I didn't comment on this because it could be a style thing - but since it's not:
It is indeed reflecting too much. You need to look at as many different photos as possibly, while making sure they are somewhat close to your scene. Using outdoors pics as references isn't always good when you are doing indoor lighting. You can do it, but it can be difficult and timeconsuming because cameras are different. Lighting conditions are different and the settings on the cameras, which can have an huge impact on how things look, are different.
The exposure on the cameras on your reference pics are all set to catch detail in the "low light" areas - 2 of the pics show no detail in the sky, and the one without any sky shows unnatural looking grass - so how can you know for sure you can trust the reflections are correct too? :P None of what you see in those pics will look like that if you looked at the same thing while being there yourself - but that's just because human eye pwns
This one captures details in the sky, but now the stadium lacks detail.
Human eyes are much better than this though and will see more (but they are not perfect). Most cameras, even the expensive ones sucks compared to the human eye - but the human eye balances out things. It won't make something brighter and something else darker for you to see... well, it will, but not as much.
With cameras you adjust exposure to get what you want. But even if you set the camera to catch reflections on a car, you can't entirely trust it unless you took the photo yourself, and you know what you are doing.
http://richardxthripp.thripp.c ... hotos/skys-camouflage.jpg
This photo was most likely shopped, but not by adding the clouds. Those are visible because of the exposure setting on the camera, and we should be able to agree that reflections are not that dramatic on a typical car paint.
Another fun example: http://i19.photobucket.com/alb ... 58/brightfish/highexp.jpg
This also shows how big impact exposure can have. The light from the car is so bright that it turns the garage port and the side completely white - but... car light during daytime = completely useless. It will barely light anything up at all.
So, exposure is a big thing and it's important to "read" the reference image properly, because different pics are taken using different exposures. Light and angle is different etc.
Something else:
Reflection on most surfaces - especially on cars, are heavier on the steep angles. the more parallel the angle gets, the more reflection you will see. It's true for many many things, including something as odd as paper - or something more commonly known like water. You can see the bottom of a shallow lake, but if you look towards the horizon, then you'll see the reflection of the sky.
This is often refered to as Fresnel effect/reflection in 3D. I think maybe in 3ds it's called reflection falloff? You may have some already on your car material, but the "facing" reflection is too strong.
A bit long explanation - I hope it made sense.
Myeh, closer. It's better though.. IMO. They could now use some dirt. Slap on some random fractal texture and it should work. Maybe you should do the same with the yellow barrels.
Thank you for your explanation.
it's not too long.
I still miss is: what color you use.
light color or dark color.
This also makes a difference with reflections.
back to my rendering.
I will play more.
because you are right now everything is too clean.
I can't say for sure since I don't use 3DS. I'd guess you need to change the dark one and make it darker. but i could be wrong. Are you still using mental ray? What shader do you have applied?. I use mr a lot, so I can help you out if you use it too, and tell me what shader you are using (if its a mr shader).
I thought we were taking about the car paint. Add some noise as I mentioned before. Use it on the diffcuse channel to affect the color, but also add the same noise to the reflection channel, to modulate how much reflection there is on the noisy parts. They should be less reflective. Make sure to scale up the noise, so it resembles dirt. Try and see if you can add a falloff to the txture, so it's mostly visible near the ground and then disappears as you get higher up.