Nice. I truly like this, and am waiting for the finished project. Yeah, the commments on the water are spot on. Much too “globby”. It needs to be denser, with a significant reduction in water droplets.
NIce job! But imho the water looks like liquid steel. Waaaayyyy too shiny.
From the last set of renders I’d say that you need to make your spec map a lot more dirty. The floor is pretty evenly shiny right now. The reference photos you posted before show a lot of matte areas and tons of little dings and stuff. You could probably add a couple layers of cloud or noise to dirty up the spec channel for the ground on top of maybe upping the contrast on the spec channel you’ve got now (it looks like there’s some decent wear and tear on it, it’s just too smooth-looking all over). All the glare is just sorta distracting for me.
EDIT: I was looking at stuff from page 2 without realizing there was another page of stuff to see… so I removed a portion of my comment that no longer applies. My bad 
I looked at all your vids and the last ones look fantastic. Can’t wait to see the finished product. Looking forward to seeing more progress 
Thanks guys! Your encouragement means a lot.
Spot on! I hadn’t even noticed it until now.
I just watched Max Bickley’s lighting reel (an excellent example of a demo reel if you haven’t seen it), and the spec map he used in his underground carpark is the look I think I’ll aim for; a sort of rough asphalt type look.
Good idea! Only I’m not sure if physical drops created in Blender will look right. But what I’ll do is add some steam and tiny drops in After Effects at the end. Thanks for the idea! 
Duely noted! But do you think less droplets will look better? I always thought: More Droplets = Realism. The more chaotic the better! But I could be wrong. What does everyone else think?
Lol. Good on ya for conquering it! Be sure to try out the new Fluid Control! It’s a lot of fun, but be prepared for some long baking times.
Again, thanks for the feedback everyone, it helps a lot. Tonight I’ll work on the floor spec and making the shopping center entrance more “close-up friendly”. 
I’ll post back with results.
I have an old thread somewhere which has exactly this scene, flooding carpark, anyway you won’t get the fluid to scale. The drops will allways be big as Blender fluid only scales to a volume of 5 metres from memory (happy to be corrected)? And the traditional way to shoot water to scale was to do it as close to 1:1 as possible.
To be fair I haven’t seen to many movies (if any) get droplets right, surfaces are beautiful, materials are spectacular (pun intended) but spray and splashes are still below par IMHO.
But good luck.
Dirtied up the floor spec:
It’s gotten to the point where I’ve looked at it for so long I can no longer tell what looks wrong or right. :no:
Does the floor look rough enough? Too rough?
Opinions! 
Rubber marks from tyres going around tight bends, paint partly ripped off from arrows. Some dirty splodges of oil at each parking bay and possibly a small pool of water from the AC condensor in each car.
Chewing gum discarded under the car, shopping lists blown about and caught around the pillars (a better ground pillar interface, moulded edge?).
Infact some debris may blow into frame ahead of the water, as the bow wake of air preceeds it into the carpark.
This looks great BTW, have you seen Mpans(?) I think he did a garage scene ages ago too.
Those are some nice suggestions
I hadn’t thought of the ripped paint lines before. I’ll definitely take that up.
The floor texture isn’t completely finished yet. Some of the lines are off, and I still need to add things like oil splotches and tire marks (the chewing gum I’ve already added, but it’s very faint). I was thinking of placing a few chocolate wrappers and empty McDonalds cups lying around, which could definitely blow about the scene.
I did a search for Mpan3’s carpark and found the thread but the video link was broken 
Stop! Don’t move…the rough floor surface is perfect!
But, yeah, just fiddle with paint chips and stuff and that will add even more to the perfection.
-Biggles
Try the demo reel, I think it was in there.
http://mikepan.homeip.net/animations
edit: I just took a look and its very brief. Maybe you should look at his other work (large scale flood) where there is water roaring down a street.
I think that you will find as I did on this project, that the water won’t scale down right for you. I even tried displacement on the bake, that didn’t work either. It’s the drops that kill ya!
Hi guys! Back with another update:
If something doesn’t look right, please let me know and I will try to fix it! 
One of the opening shots will be a droplet running down a wall, so I have been experimenting with Meta-balls to try and simulate that. This is the result of my testing:
pretty good test, although it does look like it needs a bit of tweaking, excellent job so far
Test looks promising but you need to make sure that the trail the drop is leaving is slowly dissapearing by pulling the trail towards its center. The main reason being that water has a surface tension which tries to drag the water into a sphere. At the moment it looks more like a slime trail. You can also leave smaller half spherical droplets in the course of the trail but make sure that the drop gets smaller as it progresses downwards.
I’ve been reading Jeremy Birn’s book, “Lighting and Rendering” lately and learnt all about changing the point of focus through colour. I decided to change the colour of the lights in front of the mall entrance and also at the carpark entrance.
Three different lighting schemes:
Which one do you prefer?
Do you think the coloured lights destroy the mood? It kinda looks like Christmas up in there.
I also made a close up of a fluro for the opening shot:
No.2 works really well, with a hint of colour cast from the different temperature lights. Not to blue as blue lights never get so saturated. I love the flouro fixture, you are doing a kick ass job. But every time I walk into a car park I think of this project!
Thanks David! Your encouragement means a lot 
I think you’re right about the over saturation. I’ll go with the light blue one :eyebrowlift2:
I decided the other day that a sports car was a little too cliche for 3d so I decided to replace it with a Toyota Hiace:
Great start, and with your excellent texture maps to grunge it up it will be outstanding.
I am new to this forum, and your thread was the first one I saw. This is just amazing! I love how detailed it is. I thought I was doing pretty good with modeling, but now I realize I am a total novice… :\
Now about your new car choice… while a sports car is a bit cliche, I think, the other end of the spectrum (your car choice) is not a good fit either. You should just do a plain family sedan or something along those lines. I think even a sports car would be better than a van.
-Nick
Really? Might be an aussie thing, but in my opinion no carpark is complete without at least a dozen white utility vans!
Are these type of vans rare in the US?
One of the reasons I chose a van was because I wanted to do an awesome shot where the water hits the side of it in slow motion and causes a wall of water in all directions. I also plan to film a close up of the side of the van, and in the reflection of the paint, see the water getting closer.
BTW, thanks for the modelling compliment! But you would be surprised how many cubes their are! Nearly every surface is flat with 90 degree angles. 
I’ve actually been researching on how to make the camera shots not look so uniform, because with only vertical and horizontal lines it can look incredible bland.
Thanks mate
I’m definitely going to be working a great deal more on the model, and hopefully UV texturing some mud and grime around the sides.
Oh and if you want to see a killer texturing job, check out Marek Denko’s buggy project: http://marekdenko.net/?page_id=53 Blows my mind!
Well, in the US, those aren’t really popular. And if you do see a work van like that, it usually has ladders, etc. and a company logo on the side. You should go with a higher end car though. I think that that would look a lot better. Maybe a BMW. Or at least pick a plain old car like a VW or something.
-Nick