So, fairly new to Keyshot (about 4 weeks in) coming from Cinema 4D and a very short stint with Octane Render.
My boss at my new job declares that I must take at least 1 hour a week on training and "alternative projects", so without a blink I started in on researching something I've always wanted to do, some sweet sexy car renders. I've drooled over the images in the forums, and inspired by the "anyone can (should) be able to do this" attitude of the nerd on youtube that taught himself to dance using nothing but video tutorials and practice, here I am diving in as a rookie.
I intend to keep working on the same model until I get an image I'm proud of, but I will post the WIP's here, even the ones I'm not proud of :) Will be interesting to see the progression. I am learning that there is more to Keyshot than just dragging and dropping prebuilt materials and lighting setups. So, here we go-
First is just 45 minutes of model prep of a McLaren P1 I grabbed from GrabCad. I am not a modeler, so I will need to go with freebie stuff I find out there on the interwebs. After picking tinto this model, its not the best, and if the geometry gets to limiting for textureing and stuff I might have to find a different model. The smoothing isn't very good when zoomed in, but I might learn some things about dealing with less than optimal geometry.
I like your boss :) Keep pushing it! And be sure to check out some of the quick tips, tuts and especially the webinars. Look forward to seeing what you do next!
Hey, Matt;
Welcome! You're off to a great start, and practice will only make it better.
Your scale is off to the backplate, a common problem for all of us. It looks a little "toy like".
When I set the model into the environment (backplate) I always look for visual clues to help establish scale. For this now famous backplate, look at the height of the electrical panel- electricians usually put them at eye level. Also, look at the size and spacing of the steel ladder on the wall. The height of the cubbyhole recess is likely about eight to ten feet.
Then scale your model to something, like the tire diameter or door height, allowing of course for perspective and foreground enlargement.
Also, make use of the "Perspective" tools available to precisely align the model to the backplate. But yours is well aligned.
Keep em coming! We're all here to help!
Bill G
As Josh pointed out... that's a gem of an opportunity you have there for self-improvement!
If you're looking for C&C, I'd start making a list of what works on the renderings you like and see online.
Some things that I'd do to take this good rendering to great:
- Take advantage of those sexy Axalta paints in the KS library. Choose something that really pops.
- Find a lighting environment and backplate that match. You'll want reflections and lighting to match the backplate. I'd scrounge around online to see what you can find.
- Choose a backplate that allows for a larger-scaled car. Let's make it the hero of the shot.
- Finally, orient your light source and car so that the light on the car is creating a nice focal point.
You're off to a good start.
Good luck!
Thanks everyone, the positive support on here is fantastic. I've never posted any of my personal other work anywhere because of the derogatory comments made towards people trying new stuff. Its so different on here, I really applaud the mods for keeping a positive experience.
Got more "training" this week, so I'll be making more improvements!
OK, was a session of discovery-
1) Decided to focus on a studio setup to simplify getting and image that I like. The environment issue was complicating things, and distracting myself from the real problems of material and lighting skills that I need to work on instead.
2) I have to find a different model. The geometry of this one is messed up, the normals are all over the place, and there just isn't enough detail. Granted it was free, so i can't complain at all. Need to look around for a new model. Anyone has a good resource of a model I can just use for practice, I'd appreciate it.
3) Without letting myself blame the model for everything I found a webinar on doing car renders, so I am in the middle of watching that. Already 20 min I'm taking notes faster than I ever have before. Great info.
So, here is the next image, not much better, just different. More work next friday!
Great work. Discipline and attention to detail will pay off. I highly recommend creating a new HDRI from scratch and try to light the car with the following:
1. Key Light (brightest and where you wish to establish a focal point)
2. Fill/Bounce Light (secondary surface illumination)
3. Rim light (Side/Rear lighting to establish crisp edges... think the opposite of a silhouette)
That should help out immensely!
Cheers.
Oh, and also check out the KeyShot Automotive webinar that Tim Feher did. One of my favs.
OK, haven't posted any images, partly because I'm still a rookie with KS, and its hard to post mediocre work compared to the insane images normally posted. But hell, I'm putting them out here. If I can learn something from the comments, then I'm happy. Time to bury the pride and put some stuff out here. That being said, here's the picks of my best so far.
I'm currently in a personal modeling project of one of my favorite watches, trying to model it from scratch, which is tough as I'm not a modeler by default, more of an assembler :)
Thanks all for the awesome community and the sharing of knowledge. I'm getting the matgraph worked out (still some stuff that's confusing) but next thing to work on is lighting and composition.
Matt these images are awesome, thank you for sharing!!!
Some of your materials look pretty tough to work with, especially some of the cloudy plastic + LED/light combinations. That alone can be difficult to master.
I'm a really big fan of the MA_19mm image, your material work there is top notch.
It looks like the lasers (I'm assuming they're lasers?) could use a little love, even as an emissive they can be too "solid" looking. I will often add a bit of noise as an opacity map to give them a little bit of variation, that way they're not so solid. Another option would be to apply a gradient to them (such as camera based) to control the intensity as well.
I'm attaching a try I had recently for a similar effect; I used a noise texture as opacity + PS glow to make it look laser-ey. Not sure if mine is close to your intent, but you can always push the textures on these kinds of materials.
Thanks Richard, that 19mm image is one of the cleanest I've worked on. Doing products leaves very little to the creative artsy side of things, so its nice to see a crisp clean image sometimes.
The beams you are seeing are infrared coming from fiber optics, they are mainly used for parts counting, as parts fall off a conveyor they fall through and break the field resulting in a part count to the controller. But yes, you are totally correct in that they are a bit solid. Unfortunately, this was the standard look for these product images that was set before I started, so as of right now I can't change them. I have a half dozen images where I used just like you said, some noise, a gradient and some transparency to get a much better effect, but the "Decision by comittee" crowd shot it down in favor of consitency. Only 6 months into the job, so I don't have much pull on those matters yet :)
Anyway, thanks for the kind words. We are all our own worst critics, and its very uplifting to hear positive feedback. That's what I love about this community is that the critical feedback is so very positive as well, not just condescending as it is on many other forums of other renderers.
I'll keep posting! I don't seem much product stuff on here anymore, lots of character and car stuff, so time to balance it out:)
Here's another one I just wrapped today. Back wall and floor are from poliigon, finally am getting the hang of using thier textures in KS. Some tutorials would be nice, I'm doing a lot of guessing and knob twiddling to get something that works without really knowing what is affecting what.
Most of these are imports of old 3DSMax files that were built years ago, I'm swapping new products in an retexturing them.
Looking good. Progress can feel slow at times. Once you're feeling comfortable or familiar with the program, I'd focus on efficiency. Focusing on the 20% efforts that get you 80% of the results is something I like to recommend. Speed will come in time.
Regarding those textures from Poliigon, check out the Material Graph webinar on the KeyShot Youtube from a few months ago. That covers lots of texturing tricks that may be a good refresher on how to use those textures.
Thanks Will, good advice. I am an effeciency nutball, so I can certainly get behind that theory. Especially with this sort of thing where its all somewhat real world, there's little "art" to it other than composition.
I will rewatch the matgraph tutorial. I watched it a while back, but now that I'm using the texture maps for more there's probably a boatload that I missed out on.
The Poliigon folks also created a quick tutorial on how to use their textures in KeyShot: https://youtu.be/_yj9zQ_oacY (https://youtu.be/_yj9zQ_oacY)
The metal tanks look awesome! Good job on those materials :)
Here's a couple more I've gotten done in the past month or two.
Most of the hardware was sourced from GrabCad and Turbosquid, and our own CAD engineers, of course. Very practical stuff, nothing too artsy.
Love the 'stopper feeder bowl', really cool stuff Matt :)
**edit**
Please don't take this as a crit, but there is a strange halo around the DOF areas on'Stopper Feeder Bowl' - it's really noticeable on the full res version - still love the image though !!
Quote from: Despot on September 15, 2017, 12:10:15 PM
Please don't take this as a crit, but there is a strange halo around the DOF areas on'Stopper Feeder Bowl' - it's really noticeable on the full res version - still love the image though !!
Yeah, I saw that too. I had a ton of adjustment layers and masks in that one, and I think one of the layers with a transfer mode on it freaked out when I exputted the jpg for this post. I double checked and its not in the production piece, so I'm gonna be a lazy bum and just leave it here for now :)
They don't let me use DOF very often, and even in that one I think I went a bit overboard with it. These are all engineers here, they don't really have that "artistic eye" of appreciation for stuff like that.
This is some great work Matt! Cool to see more of what you do.
Yeah! Lots of progress here. I remember your earlier work and it's cool to see how you've grown.
If you were interested, I'd suggest picking up a book or two on lighting for photographers, read through them in your down time and see how it affects your renderings. The work here is all solid. If you're looking to push it further though, I think you could get more effective with your lighting to create focal points (since DoF isn't often accepted at work). Just a thought.
Thanks everyone. I do think I have a solid grasp of the materials and using the MatGraph to get the surfaces technically correct, so yes, lighting is next. Specifically product lighting. I think starting a series of images where I'm building the HDRI's from scratch would help me understand what the HDRI's are doing to the look.
Quote from: mattjgerard on September 19, 2017, 05:51:26 AM
Thanks everyone. I do think I have a solid grasp of the materials and using the MatGraph to get the surfaces technically correct, so yes, lighting is next. Specifically product lighting. I think starting a series of images where I'm building the HDRI's from scratch would help me understand what the HDRI's are doing to the look.
Definitely a good idea. My suggestion is get a model or two from Turbosquid, apply a white diffuse material to it and try lighting it with one pin or one physical light. Do 5 of those with different light placement. Then, do the same exercise with 2 lights. Then with 3. It's a fun challenge that can push you to consider things you might not usually.
That's some good ideas, I will do that. I do really well with instructive processes such as this, I did a ton of classroom style training for other disciplines, and that works very well for me. Having assignments and deadlines pushes me to accomplish more than having a couple of hours of free time to noodle around and experiment.
More to post- Finished off a couple of tough ones, I am dealing more and more with LED's behind cloudy plastic, and I need to really nail down how they work. Dries had some good advice having to do with HDR toning (which I still don't totally understand). The group image below had a ton of PS work done to it, and while they all look technically accurate, as far as how the light blooms and highlight go, its a bit drab. But, it looks good on the catalog spread, so mission accomplished. The others are just more production work. Haven't had time for any personal stuff, but possibly next week!
Very neat - thanks for sharing.
Couple more. I did not have the time to put in a submission for the contest, but maybe next time!
Dang nice, man!
Ha, i love to see your journey, mainly because i had to do that myself not so long ago. I don't know if you feel it, but you're making a hell of a progress on your images. I strongly reccomend to read and learn what each texture channel means. Once you get that, you'll be much more confortable playing and even creating your own textures.
I'm willing to share one of my models with you (if you like, of course) if you are having a hard time finding something for practice. Check my Artstation page and read the project descriptions to see which models are mine, and which ones are downloaded. Just PM me or reply me on this thread if you are interested on one of them !
Cheers and good luck with that !
https://www.artstation.com/nm_92
I agree with Nico! That first image is super nice. One tip... maybe an occlusion texture on the threaded area to pop out the threads. But that's a great image already!
So much nice stuff here. I don't have much to add besides what has been said, but I must say I love the details on that cell phone imaging picture (that milky plastic button with the lights!) and the ones where the soft rubbery gloves are hanging out (they probably have a particular name).
So, i found this model on grabcad, its an angenieux 30-72 anamorphic PL mount lens by Alessandro Giansanti.
https://grabcad.com/library/angenieux-30-72-anamorphic-zoom-standard-pl-mount-accurate-measure-1
I was fortunate to be the camera tech on a shoot that was using this lens, and it was just beautiful. Both in build quality and image quality. So, I'm starting a little image study by locking the KS camera lens to this angle and am going to stop worrying about composition, models, etc, and totally focus on lighting, materials and environments.
First up is a simple drag and drop materials on the lens, so this is the stock out of the box look. Floor is concrete from poliigon (thanks to all that have cleared up how to use their textures its all making sense now!) Sort of an uncomfortable image for me, seeing a $63,000 lens on a concrete floor gives me the willies. Only reason this would happen in the real world is if it was dropped, which makes me shudder.
So, from here on out , game is on to see what other interesting looks I can get . Its going to be tough (but good for me) to be restricted to just fiddling with lights materials and environments.
Nice. Love the simplicity of it all - great looking lens too. The ground texture may be a tad distracting - kinda cringe seeing a nice lens laying on concrete ground! :) The lens element is missing a bit of that iridescent appearance.
Been deep into work lately, so I don't have any finished lens images, this is the sort of stuff I get to do on a daily basis. Lots of cloudy plastics, metals and black.
Update of the last shot, past the deadline so I went back to work on it to push it to where I wanted to get it before .
One more from work, hardest part was getting the cardboard edge to look right. Tried to find an image texture, but had to end up making my own geometry. I still hate the laser lines, but that is the standard that was set before I started here, and they don't want to change it yet. I'm working on it!
This looks great, Matt! On the lasers, I'd make them a bit skinnier and make sure they are brighter toward the center.
Sort of a lighting study, we have a series of products called tower lights, and we have 3 diameters that can go from 1-10 segments tall with 2 base colors, 3 connection options, and mulitple audible modules that can go on the top.
Lots of options!
Most of our web images are of the unlit versions, as to render all lit combinations would be a nightmare, and an even bigger nightmare to link them in our PIM system. So, we went with unlit with the expectation of a few. We now make RGB versions of the segments instead of single color segments.
Up until recently we had different colored plastic materials that we would use to indicate different colors. Recently I began trying to make a single plastic material that would stay the same for all models, and look correct when unlit. Then the segment would be lit entirely by the LED array that was inside. Then my idea was to make a multi material for the LED area light material, and just have a single material to add to the LED array.
With the help of Dries and others on the forum I have tweaked the plastic to where it is performing properly when lit, but will have to use a different material for the unlit versions. Now I had someone request an image that would describe the variable color options of the RGB module, so I quickly knocked this up with some cylinders inside. There are 3, one each RGB lit with its own version of the multi material so a different color could be chosen for each one.
While it may not be 100% realistic, it performed a couple functions here-
-Only had to use a single material for the cloudy plastic
- Only had to apply one material to the emissive lights
- was able to knock this sample together in about 3 minutes, sent to the render farm and had a photoshop worthy piece for the client in about 15-20 minutes. I'd say the workflow is proving itself to be of great benefit. My co-worker who had done the last version of this for the 50 mm model said it took them weeks in a different render engine to get the colors, transparencies and look good enough for use. I am slowly building to be able to put all of this into the configurator and build an interface for the clients to build their own and get a model number to place an order.
The orange one was tough, an had to do more work in photoshop with it to get it to look like the others. This orange one I personally like because it is pretty accurate to what it looks like, even if its not what the marketing people want.
One more of worker guidance lighting products. this bip file was well over 3gb, the robot arm itself went a little nuts on the tessellation coming from Cinema4d. I think I subdivided it a few too many times on output :)
Setup in Cinema
Render in Keyshot
Post in Photoshop.