Quote from BastianB :

i want them to shine like they are on...btw what i mean are the front-lights of the car

Is that what you want to acheive?
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=143119#post143119
I did them in Mental Ray with Glare for the glow.
I did a mask on the texture map to mask off just the lights and put that mask on illumination map slot, so that the headlamp/rear light texture illuminates.
I put 2 spot lights at the headlamp and use 'Environment'>'volume light', so you can see the cone shape of the lights
On the spot light set up, I used 'far attenuation' to control the spot light's fall off strength. And I did a 'gradient ramp' map to create the headlamp refract pattern with a little amount of noise, then put this map to the spot light's 'Projector Map' slot. That is how I created the light pattern on the floor to simulate light refractions.

This is the sort of clouds I used to do many years ago by using mix layers of noise map.
It doesn't look realistic, but the advantage is that you can animate the movement and changing shape of clouds.

Quote from LineR32 :

..The Z is backwars btw..

I think he tries to incorporate the F and Z together so that is why the Z looks back to front

They look rough probably because the AA setting is low.
Nice area light effects but have you turned on the indirect lighting? it doesn't seems to have light bounced back to the darkest shadow area.

The garage owner broke the law. The cars should not park at the zebra crossings

Nice work and big contributions to the LFS community
Sorry I have a few comments...I hope you don't mind.
I have only downloaded and looked at the FZR settings. To my opinion, it is a bit dark, especially on the side and rims.

The map used on the skylight doesn't do much in this setting, because it is not using that image for environment reflection. It can do with just adjusting the colour of the skylight. Also I have notice that you have used 'screen' for the 'environ mappings', you should use either spherical or cylindrical for proper wrap around environment.

The rim at the moment is highly reflective raytrace material which only reflecting what the ground colour is, so if the ground is brighter, the rim will look brighter too.
I have replaced it with a Arch & Design material, medium blur glossiness/reflective.

I also replaced the floor with similar material to the rims, but with AO switched on. I have noticed that you have set the FG quite high, but for scene like this, you can reduce it down especially with reflective objects.
That is why I only turned on the AO on ground material, so that it gives a nice soft defused shadow underneth the car to compensate the lower FG details.

Your original file took 5 mins to render, and the modified image took 2.5mins to render. That is the difference it makes.

Anyone who downloaded the files and try to put skins to the car paint material, please remember, to get a good result, add the skin to both 'base colour' and 'light facing colour' slots. To be even better, darken the skin slightly for the 'light facing colour' slot.


My modified file is done in 3ds max 2008, so it is no good for many people. Therefore I will not submit anything up here. Especially bmwe30ms has already done such great work for starter.

bmwe30ms has done most of them.
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=898586#post898586

These 2 are the examples of glowing light.
One is the Mental Ray Glare
And the other is 'Effects' > 'Glow' You will need to assign either a 'Object ID' or 'Material ID' for the Glow Effects to recognise what to glow. For example, assign your light object with 'Object ID 2' and when setting up Glow effects, click on Object ID, and put 2 in. Then adjust parameters of the glow with interactive button on. It will render your view and update the change of effect as you adjusting the settings.

Do you mean a halo glow around the light/illuminated object?
In Mental Ray you can use 'Glare lume'
Or you can use 'glow' in 'Effects'
Or 'lens effects' in 'video post'
Apart from the 'Glare lume', the other 2 methods can be found in 3ds max manual, very easy to apply.

It could be that the windows were missing when you manipulating the car by accident.
You do not often see the brake lights, reverse light, side indicators and reflectors glow at the same time. Try create a mask for your illuminate map to just illuminate the brake lights.

To save time in doing 3D projects, I normally turn off G.I. when modelling and fine tuning scene objects. Then test render G.I. light settings with low res render to check if the feel of the lighting is OK, even turning the AA down. So I can check the overall feel of the image very quick. For checking details, I will set the setting to at least medium, but only render a crop section of the image I want to check, again that would be quite fast because I don't need to render the whole image. Once I am happy, then I can render a reasonable size render (1024 x 768) for final checking. If that is OK. It can go ahead in full hi quality render.

Those renders are done with Global Illuminations.
I thought you prefer using few lights in the scene and not wanting AO switch on because it can render faster...
Global Illumination = high quality lighting render, and it will take very long to render (a lot longer than setting few lights only). I think if Bogey tells you how long it took to render each image, you may freaked out
However, it is worth the wait.

Well done Bogey. They are very nice renders.

Last edited by samyip, Wed, 13 Aug 2008 08:26.

Did you click on 'Shadow' in your light?

On the first render, you need to apply alpha mask to the brake disc.

He fixed it. converted to jpg.

well It looks like some conflict when you use direct3d for your display driver.
Easiest way to see if you can get round this problem is change your display driver to software and try again.
Goto 'Customize'>'Preference'>'Files', In Display Drivers, click 'choose driver...' If a 'direct3d driver setup' window come up, click 'Revert from Direct3d' and then it will allow you to choose 'software' as your driver.
Then assign the material again to see if it will work or not.
The Direct3d work for me as well, I have no problem at all.

Quote from Loko VEN :

like this.
http://bp0.blogger.com/_PNWHrg ... Ju5rTBs/s1600-h/Gran2.jpg

I use Vray. (sorry for the non-lfs render)

The metallic paint effect is too strong/noisy...
May be reduce your car paint's flakes setting.

What Tikshow said will work, it just that you misunderstood him. No you don't need more files.
check out this 3 simple steps. If it still not working then I can't help sorry.

Here are the 2 rendered images with different sampling settings to show the difference.
The low sampling one (-2) is more or less like what you had.
The higher setting (2) has made the edges and shadows much smoother.
Also what 'shadow type' you used for your light? If you use max's default shadow map type, you will have to make sure the map size is large. Otherwise it is pixelated. My own preference is to use raytraced shadow.
However I don't use the Brazil much. I mainly use Mental Ray. But this sampling settings theory apply to most renderers

Last edited by samyip, Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:04.

That could be the low antialias settings for the result of zig zag edges.
Set it higher and it will be OK.
In sampling settings of renderer tab, the sampling parameter is controling that. the higher number of 'Min' and 'Max' will give you much smoother line, but will take longer to render.
It may be 0,0, at the moment, so that is why your render turned out like that.

Quote from Nemox :

Version 2
Still not perfect though..
And the new truck and trailer skins are still being worked on, but it's getting there..

reverse the bump mapping on the wall. The grout should be 'in' not 'out'

Quote from drew555 :

Selecting the materials and where they go wasn't the issue really (the materials are all there, and labelled with where they go in these brackets>> [ ] ), it was the sheer number of materials there to be allocated. I suppose I was kinda hoping that I'd missed something simple, or there was a quick way of assigning them to all the right places at once.

If all the materials are in the scene assigned to the objects, than what is the problem? If it is the skin of the truck you want to edit, just use the eyedropper icon from the material editor to select the truck's body. Then the skin material of the truck will come up on the slot for you to edit.

Quote from R34king :

This was merely a test.

Of peoples Reactions

Don't try to cover up your cowardly behaviour

Quote from jonaz lindberg :

Here is what i've done today, not too great really but tell me what to improve and what you think about the whole idea

I know that all textures is gone :/

Shouldn't the head lamp be illuminated if the lights are on? It doesn't look right at the moment.

Quote from drew555 :

...when I open the material editor I cant find them, but if I click on the 'Standard' button in the material editor and select 'Scene' they are all there, nicely organised - with what appears to be designations as to which parts they go on (there is something like 100 seperate materials listed, so I'm sure you can appreciate going through them one at a time is a bit much)...

You don't see it in the material editor doesn't mean the materials not there. The material editor is just like a paint palette that you can recall any material on the slot to work on, and they kept in the memory. The maximum slots you can have is 16. It doesn't mean that you can only have 16 materials in the scene. I have worked in a scene with hundreds of materials. they don't have to all show up in the material editor.
When you start up a new file in max. The material editor is all blank(because no materials has created), then when you import a .3ds object to your scene, it doesn't automatically fill the material editor slots with its materials. You will have to highlight a free/new slot, then recall the selected object's material. One easy way is to use the eyedropper icon to select the material from the object. Any problems, please refer to the 3ds max manual. It is very clearly show you how to select materials.