ORION,

Word

Spinnenbein,

Check PM.

a LOL render..

Notice the Stratos replica in the background

Hmm, I'm often seeing the same old trick over and over; the reflective floor or the white floor with shadow.
I'm really looking forward to someone making a realistic scene to place the car in. For example a car show. I doubt it has to be complicated to make one. It's all about a couple of walls and lighting mainly.

its honestly not that hard.. i dont get why yall try and do the whole mirror ground.. thats unreal, rarely will you ever see a car sitting on a mirror.. plus, (especially having to do with LFS models) whats the use.. its not like there is anything to see on the underside of the LFS cars..

just do a scene setup.. like my cars :S
or do a real one and have the whole thing rendered with grass and all.. but thats a pain lol, but its definetly worth it

but actually sam; the actual lighting and stuff.. is extremely hard to get it right, anyone can put an omni and a white plane above the car.. and thats all that ian's scenes are.. simple and to the point, but tbh.. like you said, its just the same old trick over and over.. (in other words.. i cant stop yawning)

oh and speaking of ranting off everyones scenes lol the thing that really bugs me personally is seeing HDRIs being used in scenes (like ian's scenes) in a closed up "cloth" area.. i mean.. honestly.. wtf.
if a car is reflecting something outdoors.. 100% of the time.. its OUTDOORS!

(not trying to sound mean, just put a point into everyones head)

It doesnt have to be difficult. I work in a theatre, basic lighting that can reach great effects consists of only 2 colors. (Lee 201 and Lee 165.) Blue and Orange. They are 2 contrasts, blue is cold and orange is warm. If you put these lights in front with these 2 colors, you'll get a great effect. You can vary the relation of blue to orange to get a colder or warmer look.
Dont forget to add a light opposite to the current lights you've created to give the object some depth.
Add a gentle white floodlight or omni if needed.

Nuse, whilst I appreciate your comments about the renders (and Sams too), and I realise you are already a far better modeller and user of Max than I am (or perhaps ever will be), I get the feeling you're going around here trolling the rendering section at times.

All of us who are producing renders of LFS cars, however boring you might find, put quite a lot of time into the renders to make them better. And yes, I think a plain boring background and simple lighting is the best way to go for such scenes, as you are trying to show a particular car with a particular skin or feature.

As much as you may know, or think you know about lighting, I don't see you producing anything LFS related for anyone. I don't see any well lit scenes from you. I don't see anything other than boringly lit, pale blue car body shells on a plain background. Thats irony for you.

I don't mean to be personal, but each time I read your opinions on the renders produced here, mine or not, I just get more and more angry. I admit I'm not very good at modelling, lighting or materialing, but I'm trying my best, and that is what makes it fun for me. A few people like the work I have done for them, and that is great too. But when all you do it put it down with rarely a positive comment I begin to think that maybe it's not worth the bother...

Who knows if I speak for anyone other than myself. But please Nuse, lighten up a bit, and review the renders fairly and kindly. Constructive critisism is good, but basic psychology means you have to temper the crit with a positive comment once in a while.

thats quite alright lol but no ones ever asked anything from me either

i mean im not trying to sound negative or anything i just want someone.. just one person.. to atleast try and be different and learn how to get different lighting and make it real looking, im not tryting to brag that im 'good' with lighting, because im not that great, i havent had any time really to work with lighting (or never really wanted to yet.. didnt see any reason to) but with as many people here, you'd atleast think someone would try and kick it up a knotch

sniiki here has been doing a good job of doing that, but problem is.. no ones really trying to improve from what i can see which kinda saddens me because like in the edited pictures thread .. someone is always trying to do the best.. here its just.. okay well.. whatever
so.. ya

Imo there's also a bit truth in Nuse's words, Im not enjoying those renders with white background THAT much either. Ok, maybe it's because I do highly prefer dark colors as wallpaper (black mostly, maybe some blue/red in it), but anyhow it gets a bit boring because anyhow they all look the same - more or less.
It's true that many people here showed a nice improvement in their works, like tristan for example, and their renders look really great, but all in all - no matter if good or bad - those cars on white background look all the same in a way. Because they are all on white background

Yea, I have not rendered anything for like ages, and I have forgotten most stuff already. And yeah, Im actually a bloody noob - I have NEVER done any HDR render, I dont even know how to do this, and I have done 1 or 2 shadow test renders in vray - everything else is pure crappy scanline default render.

But if you ask me, you don't really need THAT much "3dsmax" skill to render some model into a photo. It's more about general imagination and "seeing skills". Really difficult to explain what I mean...
Well, you must learn to start seeing instead of watching, see and understand how lighting works, and try to imagine how it would work in your scene.
This is really difficult, but learnable
Like kidcodea says (who obviously simply rocks bigtime with all gfx stuff he does), its only work that stands between what you want and what you achieve.

In my renders, I have just placed some lights until it looked good :]

To get back to those "3dsmax" skills...
Nuse definetely got some nice models around, but I dont understand why he likes modeling more than making complete projects. It's always a good idea to complete things if you want to work as artist later. People will think you cant make it 'til the end otherwise.
I personally always need to finish something, otherwise it feels like "wasted time". Also, Im just curious as hell to see things evolving and developing


So, I think XCN's crits are not really some sort of moaning, it's rather the strange way an artist thinks
Maybe he has the same problem like me - finding things boring or even annoying if you see them too often.

Hi there just wanted to show my latest xrr for the kyoto ring
i took off the whiperblades so i can run half a kph faster(who needs whiperblades in LFS anyway?)

hm. as I am still new to rendering I'd like to post some of my renders for U'r critics... it is welcome and I'll appreciate it

one includes my own changes at FZR (cabrio)

My latest skin. Basically it's very much like my previous work (based on the same skin). Some may find the car somewhat clean and empty due to the lack of sponsors all over it, but that's just the way I like it. I did experiment a bit with the usual decals (HKS, Recaro, Brembo,...) and adding a car number, but it looked like crap in my opinion.

Still having difficulties with the lighting in 3dsmax/brazil. The sides are somewhat too dark and the top too light (the yellow is a lot darker in reality). I tried lowering the skylight brightness and adding a spotlight on the sides, but that gave even worse results. Tires became grey. By removing the skylight and reflective plane the lighting was quite well with just one spotlight, but due to the absence of the cool highlights (by the reflective plane) it looked like plastic. I did over 50 320x240 (trial user ) renders with different lighting setups, but none were satisfying. Maybe I'll just ask Morrow to do some sweet renders. His scenes have the darkness I like, while still retaining all details and no noise... and those rims, yummie

XCNuse & ORION: I too like dark backgrounds, but you must realize that not everyone is a 3dsmax lighting expert. I'm still far from satisfied with the lighting in my scene (actually I think it sucks), but with over 50 renders of the same scene with different lighting and still not a better result I gave up. I use 3dsmax only for those few Live For Speed car renders. I'm not planning to spend a lot of time in learning the tricks of the trade: I have plenty of other more important things to do.

I just think it's great scenes like Ian.H's ds Autos (which I used) are made available to the public so everyone, not even skilled 3dsmax'ers can get quite well looking results in little time. And true, they don't look as sweet as renders by Morrow for example, but your not gonna tell me Morrow is a 3dsmax newbie

On the other hand I also think it's great people like Morrow, tristan and others are offering their services to everyone wanting a nice looking render.

Spiritik: The blue/white combo is clean, simple, yet effective. However, the bottom side stripe ends a bit awkward at the rear. On the red/black combo the M Power logo is way too large (or placed at the wrong place).

true, but what im trying to get at, is that if you dont really want to learn what 3dsmax is all about, then why do preset renders?
its like buying an ice cream cone, only using the ice cream for something cold, rather than eating it; just a waste

Because it gets the job done. Not as good as it could be, but more than well enough taking the time you spent on it in account.

If I didn't have the preset scenes, my best shot would have been a screenshot from the CMX viewer. A render looks quite a bit better than the viewer, so I did improve.

Maybe you use 3dsmax for your living, or maybe it's your hobby. I don't know. The point is that some people couldn't care less about 3dsmax, lighting,... but still would like to get great looking renders for their cars. If they really understand nothing of the process, they can ask people like tristan to render their car (I can't remember seeing you offering such a service). If they understand a bit of it, they can use a preset scene and modify it to their needs to the extent of their limited knowledge on the subject (like I did). Is that wrong? I don't think so... Or do you want to say that when you don't want to learn 3dsmax you shouldn't want good looking renders either?

Well, in that case I hope you're an allround DIY man. You want a house, build it yourself because if you can't, you won't get one. You need an application, program it yourself because if you can't, there will be no program.

There's no way one can do everything he would like to do. People have different interests, lack of time, different capabilities,... And you have to respect that because you are just one of these people too.

I keep toying with the idea of making a nice scene for renders thats a bit more real. The trouble is that it'll take a long time to make something I'm happy with, and then I'll end up doing lots of renders with it, and it'll become samey.

If I was doing this for a living I wouldn't be pumping out renders left right and center, and so each project would have a unique scene, but it's just not possible (sensibly) for rendering people's skins. Hence the 'boring' scenes.

I am currently (when I have time) attempting a few things to make scenes a bit different even with a boring background. Some are easy (just done a nice one now ), whilst others are harder. If I had the skills I'd love to knock of a new scene each time that was lit nicely and quickly, but it's not going to happen.

lol no ones making you render skins for people tristan, thats your choice
but speaking of realistic scenes.. hey.. it just takes time and patience, same for everything else

just look at it this way; do that and i promise you will learn a LOT from doing it, and in turn will help you even more.
same with modeling, it took me how long to make part of that porsche 944 with as little detail as i gave it, and now i can do about the same thing in less time with .. tons of detail
just takes practice and patience

but i mean there is a difference from just rendering a skin; to rendering.. an actual scene, thats what im learning now for my ferrari 412p so i will know how/what to do next time and can learn from it, plus.. just a plain old render of a car in a bowl shape area with a rectangular "light" over it just .. isnt realistic in a sense to me (yes they do do that.. but you never see that)

little side of me here: i see rendering as art; the main reason i got into all of this is because when i was little i liked playing with legos (as most children have for however many generations) and then got a little into plastic models, and for a while now i just plain enjoy taking pictures that capture time and light and emotion.. thats why im remaking a section of Le Mans for my 412p project to capture the emotion of that time and place of Le Mans 1967; the year that Ford proved Ferrari that anyone... even in a time of high speed cars, that records can be broken by the small guy
but thats just me, i really think you should get into recreating real scenes though tristan, i know you have the potential (or atleast the optimism that many other people that render seem to lack)

the idea behind the Render My Skin topic is that people get to see their high quality skin on a high quality rendered image, instead of the shitty LFS Viewer views..
I dont see a reason making realistic scenes for people just having a better view of their skin..
I could make a realistic VRay scene that would take 53 hours to render(thats how long my latest architectural renderings took to render (each)) but whats the use? I would only do that for my team's skin, not anyone elses.. I'm getting payed alot of money to do that job, and i wouldnt do that for free..

ps. i've been playing with lego too when i was a kid, and look at me now.. im studying Architecture..!

lol keep in mind ramtech this is the renders thread, not the render my skin thread and once again, no one said you have to render their skin

nobody's posting renders on white planes here.. i thought we were talking about the "render-my-skin" forum..
Anyways, i didnt say im not happy rendering skins for people.. I'm doing it for the ppl here, cause we are a community, and its good to help eachother!

Picture vs modeled:
http://users.evtek.fi/~anttimak/lfsx/bridgevs.jpg

Nice Sniiki..just wonder, no driver ?

yeah would look better with driver in

nice sniiki.. nice

Quote from GianniC :

Nice Sniiki..just wonder, no driver ?

That will be PS guy's work