Ford Mustang GT: Vray love!

[Buck]

here is the side view I'm working on. Render quality is a bit grainy for now.

Caustics from the wheels (and possibly the paint as well) will be below the car. Some of the materials are a bit off right now (the window trim is to bright!) and there are a few odd reflections around the fenders that I'll either deal with in 3d, or paint out. This one as well will be 11x14 when it's finished.

[DaForce]

I must say that is pretty nice

[ene.xis]

and that dust layer is a great touch!

though it looks a bit repetitive...
keep em comming!

[Morbid Angel]

love the rims

[Buck]

and that dust layer is a great touch!

though it looks a bit repetitive...
keep em comming!

That's actually the pattern on the silk above the car. The dust is so subtle you can hardly even see it when looking up close on the 4k render.

[sv]

would you be good enough to share some info on the lighting setup? I love the look at feel of these renders (and all your other stuff you've done at sway) and i've got to do my first car rendering soon, so am really keen to get some decent knowledge on how to set up such soft renders as these.

Most stuff we see is really sharp reflections and typical studio setups, but i love the feel of these shots - really soft and moody.

Any nuke work on these? Lens Flares?

[Buck]

The light setup is fairly simple. It's cards/disks with HDR images of softboxes, sliks, and other light sources mapped onto them. For the soft silks above, I have painted gradient ramps onto them, and painted brighter/darker areas on most of the others as well.

There are two actual area lights (diffuse only), but because this is a black car that doesn't really matter much accept for the plastics and the ground (ground is a seperate pass). Then it's just a matter of placing the cards around and playing with their intensities, sizes, painted gradients, and throwing in a few black cards to cut out areas of the softboxes.

[sv]

wow.
very true to life i suppose... incredible set up, (but you do work for sway)

When you say cards, presumably you mean a plane which illuminates light, or bounces light a lot - i.e. generate GI set to 3 or 5 or something?
I thought the only way to do IBL in Vray was through the DomeLight or the environment skylight - can you map HDR's onto plane/box objects etc?

Where did you get the HDR's of the softboxes? Are they publicly available? I'm really interested in getting my sticky mits on some to play around with.... debevec?

[Buck]

wow.
very true to life i suppose... incredible set up, (but you do work for sway)

When you say cards, presumably you mean a plane which illuminates light, or bounces light a lot - i.e. generate GI set to 3 or 5 or something?
I thought the only way to do IBL in Vray was through the DomeLight or the environment skylight - can you map HDR's onto plane/box objects etc?

Where did you get the HDR's of the softboxes? Are they publicly available? I'm really interested in getting my sticky mits on some to play around with.... debevec?

a combo of ones I have shot myself, and ones from work.

The cards are just a plane, and the disks are cylinders with all the faces but the cap deleted. (single sided disk polygon basically). Inside a VrayLight material is where you put the maps, and then in some of them I have opacity set in the light material so that the plane becomes additive (dark areas in the image won't darken the background behind the card/disk)

There isn't any GI, the only lights aren't visible to reflections, just diffuse (mostly for the shadows on the ground). This type of studio setup is more about the reflections than the actual diffuse light. Especially because it's a black car.

If you wanted to, you could make the cards/disks emit light by turning on GI, you could crank their GI generation (vray properties) higher to make them brighter. or you could stick a vray light infront of them in skylight mode (or was it behind them? i can't remember right now)

[sv]

buck - many thanks.
great work.
just one last question if i may:

we have a few softboxes at work and a HDR ball - if i were to take multiple photo's of the softboxes would you recommend using the Mirror Ball and making a light probe, or just taking a load of still shots of the softbox square on to use as a texture?

I'll have a play with this tomorrow.

Again, thanks - your work is inspirational - the superbowl advert was amazing, and the morphing truck was also superb. i'd like to show a lot more of my work on this forum, but the vast majority of it is white label so i can't, but we do a lot of moving geometry animations also. (but nothing quite like sway)

[Buck]

I'd take the HDRs of the soft box directly full frame, no sphere or fisheye. Two reasons for this, #1 you get a nice high res image, and #2 you can place it where ever you want. no point in using a studio HDR when you can't move the lights!!

You can do anything, I have used HDRs of windows (straight on HDR of just the window) with blinds, with out blinds, frosted glass or clear glass. Used the windows mapped onto cards in 'still life' setups. you can move the window where ever you want to get a nice highlight

[Morbid Angel]

I agree. Anywhere we can peek at those softbox hdris? or are they proprietery?

[mdi]

intresting idea on the softbox...Iv been trying somthing lately where I make a mask that softens the outer edge of an area light, somtimes it works well...other times it looks arse.

oh....great images btw

[Buck]

I agree. Anywhere we can peek at those softbox hdris? or are they proprietery?

Not sure about the ones from work, or the ones that I shot at work or on-set, but I have some others I could show. I'll get one of them up in the next few days.

[DaForce]

*waits patiently*