Lighting and surfacing,

[LecturerAlan]

Hi wavers

Heres an update to the bmw test, still struggling with the surface,so here`s the deal, heellllpppp please....

I took a look at lewis`s cars and site, of course this is what I want to attain to,(as do a great deal of us ) I realise that at the moment I am not in same ball park....in fact not even on the same page as the aformentioned ball park, with regards to the modeling possibly at the the enterance of the said ball park,
As always any well meant advice will be greatfully received and taken on board.


Lec-Alan


Nobody will believe in you unless you believe in yourself.
Liberace (1919 - 1987)

[Zafar Iqbal]

Great model - doing a BMW M3 myselfatm :)

Regarding the surfacing .. looks like the diffuse channel has a way too high value - if not, then your reflection channel is reflecting too much.

[liquidpope]

Hey, Alan...

The model is looking great.
The render is well on it's way.
Seems to me that the light is too harsh. It's just WAY too bright, I think. Tone that down abit, and the reflection (as mentioned by Zafar) and you'll probably see a big improvement.
Definitely worth working on. Keep at it, and good luck.

Jimbo

[LecturerAlan]

Thanks Wavers
Heres a update A friend gave me a hand,Looking better
Still not quite.

Lec-Alan

[fxnut]

Alan,
I suspect you've got a pretty high setting for specular to try to get the hilights yeah? If I were you, try turning the specular right down, at least to start with. I'm also guessing that you're using a reflection map? If so, I'd get rid of it and try this.

Try putting a large white circular disc at 100 % luminosity above the car, and turning up the reflection a bit on the car surface. I think you should find that you start to get some really nice reflections on your model without having to over compensate with boosting specular and diffuse. It might just be what you're looking for. :)

IMHO, the hardest thing with surfacing is that it's very dependent on lighting and environment. So try to put it in an environment that approximates where you would expect to see the car. I.e. the white disc approximates having a v bright sky, and you should add lights to match. Once you know what the environment is doing, it'll give you a much better understanding on how to progress with the surfacing and texturing of the car.

The other big tip is to get as much reference as possible. There's some great pics of BMWs on the BMW website by the way.

Regards

Andy

[renderingfarmer]

I really like the modeling job.
In your last image I'm reminded of shiney plastic. I'd turn the glossiness down. But then again I'm a newbie, so I could be wrong.

[ponder_it]

fxnut's right choose the environment. But when surfacing something like this use Gradient incidence angle. Awesome results. The glass from the top pic looks better, still needs some tweaking though. How is the overall body surface comming?

Cheerz.

[LecturerAlan]

Big thanks to all

Zafar Iqbal

liquidpope

fxnut

renderingfarmer

ponder_it

Yes ponder it, for some reason your well meant advice from the other day didnt get saved in the model file(xp pro )nuff said !
but that said, I think the top render might of had it,

Fx nut, love your work, cool site too ! your comments have been taken on board.

Zafar and Liquid pope and RenderF, thank you for bothering to post I shall un-plastisize( made up word) right away, or should I say un-gloss the surface or is that de-gloss I`ve lost it

Lec-Alan

[LecturerAlan]

This forum lark works you know !
here is an update of this bmw project, many thanks to all who have contributed, keep the advice coming ....if you want

Lec-Alan

[fxnut]

Wow, looking much better. I think your diffuse might still be a little too high. I don't know if you already know this; generally speaking: diffuse% + reflection% <= 100%, but for polished metal bodywork you'd probably want to make that <=80% or 90%.

BTW, ponder_it was talking about the Fresnel effect when he mentioned using a gradient based on incident angle. In case you're not up on your optics theory; all it means is that all surfaces (even non reflective surfaces), have a tendency to become (more) reflective at glancing angles. (You can see this if you try holding a normal piece of paper flat out at eye level, pointing at something fairly bright). There's loads of stuff on the net about recreating the Fresnel effect in CG.

Regards

Andy

[liquidpope]

Yeah...

Already looking pant-loads better.
I still think there's more of a lighting issue here than a surface/texture issue. Looks like there's one very bright light directly above the car. Ditch that sucker and go for broke.
Try using more lights, like a basic three-point setup. Just playing around with different lighting setups can teach you lots of cool tricks. So load a bunch and go nuts.
Also, what do you have in the scene for this car to reflect?
Should be lots of stuff, like many large white cards, maybe one with a gradient perhaps... Stuff like that.

Looking better every day. Keep at it.

[renderingfarmer]

Wow that DOES look better. Very sexy. I don't know if someone said this already, and I'm toobusy at the moment to read it all again, but I just noticed that there isn't an interior. You might want to think about "tinting" the windows a bit more. The back licence plate spot looks really wacky in the first picture because you can see it inside...

Keep up the work dude.

[Zafar Iqbal]

Your welcome, LecturerAlan :)

I have a suggestion:
Add a lightsource like the default distandligt - dont adjust the light settings to make it look good - instead tweak the surfaces.

When you are happy, then place the light where you want it - use several lightsources to lit the car from different angles, but only with one lightsource wich has dominant intensity. The rest should just act as fill light to lighten up dark areas (basicly).

You can place them i such ways that they create harsh bright lines along some of the edges of the car.

Take a look at this:
http://www.3drender.com/light/3point.html

[Lewis]

HI LecturerAlan !

I'am late to party but here is my suggestions :)

As you already heard here you need environment, real one or gaked one is not important but you need it. All reflective materials need to be in bright and colored environment to show full beauty. Imageine what would you see if you put real car in totaly black room (black wals and ceeling). It would look awfull and tootaly wierd no matter if is real car :)

So you need soemthing to reflect and as fxnut already suggested try wiht luminous panels above car. Next thing is material. I don't use fast fresnel shader anymore 'coz it gives that small speckles on paint what isn't too realistic imho. SO i use incidence angles on reflection and soemtimes diffuse channel also. Bare in mind that different car color require different settings so don't change colors untill you test render.

you've made good progress form first to last image, keep up and you'll managed :).