Another car render. It took me some time getting the lighting and materials right, but I feel like now is the time to publish this project. Thank you to the people who commented on my focused critique thread! The feedback was very helpful.
I have struggled quite a bit with color correction for these images as I am using a dual screen setup and a laptop when working in Blender. On every single one of my screens the renders look different, which can be really frustrating. Do you guys have experience with screen calibration? Free/paid software or hardware?
I also spent a couple of weeks on this animation. The car is animated using a rig I created. It is based on blazraidr’s old car rig, but have been reworked with a new steering-system.
Recently, I found an awesome video editing program called “HitFilm 4 Express”. It is free and has a lot of features. Color correction, effects and sound were added in that program.
For some reason I found it really difficult rendering the front of the car. The reflections just always looked weird. Anyway, this was the best ‘front-render’.
The images are great, yes… But the video is awesome! After the beginning I was hoping for it to be longer, but I love the camera, which is “mounted” to the back of the car and is moving with it. It look so real, so vivid.
@tygrum: Thanks! Well, I didn’t even bother to model the interior. I just used the seats and the wheel I had modelled for my McLaren. I think the exterior is somewhat detailed, but no - it’s not perfect.
@krsblend: Thanks! I used separate lighting setups for each render. As you can see on the second image, the material for the light-planes is an emission shader with a gradient map mask. By controlling the gradient map using a color ramp node, you can get the exact reflection you are looking for.
@Darcvizer: Haha, well… That’s gonna take some time. I have rendered quite a lot of crapy renders of this car before I started getting some good ones. However, here are some of the renders. (Oldest first)
Superb work on this project, Dan! The images alone are quite stunning, but the video brings it all to another level. I love the animation; the “car rig” camera shot is my favorite, it feels so life-like. Are there any tutorials you followed to create the suspension movement? I would love to learn how to do that for my own projects.
@Darcvizer: Sorry, I have’t had much time the last couple of days. I will post the breakdown as soon as possible
@IconW: The subtle dirt was created in the material compositer by mixing multiple dirt maps and masking with vertex paint and cavity masks. The ‘wet map’ was drawn in ‘texture mode’ using some rain textures as masks. The droplets was added using a particle system and the moving ones are metaballs animated ‘by hand’.
@Indy_logic: Thanks! I used almost the same material for my McLaren MP4. However, I will post a material breakdown as soon as possible.
@James Candy: Thanks you, man! Really glad you like it! The rig is a modified version of a free car rig ‘blazraidr’ posted on YouTube. I remade the steering part, but the suspension is almost identical. Later he made a paid version of the rig, which is a lot more realistic and he deleted the tutorial for the old one on YouTube. I feel like it is a bit wrong to post the details for the rig in here. I can PM you the details if you want.
@sasa42: Thank you for the feedback! It is appreciated. Things to remember for my future projects. If you are talking about the moving droplet then the aswer is metaballs.
I work in product and trans design and good smooth highlight flows are key for car bodies.
Often I see in poly models a lot of highlight issues - your model seems based on the renderings
to be pretty flawless!