This is a render from the first car i modeled 2015.Rendered with Filmic Blender.
51,300 Faces.
Rendered with 4096 Samples.
Only Materials no textures.
One HDRI light.
1 Like
I like Blender Filmic.
Have rendered some testrender,with exposure adjust on film panel vs some render with hdr light strenght adjust.
For me HDR strenght adjust wins.It increase the whole light dynamic.While if the scene was dull and adjusting exposure, is not helpfull as light strenght increase,cause its lift up the whole scene ,without decrease the dullness.its not that bad,but strenght adjust is better imho.
not bad so far but maybe you wannt to work a bit more on your shot and the backplate 
thanks for reply Eric,this was more or less another testrender,just dropt a different hdr.if your mean the redish on the backplate,i know this seems the to be the reflection of the pitstop lightcover.the backplate is with a plastic material,as you see in pic #1 a little better.
additional in the second render,i tryed a bit with the depth of field from the camera,to bring a little bit more realisim to the whole render like a real camera would do.maybe it is a bit to much and blurry,but i like it ,for the first try outs with the dof.
since i am a hobbyist,im watch out for another good free hdrs,especially for car renders with streets, parkingzones ect.
btw i have to say that Blender Filmic make it easyer to work with HDRs.just drop a HDR ,adjust strenght or exposure with a 18%grey material and false color on,…done.it seems to me ,that with Blender Filmic it is just easy ,with higher light strenght values,as the standart CM methods.
Your test render look very good, pixelgrip! I have recently started using filmic as well, but am still very new to it. I will have to try out the 18% grey and false color method. I had not heard of that before. Thanks as well for mentioning your preference of adjusting HDR strength vs. exposure adjustment in color management- I have wondered before if that would produce a difference in final result, but never took the time to find out. I will have to remember that!
thanks James,we have a thread about Blender Filmic here,where the 18% grey method is explained
for me the goal is,to have a result that looks not as copy and paste a object into the scene.i want it to look melted as real looking as possible,if that make sense.Blender Filmic is a great help in that direction imho.
i build a new shader again.this time my attempt was to rebuild the look from the liquid metal coatings,that mercedes benz and porsche ,to name a few ,has on they cars.this coatings having a very high flop index.this means that on high viewing angles like 90° to 110° the colors darkens/absorbs alot vs the look at around 45°.
i have modeld the upcoming Golf R 2018 rims ,and modeled the Continental Sportcontact 6 Tyres.the Bumpmap for the tyres are found in the net(Goodyears).
i tested, if i could get the same results, with my thin film shader,like the renderings in from reference thin film shader paper.
this render shows the shading, from the vw beetle car, from the paper.same thin film setup as the paper.
this shows tempered steel shading,with same settings from the paper
