Wonderful modeling. It’s a nice change from the usual sports cars.
Steve S
@Mistro
Yeah, those 80s and maybe 70s models look most appealing to me. What do you mean with steer with one finger ? Because of (still) relative simple dashboards inside (not filled with dozens of little buttons for all the electronic stuff today, but afaik those models from the 80s had some electronics inside already. Atleast they didnt survive an EMP blast 
(like seen in the movie “The Day After”)
@harleynut97
ok, i partially fixed the plate, just made the font a bit thinner and flatter. I also added some basic dirt to the tires, (thanks for the suggestion) and I increased the contrast of the background a little. Yeah, i want it realistic, but i also try the simplest approaches first to see whether it looks realistic enough already.
@Steve S
Thank you, glad you like it ! Yeah, i thought its time for a more usual car to model, and the boxy shape is easier to reproduce
here my latest attempt of integrating the car into the background… i blurred it a bit (just the car) because the whole scenery looks a bit blurred. Took some time to find the correct compositor setup to separate the car, the ground plane and the background (composited in as seperate image, too bad you cant set film transparency per renderlayer, would have made this easier) blur just the car and build all together correctly with alpha “masks” basically.
What would you prefer ? The “sharp” car or the blurred one, what looks more natural here ?
I can see what you mean that slight blur helps integrate better, in some ways it may be just a touch too heavy on the blur… I would say consider trying to cut the blur by maybe 20% and see how you like it.
The tires look better, as does the license plate, but on the plate I’m wondering if you grunged it up too much based on how clean the rest of the car is. But it looks much more realistic to me than earlier.
Often in Photoshop or after effects I’ll use a photo filter that almost always better integrates elements that come from different sources. I seem to remember Blender has some compositing setting now.
Something about your headlights stick out to me… It’s almost like there too white. I wonder if just a slight tint of yellow might make them more natural. I don’t have any references though, but that is another thing you could check on.
Just curious, how long are render times running, and how many passes are you using?
Hmm, cutting it down by 20 % will be hard i think, since i use a fast gaussian blur with setting x=2, y=2. and x=1, y=1 is 50% ?
At the plate i simply used one texture from the internet and erased the characters on them, made it a bit glossy and used the same as displacement, and stuck my text object into it. Simple as it can be.
The headlights have still some emissive material in it ( again, i forgot to turn off the lights… you will see them better at “night” (with background strength at 0.03)
About the render times, at 300 samples for the blurred one (rendering 2 layers) 1 minute 13 seconds, so not the worst i would say, before i used 500 samples and had times around 1:50 or 2 minutes maybe.
As far as passes are concerned, i just use the composite of 2 layers and 1 external image (rendered before from the same camera, and after that i set film to transparent
Here my compositing node setup:
fast gaussian blur with setting x=2, y=2. and x=1, y=1 is 50%
I’m not sure if it’s 50%, but hell with that fast of render times, it couldn’t hurt to test it out.
Yea, if you had your emission lights on, that would make sense. They seemed to look fine at night.
so… i cut the blur down, so its only slightly noticeable and made renders from 3 perspectives, all at day time this time. Hmm, looking closer at the back render… the “plate lamps” stll look wrong and the car looks too big for the scene…
Speaking of plates… i made them more diffuse so they dont reflect so much any more. Except adding some minor details like the “Cadillac” font logos outside and some interior details and maybe different backgrounds i would consider this “nearly finished”, will compare it first with my reference photos again.
I think the blur level looks much better, as does the license plate change you made. I can’t speak to the license plate lamps because I don’t know what they looked like in the reference.
Is the scaling problem you mentioned just in the bottom render or all of them? If it is off, it’s not by very much. I always struggle with proper scaling. If I look at this, it almost seems like it is a little too small in the top 2 renders, and just right in the bottom one.
I wouldn’t be afraid of putting this in a not so overcast day for some addional renders. It looks very realistic to me in this environment, but it might be fun to add perhaps a city render, or even a sunset scene.
here is my reference photo collection, the biggest i found for cadillacs of that era: http://www.mcsmk8.com/80CAD-500/MAVICA.HTM (scroll down, somewhere there is a photo from the back of the car-> i noticed i made the plate section too small.
about scaling: ok, i was thinking the bottom render looks a bit too big, maybe i was wrong with this 
Next step will be trying out different hdr backgrounds.
i was thinking the bottom render looks a bit too big, maybe i was wrong with this
Like I said… I struggle a bit with visual scaling so don’t necessarily trust my opinion 
That’s actually a great reference site you found, I see what your saying about the plate section.
hey, i just pushed my computer to the max by rendering my picture in (nearly) 4k with 2000 samples, rendered per commandline and with tilesize 1024x512, see here https://www.dropbox.com/s/wlnz14wwck2dh0j/caddy4kTest.png , this time i omitted the compositing,
and it took a bit more than 40 minutes to render, i would say not so bad for a GTX 580 (with 3GB RAM) (though, lots of “simple” background too)
But now you can see every flaw in the model 
But now you can see every flaw in the model
Yea… your headlights are still on But it really looks good Scorpian
I don’t think the compositer stuff you were doing adds that much rendertime does it? You should have just let roll with everything. What is the advantage of the command line stuff you mentioned?
i heard somewhere it renders faster when done from commandline… the gpu wont have to display what is rendered which saves some resources. I started a render from blender with its gui enabled, there the “remaining time” was higher in the first minutes i tested it. And with the commandline render it started lower, e.g. 1:30:00.00 instead of 2:00:00.0.
Also rendering with my compositing setup would have been slower i think, because i render 2 layers instead of 1 and also “unnecessary” parts of the picture too, e.g. the ground plane being covered by the car.
Hmm… when i think about it… maybe it was not even necessary to split car and groundplane to 2 layers… i should have just kept them together and rendered with transparent film, and added the rest of the background from an image…
But I think i leave the 4K one now as it is, my computer nearly ran “out of breath” with it (high CPU and GPU temperatures, GPU around 68 °C and each of the 4 cores of the CPU around 65-75 °C.
wow, great job mate! i love the final output, it is really nice. just curious, if you managed to fix that gap on rear doors? i assume you did, i’ve noticed it on Sketchfab model, and that was quite long ago. I like your renders from post #67!!!
@Revo Nize
thank you for your kind words
About that gap between rear doors and wheels, hmm i didnt notice it back then, but it looks like i made it a bit narrower in the meantime. Frankly, I dont know anymore. I have been working on that model quite a long time in total.
Glad you like my hdri renders ! I wanted to repost some of them together with the best looking “studio” renders in a finished thread soon. Did you also check my focused critique thread ? there are some nice interior renders as well.
Good to see the ole’ Caddy back… While I know everyone thinks studio renders are a must have, I think your model looks so much better outdoors. Just my opinion.
Nice model so far. Whenever you get around to adding the center rear-view mirror, don’t forget the fuzzy dice and one of those cardboard pinetree air fresheners.
Your Cadillac looks very good, scorpion81! I don’t know how much you could improve it, I’d say most viewers won’t be able to spot any flaws. I certainly can’t!
When you do decide to post final renders in the finished projects section, I’m sure you’ll find very good response!