Oh yah, good thing I didn't show the other side Great design so far. Can imganineit will look that much better when done. Nice work with it - oh, and blame Kolz
LuxRender is a non-biased renderer which means it aims for über realism, however that in itself does not guarantee good renders (just like you can take a photo with a camera and even though you are photographing reality, it may still look like crap vs. professional photographs - and no, its not purely because pro's use expensive gears. You can take good pics with crap hardware too if you know what you are doing). Personal skills are still a requirement.
Non-biased also means the renderer doesn't cheat (everything is done as true as possible). This affects rendertimes a lot.
Are you willing to wait for such rendertimes? I'm not, which is why I've been ignoring non-biased renderers for a long time.
mental ray and vRay (among others) are biased (they cheat) renders but they can produce über realistic results too - rendertimes however are much faster.. but again - skills are required.
It is not enough to have a solid renderer - you still need knowledge about surfaces/materials, colors, lights, compositions and more.
Edit: If you are looking for something easy to do LFS renders with, then give something like this a try: http://www.bunkspeed.com/shot/
Heh, I wish I understood at least half of what you have said. I'll look at the Shot, thanks for link. :P
Btw, I threw in LuxRender link just for other 3D people to check out, its not like I can figure out even 0.01% of it's settings. :{
The biggest thing ruining it is the lighting - your light setup gives a confused impression of the lighting such as the shadows that doesnt match with the strongest lightsource, the sun (even though its setting) and you have light on the back of the car as if another car is parked behind it - but it's not working as it should. You probably should have moved the light further away, to get a smoother falloff.
The bright white reflections upo front are simply too white - on a red car - with a yellowish sun. Doesn't match at all. Should look softer too.
also remember that you don't HAVE to cast shadow from all lights. there are 2 shadows that I could see and they just add more to the confusion.
i dont have a sunlight,and no light behind the car. there is small light above the car which if i lighten ,than car is invisible O.O its only a background pic with a fail hdr i cut out from original pic. which i tried rotate million times,but didnt work. thats why i posted fail render