Quote from r4ptor :

btw: z-buffer works well in many cases, but is some times not very sufficient.

Also, z-buffer often doesn't contain transparency info, meaning that the DoF effect will be wrong through windows etc.

what I normally do is enable the 'material overide' in Mental Ray to set the whole scene in a standard opac material, then render the Zdepth pass. I also use that for render an A.O. pass.

When you disable it, it goes back to your original materials.

He should stated that he did not create the scene and lighting set up. He tried to take all the credit, but how embarrassing when someone else found out....

Hi Bogey,

I think for the scene you had here, there isn't much indirect lighting needed, because you already have strong light source from above and there isn't many objects (or any at all) for lights to bounce back to the car, if the car is in a large studio room then the chances for the light to bounce back is very minial. You could have lower your G.I. setting and probably still get the same result. (sorry I am not a blender user, but I think you are enable to do so)

I used to use 'light tracer' in 3ds max before, the result is very good and accurate, but it took many hours to render an image, I think that is simular to Indigo in this case. However, I have no patient in waiting, I am using Mental Ray (using Photons) more often now for still images.

In 3Ds max, you can use render elements and render out the Z-depth, adjust the Z-min and Z-max parameters and you will get the same alpha mask for your photoshop blur.

you can stop it tiling by disable the tile check box on your material's bitmap setting.
Your background is too bright/white for the reflection. All it is reflecting is white in the background!

I like the 1st image. Very stylish and different, although it wasn't intended to

I agree with XCNuse, it is easy to learn but take lots of practice to be good.
3Ds max's modelling tools are comprehensive for you to create anything very quickly.

If you want to buy it or down load learning edition, goto:
www.splutterfish.com

If not, don't ask!

Quote from dj-fluxsa :

Woops im to late again

You need to repair the rear bumper

Have you turn the glass material's tranparency setting right down? 100 is opaqe and 0 is transparent.

The image seems to be a bit washed out, what light did you use? may be the light is too intensed? try use only 1 Sky Light instead and try.

Here are some images I done b4 in Mental Ray with Glare effect long time ago. No Photoshop work needed.
The set up was 1 sky light for overall lighting, and 2 spot lights per each car's head lamp with little amount of volumetric light effects.

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=143119#post143119

Yes, the petrol station was a paid project for a client. Took 7 days (normal working hours) to model, textured, lighting set up, camera walkthrough and render the animation sequence.

Don't get luxuary of much time in reality. Pressure was quite high, so can't do everything in high details.

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=614772#post614772

These images are rendered with Mental Ray too.

Quote from LineR32 :

Didn't pay the bill for last month, i'm skint atm, so can't pay it till I get some spare cash.

May be you should charge for skin renders

Quote from kyler :

Ok here is my first mental ray render. There are a few problems the main one is the glass. 2nd one is the back ground and. 3rd one is the rims witch i plan on replacing.... =) what do i need to fix?

I have made a Max 7 scene that you can download and look at the materials of the car for glass or paint work. You can replace it with your own car and render.

For mental ray to render your scene nicely, you will have to have light source in the scene and enable 'Final Gather'.

see attachment 'draft FG render' for settings on draft work, the lower the 'Samples' are, the quicker it will render, but of course the quality is corse. Better to render drafts in 320 x 240 size.

Once you happy with your set up, see attachment 'quality FG render' for quality renders. the higher 'Samples' for the better quality, but will take very long to render.

see attachment 'environment background'. That is where you change your background colour or put an image.

here are 2 renders with reasonable quality FG setting

some car paint tutorials
http://www.3dlinks.com/Links.c ... 5&subsubcategoryid=47

Jaff Patton's materials collection
http://jeffpatton.net/Downloads.htm

Some metallic paint files by Jaff Patton
http://jeffpatton.net/Max6/index.html

here is an example of added Mental Ray's Glare effect

I had Max 7 too, and the car scene was on max 7, then I open them on 3ds max 2008.

No, not on max 7, but I know that someone has created a material preset of car paint, try google 'car paint shader for 3ds max download'

In 3ds max 2008, there is 'Car paint' shader for mental ray. That is all I used.
However, you can use raytrace shader and mix with fall-off to create realistic reflections.

Last edited by samyip, Mon 24 Dec 2007, 00:39.

I don't have MSN nor Xfire. I only use Mental Ray in Max, tried a little on Brazil before, but didn't like it, so I don't know much about it.
Here is a link of neon tutorial with Mental Ray, I am sure you can find more.
http://www.quality3dmodels.com ... x/neonlight/neonglow.html
and this one
http://www.tutorialized.com/vi ... ng-Mental-Ray-video/13583

Last edited by samyip, Wed 19 Dec 2007, 19:54.

You still can do the neon effects in 3ds max 7 with 'mental ray' renderer. There are lots of tutorial on the internet to show how to do neon with mental ray.

Quote from kyler :

Yes you all i have a question on about going with neon under a car how would i do that would i make a tube and put an neon out put on it but then how would i get the glow can somone tell me how????? thanks

You don't need to have any third party renderer to do glowing neon effects. The standard 'light tracer' or 'Mental Ray' from 3ds max can create the effects.

Here is a test render I did, only took 24 secs to render (Duo Core, with 4G ram) A very simple set up which takes only about 5 mins.

You can download the attached scene (3ds max 2008) and replace it with your car and neon. (I have not include any texture maps in the zip)

Hope that will help you

Last edited by samyip, Wed 19 Dec 2007, 00:52.

You poster is nice

May be it is just in a worng place

I think what they meant was that the actual '3D' render part of your 'Photoshop composed' image was done by some body else (i.e. Beefy) Please forgive me if I got this part wrong.

This thread is originally for 3D renderers to post their '3D' rendered scene to share with others, and not Skins or Photoshop composed images without their own creation of the 3D render.

What tristancliffe saying is that if you could put the person who rendered the 3D image for you at the bottom of your image (e.g. 'Rendered by Beefy' in this case) will stop misleading people that you have done the '3D' as well.
By not doing so, no 3D renderer would like to render skins for you in the feature, because you taking their credit off.

Don't get me wrong that I am not blaming you on anything. I am only explaining why other people have this response to your work in this thread.

Last edited by samyip, Wed 12 Dec 2007, 10:16.

I think someone has uploaded OBJ files of LFS cars in one of the thread. May be is one of the render with Blender thread, not sure...can't remember which one.
However, the OBJs are mesh model only and still require a bit of tidy up and materials appling to them.

I had a deadline of a week to model, texture, lighting setup, 2 X animate walkthrough (2:15 long each) and render. It was a pitch work for the client, so I could only charged £2100. (average £300 a day)