January Challenge - Before And After - Acid44
 

Hey all, feeling like I need a break from the low poly modeling, so I'm gonna join in this and see if I can keep up.

I figure the easiest thing for me to do was to put a car on a road, but then I realised that lighting and stuff is bloody hard... Still going to try though :P Haven't made a final decision on the photo I'll be using yet, but I found one I like that I took ages ago on my PhotoBucket that I may use.

(Click to enlarge, again for full)
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w...h_DSCI0007.jpg

Shots of that car to come soon :ninja:

Nice resolution on your photo. Was it taken near sunset or sunrise? Looks a little dark on my screen.

Taken not too long before sunset, really liked how it turned out with the lighting and such.

Got some of the car now, a McLaren MP4-12C

Click to enlarge, again for full size

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w..._MP4-12C_3.png
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w..._MP4-12C_2.png
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w..._MP4-12C_1.png

you really are a lover of cars arent you mate LOL.....this should be good!

cheers bullet

Yes I am :p

I hope it turns out alright, this car's turning out to be a pain lol

bahahahah...it will mate......finish it.

cheers bullet

Had another few hours to waste away today, probably do more later...

Uh... Got some wheels (Half done), and a roof and stuff. Crits?

Click to enlarge, again after the jump for full size
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w..._MP4-12C_4.png
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w..._MP4-12C_5.png
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w...2C_Wheel_1.png

Looks bloody good mate...dig the mag wheels...keep on keepin on man!!

cheers bullet

Have still gotta put in the rest of the wheel, but not sure if I will or if I'll restart them, not too happy with them at the moment. Thanks d00d

ಠ_ಠ

good start bullet the car is going pretty nice . keep up :)

Hey! It's my car, Bullet just comments a lot :P

Hey! your my mate too...so Im allowed to comment as much as I want :P and I will of course take complete credit for the car...as it should be bahahahaha

cheers bullet

Haha, wanna take credit for all my other unfinished work too then mate? :P

yep you bet and you can have mine too bahahahahah

I've tried my hand at putting a car on the image, bloody hard stuff with the way I plan to do it >_<

Used the Artega for this one, cause I'm not entirely sure if Ill be able to finish the McLaren in time, I'm running into troubles all over the damn thing :p


Click to enlarge, again for full
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w...h_untitled.jpg

Glad to see some still in it, its not that easy are you going to use a light dome for the reflection...........dave

No idea man, this is the first time I've done anything like this... I'm thinking the best way to do it would be to model the bridge and texture it to match the image, then hide the bridge when I render so it just gives reflections but doesn't look like crap

When you do that the easest way is to select the bridge then go to the attribute spreed sheet and turn of the primery visibiltty it will still show reflections..........dave

Acid44, you need to be using Image Based Lighting for your scene, or you will never be able get the car to match lighting of the photo background. "IBL" is in your Mental ray attributes.

Thing is, I'm not using Maya for the renders, I'm using KeyShot. Keyshot is pretty much made for studio renders, using HDR's for lighting, and only HRD's, so Im still trying to figure out all the different settings

Is keyshot really that flexible for this kind of challenge like you said its meant for studio type shots

At this point in the challenge deadline I'd rather try to figure it out in KS then learn MR :P

I am making progress though, I've somewhat figured out the lighting/reflections, now it's just a matter of making it look believable. Hopefully I'll have something to post tomorrow

Cheers Acid44, cant wait to see what the final will look like!

Thanks man

Going with a different image taken on the same day, from the same bridge. This time it's of the highway running under the bridge though. This one seems a lot easier to work with, especially with the HDR. Should be done sometime tonight, but have a preview for now

Click to enlarge, again for full

Base image
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w...DSCI0006-1.jpg

With Artega
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w...tega_GT142.jpg

hope you make it!! dude LOL PMSL what IS with the Mexicans bahahahahaha and you had a pic removed!!! bahahahahaha naughty man

Thanks man ;D And what about Mexicans and pics removed? ಠ_ಠ

EDIT: Getting pretty close to what I want for a final render, just a few small adjustments now, then I'll be rendering and, hopefully I'll have time to get it into Photoshop before I get too tired ;D

EDIT 2: Save file got screwed up, gotta start the render set up over from scratch :mad:

EDIT 3: Started the render scene over, starting to get close to being happy with it (remember that there is much to be done in PS after)

Screenshot from Keyshot (Still not sure about colour)

You know the deal, click it, then click it again ;D
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w...ntitled155.jpg

Awesome stuff Acid44! Looking really good. I like the color. It just needs a stronger specular to match the other cars, and some light on those headlights.

Gonna be fixing the levels and such in PS, as well as adding headlights and anything else I come up with

Just waiting for the final render to finish now so I can start putting it together:ninja:

i belive the car should be slightly smaller and u miss the hard shadows too :) .

Shadows are being done in photoshop (having trouble with them though), and I checked the cars scale compared to the Ford Taurus behind it and it's just about perfect (spent hours scaling it) :P

Here's a preview of how the final may look, shadows are wrong though, and I cant figure out how to do the headlights :S

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w...M_Compcopy.jpg

I think the shadow should be a tad softer, and the road line should shine through more, if you compare to the other two places where a white line is covered by shadow. I agree with THX about needing more specular, I don't know if you can change that at this point. Maybe just dodge the roof and right side. For the headlights you could try dodge as well, but I dunno how well that will work. Good luck!

I couldn't figure out a good way to do headlights, using the dodge tool gave me bad results because of the black spots in the headlight area. But I have fixed the shadow, and brightened up the car a tad to try to match the lighting a bit better to the other cars in the scene

I think this will be my final entry, unless I can find a way to do the headlights/generally improve it. Thanks for the help guys, and good luck to all who finish ;D

Click to enlarge
http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w...Comp_Large.jpg

You could always copy some light from one of the other cars headlights, and paste them into your cars headlights.

Cheers Acid44!

I thought of that, but couldn't find anything that matches the picture well enough to pass it off. Thanks man

I actually tried it and I thought it looked pretty good, although I had to scale the light bits to match the size of your cars headlights. It still looked pretty decent IMO, but if your content with how it looks already then more power to ya.

Cheers Acid44!

Hmm, now it seems I'll have to try it again, maybe there is some hope after all :P

The side is looking pretty good now! The roof I think could be more fully brightened, the other cars seem to have the highlight over more or less the whole roof.

Fixed the roof, still can't get the headlights right though. Gonna go with this for my final image, 1920x1080 here, small version will be in finals thread

Click to enlarge

http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w...mp_Large-1.jpg

Sorry to hear about the headlights Acid44, the entry still looks great. Best of Luck!

Gotta get back to my project............

Thanks man, just couldn't get it looking right :(