OK folks… heres something that has been on my mind.
I am sure this is a simple trick and has simple answers but I suppose I want to hear it from you guys…
Question:
1- How did he get the shadows so perfect… did he use Photoshop for post processing or is it done in a single shot.. (although it says postproduction on his image)
2- Did he do the lighting using HDRI?
3- AND how about the reflections… did he use a background to reflect it off his material???
What do you think..
Thanks
Leo
Suurland does frequent this forum so he may chime in and answer your question…
taken from Thomas´s homepage :
HDRI map SpheroCam: 3e-Oeil studio
so the reflection is a custom HDR taken with a spherocam.
No idea if he also used it for lighting tho
Thorsten
Yeah i was going to say hdri hdri hdri.
in theory should be pretty straightforward if you have the equipment, and are on location. execution though is another matter… hehe its a nice image.
I actually have a project that I am currntly working on… somthing that is very very similar…
The interesting thing that really seems insane is the way he did the shadows…
It looks so perfect… heres another image I found…
same/similar looks and maybe same solution…
although I do see a cheat where he actually hides the road and shadows…
everything else is perfect…
The reflection is from a HDRi map, the background is a photo. The Shadow is just uniform shadows from a skylight.
/Thomas
You can achieve similar results with a cheap chrome ball and taking pics of it at different exposures, then merging them using hdr conversion from photoshop cs 2 or hdrshop. This way ull have nice reflections, and if u have access to newer vray builds, you will be able to map this hdr image to a vray dome light for accurate lighting and sharp shadows.
Thomas,
“shadow is just uniform shadows from skylight”
I totally understand that and use that trick myself in most of my renders BUT… the thing that puzzles me is:
If you use a background environment image you dont get any plane to drop the shadows on. Did you postprocess the shadows and make them in photoshop?
I admire your work BTW great job.
Leo
i suppose that job had something like a camera-match, and uses a matte object to get the shadows on. then it is all composed.
Best regards,
nikki Candelero
screen mapping bg on ground plane
I’ve done this by making the object invisible to camera (in this case the car) but visible to shadows, then create a matte/shadow object that roughly lines up with the ground plane/other objects. Then, render out a shadow pass with the existing environment mapping and lights and comp it in Photoshop / Fusion.
By adjusting the opacity of the shadow layer you can match up the shadow level by eye. In theory you could also account for GI color spill by doing something similar with a GI pass as well, though I’ve never tried it.