For my first car rendering I chose a vehicle I am very familiar with, a Chrysler Crossfire Limited Coupe (I drive one, fabulous car. Pictures of real car here: http://www.roughboy.net/?p=2578). The 3ds model used left a little to be desired, had a lot of polygon issues most of which I was able to resolve in Modo 5. There are also some minor errors in the model, but nothing anyone but another owner would pick up on. I would appreciate any comments or suggestions on how to better render car subjects.
Paul
I think the image has a bit too much contrast. What is the Gamma value set to in the image setting tab?
The gamma was set to 2 which resulted in very open shadows, particularly in the wheel well area. I did some post work in Pshop darkening the shadows and bumped the contrast a bit. Since it is a contrasty sunrise background, I thought that would work alright, but perhaps I should drop the contrast slightly. A slight drop in saturation may help too. I just don't want to open up the shadow areas though.
Paul
yes that may help too. If you have Pro you can easily adjust this in the HDR Editor.
Here's another Thomas incorporating your suggestion.... dropped the contrast while keeping the shadows dark. Thanks for the input...
(http://www.roughboy.net/imgs/Crossfire4.jpg)
Paul
That looks good Paul. The highlight/shadow tool in Photoshop is also excellent for those adjustments.
Hey WPRayner,
Your wheel arches are a bit wobbly and you need more work on the corners of the door and panels (when you do the smooth you get some radius on the corners, so you need to tight those up). You can get nice wheel arches by creating the curve that matches the shape in 3D, and then simply snap the points to that curve and you'll get the perfect shape, of course make sure that the points are somewhat equal distance from each other ;)
best,
Voya
Thanks for the input guys.
Dillster: yes the Pshop highlight/shadow tool is useful for some things, but I prefer using the curves tool for making more precise and subtle changes.
Voya: there were actually a large number of very wobbly curves on the original downloaded 3ds model. I've completed a lot of corrections so far, but still have more to go. It's much improved over the original file. This is the downside of using a downloaded model. Probably would have been better off drawing the car from scratch... ;D
Paul
hello WPRayner
good model and render , try add Dust map to the wheels , i see many renders here but always no dust in wheels this effect give more reality
Finished another render today... made some more corrections to the model though there are still details that are not right, but it's getting closer. Like this one much better. Background is from Moofe.
Paul
Very beautiful :)
Nice work Paul. I really like this car. Don't know why it didn't take off.
I feel your white paint is too white, if that makes sense. You are very close.
Keep up the great work.
Tim
Thanks guys... much appreciated.
Tim - you're probably right, the white is a little bright. Next rendering I think I'll tone it down just a tad.
I absolutely love this car, but as an owner I'm only slightly biased... ;). It's my dream car, at least in the range of dream cars that I could ever possibly afford. Engine and drive-train are Mercedes, body is by Karmann. As to why it didn't do well in this country, I've heard several theories, one being it is "too European", whatever that means. Personally I believe it was a marketing issue. Chrysler didn't market it in this country and only produced the car in limited quantities. As a result, it's a fairly rare car here and was recently categorized as a collectible by Haggerty. It's curious because people were paying over-list just to be able to get one when new, so why Chrysler didn't pick up on that, I don't know. It's a wonderful car and an absolute joy to drive, especially in the mountains where we live. Ours is our daily driver and I have no complaints about it whatsoever. It's a head-turner (most people here have never seen one) and a cop-magnet, perhaps its only detriment. With a stock top speed of 160 mph, you have to be very careful not to attract the attention of the "rozzers." The one concession they made to the American market was to add a collapsible cup-holder between the seats, which, interestingly enough, is the one feature that is universally broken on all Crossfires. Fortunately ours happens to be jammed closed so is much less intrusive than many which are jammed open.
Paul