I have been working on this render of an Aston Martin One-77 for a few days now and I’ve been staring at it for so long that I can’t tell how to improve upon it much more.
Tell me what you think about it and how I can increase the realism.
Something about the rims seems to give away that the car is CG, possibly the materials, I can’t quite place it. The headlight seems a little too small, and is also slightly elliptical. The wing mirrors should be a little taller (some reference shows them being only slightly taller than what they are now, some show them being almost a different shape, perhaps they are different model years) The shiny material around the windows should be a little less chromey (I think). From the reference I’ve seen, the seats look a little different to the ones you have in place. There is no fuel filler cap, and no key hole on the door handle. If you look closely at the tires, you can see edges, and there is no sidewall texture. You can also see edges on the front wheel arch. The headlights seem a little blurry through the glass too, and almost as if they are a texture. I really had to nitpick at times, so really great job
To add an extra bit of realism, I would switch out the Goodyear Eagle texture for something you would more likely find on a car of the caliber of the One-77. Those Eagles are fairly common tires (and that texture is found often on 3D models). The reference I found showed the car on Pirelli Pzeros, but I’m sure you could find some on Toyo’s, or anything similarly sporty.
I added a sub-surf modifier to the car body mesh to smooth out the wheel arch and vent. The mesh looks much better but the shading got a little weird in some places (like behind the front wheel arch, around the back wheel arch and on the hood). How can I fix this?
Good Job! I think the thing that makes it weird is that the background is the typical we are used to in car professional renders, but the lighting is not. So in my opinion you might add some studio lighting or mix the render with a real background because in the lighting (I supose its an HDRI) we can see figures like theres a world reflecting over the car and in this kind of renders the only thing you see is the car itself enhaced by a good studio lighting (also it would improve the front glass feeling)
What I’m really stuck on is the glass for the headlights. Suggestions on how to create a good looking headlights glass material? (Other than using the glass shader cuz it doesn’t seem to be working too well for this scene)
the car looks like a small model like a plastic kit model, though a very good one. it just looks like desk top sized. I don’t have any idea what the remedy for that would be, but if you call it a die cast model or something like that then I say it’s great. I think the newer photos look best. good work.
I got an extremely good glossy look in a game engine using a custom specular texture that was essentially a version of the base texture with the luminance turned way up. (I’d have desaturated it a bit too but it was all grey anyway.) Something like that might make the paint surface look more like clearcoat.
Farber2, I understand exactly what you mean. I think it looks like a desk-sized model too. I also don’t really have any idea how to fix it so today I just played around with the camera angle and DOF in attempt to increase the realism.
Sdighe, I applied the your glass material to the car and I think it looks way better than any material I could create on my own. Thanks for the help!
Today I added a license plate and worked on some compositing. Even though the car is British I put on a German style license plate because, why not? As a bit of a joke I also put the emissions testing sticker on the plate (the little red hexagon) because the car only gets an average of 6 miles per gallon which I can imagine is a nightmare for the environment.
I think what I need to work on now is the headlights themselves. How do you think I can increase the realism of the materials and the actual lights?
To much DOF. You want the background to be blurred not the subject. Also, what does your hdr look like, I doesn’t look like it’s a studio hdr, which is what you want in this situation.
I really love the model though. If you work a bit on your materials It will be awesome.
As far as the headlights go, I would make the material inside lighter and more metallic. Also, remodel the actual headlight cylinder to the correct shape (yours seems a little too conical)
Tardis, I understand what you are saying about the DOF but for this particular image the focus point is the front of the car. And I am not actually using HDR lighting. The lighting is a plane directly above the car with a gradient so the light starts to fall off at the hood and two supplementary lights on the either side of the car which makes the interesting reflections. I don’t know a single thing about studio lighting so maybe you could lend me some tips on how to create a studio lighting setup.
Sdighe, I will definitely modify the headlights as you suggested. Also, the inside material of the headlights is actually pretty light but the glass darkens it. I will try to fix it.