Place highlights the best in max! :- ) wish maya had it haha
We’re doing a lot of car jobs too and like others have said. Cad data is provided for most of them and there is a lot of post involved. But like koso I like to do produce good looking render (for the amount of time I have) before post gets the files.
Lighting is a mix of IBL /HDR Studio/ Vray area lights. Depending on what is needed.
Is your nickname in any way related to Ralph Richter?
I’m pretty sure its him :- )
Hi Kosso,
Some really nice info here! Yes I have witnessed good and bad hdri’s myself, I put it down to incorrect use of ptgui,
Junf Von Matt, I can imagine it to be very insightful to be a fly on the wall there! And very cool to know how different render quality can be,
I’ll have to check those scripts out!
Cheers Kosso, Nice Feeback,
Alistair
Ok then guys, lets add some extra related questions into the mix, little more specific to car work,
Render Pass Compositing, Useful passes for compositing/ retouch, how do you use different passes in post, which are the most valuable other than mattes,
Micro Noise / Surface Imperfections, is much of this going on in commercial ad work?
Tires, Modelled or displaced tread? Whats preferred? What works best?
Camera backplate matching? techniques, matching settings of something complex, like an Alpa stitch on a phase-one back, guesswork? or are there real values we can use for sensor size and lens,
The Max perspective match tool seems hit or miss, I could be using it wrong, Or are shots just matched creatively by eye, or backplates worked in retouch to match the car?
Horizontal and vertical shift, are these used creatively on shots to skew perspective?
Who picks the heights angles and lens’s, I know car company’s do this sort of thing for photography but is it the same in cgi? does the cg artist get a say?
Vray Sun or direct light, for boosting Sun power? Plus creating crisp shadows, what opinions are there on this?
What cool location rigs are available for cgi work? Real life rigs not talking about cgi rigging,
Is anyone cgi rigging their cars for easy positioning? Ie suspension, ride height, wheel angle, speed, lights on / off, doors open/closed I can imagine this to be handy in a little menu, but is the work involved just overkill?
Modo with vray is anybody going to switch? Modo seems the perfect tool for automotive work to me, modelling, retopology, etc, will it be as well integrated as in max? Also an osx version would be nice!
Hope this is aloud to be posted in the same thread,
Cheers,
Alistair
Hard to say really. In my experience this strongly depends on the retoucher who does the final artwork. Some retouchers demand different passes than others. But in the end, they all basically need Lighting, GI, Reflection, Refraction, Specular, sometimes SelfIllum. Other passes are optional. A friend of mine is freelancing as retoucher, he does crazy stuff using the raw reflection pass. He abuses it in my eyes, but hey, the results were nice 
Mostly dictated by the manufacturer. Mercedes had no problem with that back then, for Audi this is a no-no nowadays.
Modelled treads, but displaced sidewall details. I set the displacement to static, which renders quite quick. For spinning tyres, the displacement is disabled, because you can barely see it.
Often the photographer uses a stand in car on the set and can provide details like camera height, distance to front wheel center, lens etc. The perspective match tool does work very well, if you can find enough lines in the backplate. Also, there is the somewhat hidden camera match tool. Saved loads of work for me and is one of the things I can not find in Maya.
Never used it for cars. This is more common in architecture I think.
Mostly the car companies. Had the case where I needed to render the new M-Class for an ad campaign. The camera angles were set up and provided by the M-Class product manager of MB. The photographer had no influence on this.
Direct light. Reason is that you give a certain color to the direct lights. I then make three lights, one red, one blue, one green. Each with slightly different settings or position. I then render these with the raw shadow pass. This will result in colored shadows in that pass, which you can easily select in PS using the color channels. Basically a mask for each shadow…
Because I am working for print, I do not need these rigs. Only thing I do is make a little setup for spinning wheels and for steering. I need that for rendering them with motion blur. Some dataprep companies like RTT can provide groups and helpers for this, but in general this is all a big mess. In Max at least, because they do it for Maya.
Max ftw! I am the only one in my company who is using it, everyone else uses Maya. And to be honest, I can see no point in that. Everything seems to take ages in that software, even simple tasks are overly complicated. Also, Max has a whole lot of neat features out of the box which Maya does not have. Again, this is for print, not animation.
Please start numbering those questions 
1 Light, Specular, Reflection, Reflection Filter, Normal, Bump Normal, Depth, Mask per material - No GI its bit pointless for cars. Unles its architecture but then I would not render GI for car.
2 Depend on artist. I build up my shaders and now after few years they are quite compelx using procedural textures and triplanar projections with details dirt and so on no AO tho. I use different softwares so I make sure all its compatible
3 Usually comes as CAD but if no then model
4 Bye eye or have box or triangle in backplate to match to
5 yea its random. Sometimes it works sometimes it dont. Just match 500 backplates and youll get a hang of it
6 Yea they are used a lot. If so then ure screwed as they are one of the hardest to match
7 Not really… more like Art Director. Usually you match it do backplate…
8 Yea can work. Or area light very far away
9 What rig are you talking about? I’m lost
10 I write a script a while a go for it. I use it till now :- )
11 Not sure…
A lot of work that the big companies do is to make sure there is fluent workflow. If there is a shader that is being reused 1000x then they are worked on and refined over time. Same with scripts. Learn python its very powerfull tool. I script now for maya, photoshop, vred and soon Nuke. The time it saves is insane… My entire render workflow system is fully automatic as well as stacking renders in photoshop…
If you are going to invest in cars make sure you can automate as much as you can.
Automatically stacking renders! Oh, how much time it would save… Never tried doing it, though.
Its. Epic. : p Specially when I get around 150-200 render layers for each car out of my render script…
Could you share some insights on how it was done? I mean, every render has a different name, are the layers filtered for specific names like *reflection* etc? Come on, how does the magic work?
150 render layers for each car? Sounds like a whole bunch of overlays for each car. Why is that?
I mean, The Scope has a workflow like a traditional car photographer would shoot a car: Light each part seperately. Headlights, wing mirrors, grille etc. This results in about 20-30 seperate renders for each car, is your workflow somewhat similar?
Heya
Hehe yea I have some cleaver ways of finding renders in my folder :- )
As to layers well its like photographer does it… it just 1 light pass produce 3 sub passes (diffuse/refl/specular). I also have extra set ups for reflection planes, motion cameras, shadow, interiors and so on. It took me 3 months to code it all. PS was a bit easier so that got wrap up in 3 days ^^
Yep I work for Ralph Richter. I do most of the cg stuff for him.
Render Pass Compositing, Useful passes for compositing/ retouch, how do you use different passes in post, which are the most valuable other than mattes,
We usually use the beauty pass as basis for our post work. And add passes like reflection/refraction on top with heavy uses of masks. Sometimes reflections are even painted from scratch because you wouldn’t get them any other way or at least not without a lot of headaches. We had to do a job with a mini once and the client wanted a certain reflection on the hood to outline some kind of form that isn’t even there on the original car. In the end the client was happy but to us it just looked off and unpleasing
Micro Noise / Surface Imperfections, is much of this going on in commercial ad work?
I sometimes try to slip it in but most of the times clients don’t want any imperfections on their car.
Tires, Modelled or displaced tread? Whats preferred? What works best?
Modeled tire but the side details displaced/or bump depending on the perspective. But you don’t always have a modeled as an option so we had 1 or two cases where we used photos of real tires and “cloned stamped” the details in. All in all you use what you can.
Camera backplate matching? techniques, matching settings of something complex, like an Alpa stitch on a phase-one back, guesswork? or are there real values we can use for sensor size and lens,
At least for us most of the time its guess work because sadly nowadays clients rely on stock footage and they send a link with the background they’d like and not always camera values are known. Or we get a premade background where someone already distorted the perspective. But I’m sure this is different for all of us.
The Max perspective match tool seems hit or miss, I could be using it wrong, Or are shots just matched creatively by eye, or backplates worked in retouch to match the car?
I don’t like the max perspective tool. I used it once or twice and I never get a good conversion to a vray cam. The perspective is always off.
Horizontal and vertical shift, are these used creatively on shots to skew perspective?
We never had to use it.
Who picks the heights angles and lens’s, I know car company’s do this sort of thing for photography but is it the same in cgi? does the cg artist get a say?
Sadly the brief usually has pretty strict guidelines on perspective etc. So we have little room to be creative. But if we see something that might work better we do a quick mock up and send it to the agency. And we had a few jobs where the client was using teamviewer to finalize the perspective with us.
Vray Sun or direct light, for boosting Sun power? Plus creating crisp shadows, what opinions are there on this?
No real answer for that it depends on what is needed. Sometimes we just check how the shadow would fall in CG but paint it in photoshop.
What cool location rigs are available for cgi work? Real life rigs not talking about cgi rigging,
I have to get some feedback on this I know my boss likes to work with 1 special company, but I forgot the name.
Is anyone cgi rigging their cars for easy positioning? Ie suspension, ride height, wheel angle, speed, lights on / off, doors open/closed I can imagine this to be handy in a little menu, but is the work involved just overkill?
For stills that would be overkill. I only did 1 rig for an animation and that is 2 years ago.
Modo with vray is anybody going to switch? Modo seems the perfect tool for automotive work to me, modelling, retopology, etc, will it be as well integrated as in max? Also an osx version would be nice!
Not really we do alot more than automotive and modo doesn’t seem ready yet to make the switch. Additionally from the few times I used it I didn’t like it one bit. Their materialsystem really annoys me
I tend to stick to TotalLighting, Refraction, Reflection, Specular, and then maybe an AO pass with VrayDirt, but that often just leaves the shutlines looking too pronounced.
Other than that, just loads of multimattes to mask off each component.
No harm in a bit of that, as long as it’s not overdone. Some clients want a bit of imperfection to add to the realism of the shot. Some want their cars to look perfect.
Modelled always works best, no question.
There are real values you can use for a Phase One sensor. Off the top of my head it’s 51mm wide.
But usually, it’s just about making it look good, rather than matching to the millimetre.
Never used it. Sorry.
The camera match tool can be useful occasionally though, especially if you can get some kind of reference object in your shot.
Not in my experience, no.
The car companies will often be fairly clear on the sorts of angles they want to shoot, and then it’s up to the photographer and creative director to make it work.
Whether you’ll get a say as a CG artist will depend on the photographer and CD.
I’d maybe do a separate render with a VRaySun beforehand just for the shadow, but probably not use it in the scene with the HDR.
Ideally you’d have an HDR with a high enough range to give you a decent shadow.
Grant Warwick’s done a very interesting tutorial on HDR lighting as part of his Mastering VRay series, in which he deals with that very problem. I’d definitely check that out if you haven’t already.
I’m not 100% sure I’m clear on what you’re asking here, but if you mean a CGI dolly, then there are a few different places that do them. I know a couple of photographers that have built their own, or else there are people like Move and Shoot that hire them out.
Only the wheels, as you’ll often need them spinning, or the front wheels turned. Anything else is overkill for stills.
No chance. Just like Oliver said above, I found the material system infuriating. I’m happy to stick with Max, and the extra bugs they give us every year!
Cheers,
John
Specular, Reflection, Refraction, Normal, Mattes per material, matte shadow. Mostly depend on the retoucher, I have colleague that don’t use anything (they are use to work with photo, so they trace their matte and retouch without passes).
I rarelly had to add any imperfection, lot of car manufacturer want the car to be perfect.
Modelled tyres with bump for the side.
match camera spec (if known) otherwise by eyes.
But 50% of the time, I do a camera angle study (with or without the photographer), then the photographer matches my angles.
A lot of the time, the car doesn’t match the backplate, either because it wasn’t shot as intended or because it look better.
nope never used it
All depends on project and photographer
most of the time I would do it as it is better to pick the angle before the shoot as it saves money and because most of the time, their isnt the car..
Some car manufacturer do angle study internally, then give you a set of angles that are approved, so they need to be matched. GM does that. I use to work there and was selecting these angles.
Depnds on shot and client, some like hard shadow, some don’t. So either shadow created from the hdri of soft light or a directional for hard shadows.
I sometime rig the car, specially for dynamic shot, but most of the time, no need.
I have colleague using Modo for automotive jobs, but at the time they creat only environments and props, mainly because all the CAD data is provided as a Maya file.
Just to add something about the hdri, you never use the raw hdr, all the nice images you see, are usually using a modified HDRi, sometime using a combinasion of several hdri (example: http://www.cgifocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Ford\_UsedApproved\_1.jpg there are 4 or 5 hdri merged).
Also it was mentioned how German car images are a bit more bling. They love to have strong reflection making the image hyper realist. Also it is mainly down to the photographer’s style and you will notice it is always the same 3 or 4 photographers. American also like the extra strong reflection.
Yannick
Thanks for this Info Yannick very insightful! Reallly nice work on your website two, any info on exactly how these hdri’s would be merged? i notice they are all at a similar location but different areas of the place?
Cheers
Alistair
Hi John, Thanks for your feedback again, really helpful,
I tend to stick to TotalLighting, Refraction, Reflection, Specular, and then maybe an AO pass with VrayDirt, but that often just leaves the shutlines looking too pronounced.
Other than that, just loads of multimattes to mask off each component.
How well does the Totalighting, Refraction, Reflection, Specualar comp together? Is it a perfect match
I’d maybe do a separate render with a VRaySun beforehand just for the shadow, but probably not use it in the scene with the HDR.
Ideally you’d have an HDR with a high enough range to give you a decent shadow.
Grant Warwick’s done a very interesting tutorial on HDR lighting as part of his Mastering VRay series, in which he deals with that very problem. I’d definitely check that out if you haven’t already.
Yeh excellent videos from grant warick especially the hdri one for boosting the sun and matching things up
I’m not 100% sure I’m clear on what you’re asking here, but if you mean a CGI dolly, then there are a few different places that do them. I know a couple of photographers that have built their own, or else there are people like Move and Shoot that hire them out.
Yeh I’m talking about company’s like move and shoot here, they offer a cgi dolly on their website, then under the accessory’s they offer some kind of moving hdri add on for the dolly?
No chance. Just like Oliver said above, I found the material system infuriating. I’m happy to stick with Max, and the extra bugs they give us every year!
Yeh Ive been having a look at modo, but have the same opinion, the material editor is very odd, please give us a normal one!
Although you see some fantastic images being produced with it, so still reluctant to give up on it,
Thanks again
Alistair
The passes usually give you beauty if u stack them in 32 bit. Once u drop down to 16/8 u get miss match. I normally dont care about it as my renders looks bad and I mostly care about the retouching part.
Hi,
I have merged hdri from completely different location, like taking the sky from on location, the sun from another one and blending it to a third location.
This is all done in Photoshop (Extended) with a mix of exposure filter and cloning tool. The trick is to have hdri with the same level of intensity and colours, if there are not you have to bring them to the same range of value with exposure, saturation filters and masks.
Another thing, is that I never only use and hdri to light my cars, I have always a few rec light with texture mapped to underline the car’s curves/
Yannick
Sorry to bring up this old thread - although I haven’t read through the whole thing i must say it is incredible interesting still now though!
I am having trouble with a scene of five cars, about which you can read here
https://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthread.php?94270-Car-CAD-data-to-Proxy
Any suggestions on this from those who also work with cars? Would be very much appreciated!