How to make proper looking car lights?

[bronxbomber2313]

Hi, i am new to Keyshot (which so far is amazing) and im having problems getting the headlights, reflectors, and tail lights to look right/real on my saleen s7. I don't what material set up i need to get it looking like it does on the actual vehicle. Any help would be greatly appreciated  .

Here are some renders of my current set up in Keyshot and what im trying to achieve:

[bronxbomber2313]

This is my first stab at a car model too, so critiques are welcomed!

[JeffM]

Let's start with the tail lights, can you post a close up of what you have currently?

[bronxbomber2313]

Here is my current attempt at the headlights. I hid the peice of geometry that i had behind the colored glass and added the relfector normal map to the glass materials. Also fixed the shape of the two light peices to better match the reference image.

[bronxbomber2313]

I cant seem reproduce the above image when there's another object behind the taillights (like the body of the car). The glass gets really dark and doesnt look like a reflector/taillight any more

[bronxbomber2313]

here's what the tailLights look like when the car is in the scene. I dont know how to get them to look right when everything is in the scene.

[Tiho Ramovic]

Hi!
Try putting something reflective inside tail light (look little better at the photo of the real car´s tail light and you can see that behind clear red plastic is some reflective material and light bulb, that reflective material is what you need) and play a little with number of ray bounces.
Hope this helps.

Tiho Ramovic

[bronxbomber2313]

Alright Tiho, i'll give it a shot. Where are the ray bounces located?

[trice1]

Bronxbomber2313>>This is covered in the rear so all light is coming from the front.

[Tiho Ramovic]

Ray bounce options are located: Options/Realtime (thats for realtime) and Render/Quality (for the final render).