oops, i've said too much, sorry for that :) just wanted to share my experience and opinion on the matter.

by the way, i've found out that this pic is taken from lambo's website itself (it's not there right now however) cause other gallardo renders have almost the same lighting as this.

thanks a lot. comments and questions are welcome :)

[JupiterSunset]

hi

the lighting here is a bit similar to what you want to achive (I guess).
rendered this about 2 years ago using one of sabaman's great models
that he kindly gave me for a test-drive.
totally unfinished so I never showed it anywhere, but maybe it fits here:


http://job.parasol-island.net/view.php?id=453cfed41f

Maya+MentalRay, standard Blinn-Shading, some BounceCards and AreaLights, a bit of Photoshop, nothing fancy. if I could be of any help, just ask :) but there are plenty of tutorials around the net that will enable you to render far better car-pics than this.

best,
jupiter

[Night Hawk]

Nice render you have got there "jupiterSunset", it looks hyper-realistic :thumbsup: .

[JupiterSunset]

thanks Night Hawk :)
lot of room for improvement though...

[maxwater]

Its not a car... but maybe it helps..

this is a rendering i made with the carpaint shader found on highend3d.

reflection is just a sphere around that scene with a texture (gradient or bitmap)
with 2 (maybe 3, too lazy too look :) ) Stripes in it

NO gi/fg.....

just simple AO + little bit photoshop adjustements


http://splineworks.de/eio1.jpg

greets,
maxwater

[STEVE33304]

Hi,


hopefully this will help you, from a different perspective, viz on from the advertisers pov.

That is when i have been on shoots that feature a car in a show room, the majority of the time, (unless effects are wanted) the lighting is all bounced light.

Alternatively the lights have diffuses infront of them, to minimize where the reflections are, so individual key lights can be specifically placed.

Sorry I didn't see this earlier, but you seem to have work that part out. eg only emit difuse.

Often too the final image is adjusted in photoshop, so maybe you want to render all the different passes, spec, diffuse, color, etc, and combine them in ps, because you can simply adjust the blending modes, and the amount of opacity/fill too. And dont have lose time re-rendering.

I often feel the hardest thing to achieve in CG, is the corona/bloom effect that happens with real light, but i believe there are plugins for ps to do this.

Finally, either in ps, use an 81A filter, and or a polarizing filter, as one or the other is generally attached to the "real" camera.

I know that you want to do it all inline, so to speak, but that may well be why your not getting 100%.

Good luck with it. Hope the above helps you out.

Steve

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