mother of god.
Kick-ass 
A couple of things strike me immediately:
- Too much vignette This could of course be an artistic choice so just go with it if that’s how you want it to look!
- Is the car really that small (in height)? Maybe it’s the perspective tricking my eyes, but it seems to be even lower than those white poles, which looks too low, but you’ll probably be able to tell better.
Well… I guess I can’t post the Ferrari I made… 
Wow. Wonderful job. My only critique is that if you notice the other cars in the background, they all have sharp lighting and shadows like they are very glossy. I think your car is not reflective enough. That is pretty much the only thing I could see. How did you get shadows cast on the HDRI background?
do some color matching, the cars in the background have cool/blue lighting, your model has warm/yellow lighting, it’s obviously artificial.
PS: Forgot to mention the video you linked to - looks golden indeed, thanks for sharing! I recently finished Jeremy Birn’s Digital Lighting and Rendering, it is a fantastic book and I totally recommend it if you want to dive deeper in the subject.
Fax,
you’re probably right, the car looks a little tiny. I’ve also thought about buying that Jeremy Birn’s book and I think I’ll do it asap :yes:
McThingy, definitely post your ferrari! I’d like to see what you’ve done 
Jonathan L, I delivered an ambient occlusion pass from blender internal and multiplied it over the backplate to get darkening on the BG.
Also you and Kemmler made a good point about matching the colors/reflections to the cars on the backplate and this has lead me to a different approach. Mainly because I’m stuck with the camera angle, can’t get funky with the lighting and I really don’t want other people’s credits on my final piece. So I’ve set myself two goals: 1. Make better studio shots with more light in the environment 2. Make the render that would be displayed as the “finished result”. For that I’ll model an environment and use area lamps+hdri for lighting.
Wow, I just watched that lighting video and it really, really, helped. Completely changed my thinking. Thanks a ton for mentioning it!
Very funny that you say that, because I felt exactly the same way after a few attempts with backplates with my Toyota. It’s really limiting in creativity and by the end of it I actually think it’s not that impressive! I also decided to invest in something else. Really looking forward to seeing what you come up with in that respect 
Thank you very much, we think the same :eyebrowlift:
Anyways, I think I’ve improved my studio shots. Had some fun with colors aswell. Just out of the oven 
Btw, I did not change any material settings, just played with hue offset and set the factor to be a black and white image of just the car’s body, rendered separately in BI with everything but the car having a transparent mask material. No need to re-render to see, how the car looks in blue or yellow. I also delivered an AO pass again and used soft light blending in gimp(divide mode for the blue version).
Attachments
I changed the front shot a bit, also removed the “lens flare”. Got pointed out that it doesn’t look right and its probably true because its a well-lit environment and lens flares pop up in the dark. I believe these are now my final studio images, now off to exterior rendering 
This model is way better than mine Looking at these renders blow my mind, and I’m inspired to work harder. Thank you for this artwork.
Thanks a lot man! I think your carrera is coming along nicely :yes:
So i have to do the aventador…
Hey RainerS, I just found something I thought you might reeeally like:
You can get yourself a free 24h pass to kelbytraining (http://kelbytraining.com/online/freetrial/). If there are no more passes available when you check it, just check again the next day sometime earlier before they are “sold out”. It basically gives you access to all the photography training videos it has inside…
… but the ones that will probably interest you a lot are those by this guy Tim Wallace. Jaw-dropping stuff he does eh? 
He has one video on lighting the whole car and scene, and another on just details.
I’ve just watched them and they are totally worth the time, which is not so much either. To-the-point stuff. I think you’ll like it
whoah thanks alot Fax, that’s a nice offer they have there.
Meanwhile I’ve made some texturing progress on the scenery for the exterior shot(also the area for the animation clip) I think I need to displace the oval’s surface a touch.
Yep, these two images are OUTSTANDING finally!!!
JayMThanks JayM!
I was thinking about adding a concrete wall to the left and a tree shadow coming from the right to give the car shading a bit more variation. Still not a finished project =)
Anything else I could possibly correct/add?