Hi, after my last car-into-photo image, I thought I would move it up a level to something really complicated! well, I found this image on the internet, and I thought, hey, lets put the lambo in that spare car park! I dont know if its possible, but I've got a good thing going so far, so I thought I would share some images of where I am at with these challenge!

First up I move the camera around to get the basic ground position and camera angle correct, then set the perspective. I then loaded up Mr. Lambo and got him into position and the right size for the photo. Then I tweaked the camera and perspective to get the lambo looking proportioned to the other cars.

Next was the lighting, I loaded up the background image as the IBL image, set the intensity to 120% and positioned it to corrospond with the shadows on the cars in the photo. Then I added an infinite light, set it to specular only, and angled it up to match the specular lighting of the cars in the image.

Next was to put materials onto Mr. Lambo and setup other 3D cars to represent the reflections of the cars in the photo. Unfortunately I dont have 3d models of the cars in this photo, so I grabbed some from DMI Car Models that were as close in shape and type as possible. Then I loaded them in, and positioned them to best represent the cars in the photo, and changed there materials to match. THINGS STILL TO DO : I still need to setup a shadow capture object to represent the red car in the space behind Mr. Lambo, and also to add a pole object for Mr Lambo to reflect. Also, the tarmac on the ground is wet, and is reflecting the cars somewhat. I thought I would add a 100% transperant plane, with reflection and bump mapping to best re-create the reflecting effect in the photo! after I've got all these setups done, I will need to do the following as far as I can see : Render Mr. Lambo By himself (all other object hidden) Render Mr. Lambo with all reflect objects Render Mr. Lambo with 100% ambient white material to create a mask. Create a mask of the ASTRA car in the photo combine appropriate parts of renders together into final image! what do you think?

Interesting technique. I like it.

Very interesting - well done!

never going to work your car looks to expensive, doesn't blend in :P

Oooh that's NICE! I am looking forward to the final, finished blend!

One thing: Remember to blur mr. Lambo slightly to fit the overall blur in the photo :o)

Fun project--this trick will help you cut down on the number of renders that you're doing. You can make a reflection-catcher by plugging a reflect node into the Alternate_Specular input and setting the object to completely transparent.

PoseWorks. thats an awesome technique! will it still be effected by bump-mapping (to simulate the effect of the ground in the photo?)

"never going to work your car looks to expensive, doesn't blend in " LOL, well I think I would take a photo of a lambo in a car park more than I would take a photo of a spare car park-spot! LOL

Yes, it should be affected by bump mapping and displacements.

"LOL, well I think I would take a photo of a lambo in a car park more than I would take a photo of a spare car park-spot!LOL" templargfx...Agreed! However, you could try the same techinque using (EG) an antique Rolls-Royce; A road-going steam-engine; (getting more surreal...) a steam locomotive; a whale???? Excellent technique!! Cheers, Diolma

A whale! hahahahaa that'd be soo funny, with like a seat on top, and indicators on the side, and SIDE MIRRORS! HAHHHAHAA Im working on the car ground reflection now, and yes the bump mapping is effecting it, Ill post the result soon!

Sorry for ariving late. I think it's great you took mysuggestion to use a real photographic background for your Lamb. renders. I think it's even cooler that you decided to use a photograph with other cars in it, wow, what a challenge! But, I don't think this photo is worth your time. I'm counting on you finding a much better Bkg. to work from. This isn't ameture work, you want something to be proud of when all is said an d done, not just a good blend. Maybe a picture from a Car Show, Concept Expo, maybe even a really nice Lamb. Dealer lot, that you can mask in photohsop to add a great sky, maybe!

Thats part of the point tho LOL. to be able to get the car to look like it was in the photo even though its am amature one with a little bluring and some distortion! more challenging lol. did you see the other image I did? in my gallery? I put 2 cars on a road (pro photo)

Finally, that took a long time to render! here is the ground reflection as I have it so far ^ Things to fix : white-out of reflection causing pinkish coloring NOTE ABOUT THESE RENDERS : all the renders I have posted are done at a shading rate of 2. The reflection on the ground in this image is actually blured, but because the shading rate is so high, the bluring doesnt work properly.

here is the nodes used on the ground reflect plane.

they are grouped into 3 sections :

the top 3 nodes simulates the tarmacs texture.
The marble nodes sumulates the natural tarmac texture
and the spots node simulates those chips you can see in the photo.

The middle 3 nodes simulates the way the surface reflects.
The blender node is controlled by the ray-trace node, what this does is makes the reflection more visible the brighter that part of the reflection is.
The edge blend node simulates angle-to-surface reflection amounts.
the spots node adds a small amount of reflection-amount change (as the ground in the photo is wet, the reflection wont be even)

and lastly the reflect node!

A BIG THANKYOU to PoseWorks for giving me this basic method of rendering reflections. you saved me alot of time later on!

Message edited on: 02/06/2006 18:30

What do you think guys? the Murcielego R-GT or the Standard Murcielego? (above is standard)

liked the previous one better (R-GT?) This is a great idea - looking forward to seeing how it comes out!

THanks! I agree, after playing around with the standard one, it just doesnt look as good! (although I do like that it has no wing :P)

is it just me, or do the cars on either side look a bit uhh...not right =P

I wanted to test if this is going to even remotely work (and whether I have the ability to put the images together! well, this is what I came up with!

Not too bad, only took me about 15 minutes to do this. obviously I will spend much more time on the final image!

what do you think? image below, I uploaded the wrong one LOL

Message edited on: 02/06/2006 23:00

here it is, the test compilation

Now, that is awesome templargfx :-)

This quick compilation has made me realise how important focus is going to be in the final image, in order for the car to not seem pasted in, the focus is going to have to be set just right. thats my next priority! also, the photo isnt as "colorful" as the render, so I will have to use some saturation modification of the car when I bring it into photoshop for the final compilation!

looking even better. A few thoughts: the glass needs to be less transparent - needs to have more reflection on it (I want to say "more fresnel" but I don't know if that exists in P6?!) to lose some of the interior detail; the Astra and the Lexus(?) have quite bright specularity on the lower front - although Mr Lambo has a different shape, the specularity seems far lower and lacks that "washed out" look. the shadow/reflection under the lambo (between it and the Astra) is too small - needs to be quite dark here (to a similar depth and direction as that of the Astra) I'm loving this though!

The shadow under the car is a hard one, the light that casts the shadows matches that of the light from the photo (I used the shadows of the lexus? wing-mirror (look in the first image) to guage direction and strength) I think the thing that puts you off is that the lambo is so low. I will play around with it some more and see what I can come up with! The specular, you are quite correct, the render I used in my quick-test did not have the upped specular. a new image is coming soon!

looking again, the shadow is ok - it's the reflection on the wet floor which should be quite dark at the side. At the moment the lambo is only really casting the reflection at the front...

oops -meant to attach this:(

yes you are right, if you look at the render, the lambo reflects a slight red reflection on the side, very faint. I cannot work out a way to get the reflection to reflect dark. because the dark area of the real reflection is actually a lack of reflection of the sky on the wet tarmac, not really a reflection of the car. this will need some work. I think I will have to render the reflection serperately and use some type of post-process to get the desired effect unless someone knows how to simulate this on a transperant plane (or perhaps a totally different way of doing it

This is what I am talking about. here I took the cloth_plains I used to do the reflections, and turned down the transperancy to .2. I also added the spheremap background image. as you can see the lack of reflection of the side of the car creates the dark area you are talking about, now all I gotta do is work out how to use this on the photo LOL

bkmk

set the spec size up a bit more, the bottom part of the front of the lamb, is about same angles as the car in right of the pic so the size in both should match about the same, maybe slightly smaller darken the reflection on the tarmac

Great work so far. But, I think the scale is off. The Lambo looks too big to me. The car on the Lambo's left (our right) is a Lexus GS, right? Overall Length of Lexus GS is 189.2 inches. The length of the Murcielago is 180.3 inches. In the last post it sure looks like the Lexus is 9 inches SHORTER, not LONGER. You're off by about 9 percent - multiply whatever your current scale is by .91 and it should look about right. This is assuming, of course, the back ends are lined up. It looks about that way to me.

Attached Link: http://j-girl.axisz.jp/photo/tm2003/car/murcielago.jpg

Hey, templargfx, you are making a unique image. I looked at almost 600 photos of that car and only ONE had it parked next to another car. The other car was also a Murcielago. :) The only picture I could find that showed some sense of scale was this one (in the link). The chick in the picture can't be very tall - and yet the roof is no higher than her elbow. That is one low car. I saw another picture with Paris Hilton sitting in the driver seat. She was so low her elbow was resting on the door sill and her legs were straight out.

hey now there's an idea - Paris' legs sticking straight out of the window... but I digress:) the only way that I'd be looking to fix the dark area would be to... cheat. ie: doctor the background photo to have a dark area before you place the car in. Probably just borrow the dark area from the Lexus - or simply paint it in. But I'm sure that you'll be looking for a technical solution - so good luck:)

I think I have found a technical solution that should need very little actually post-processing at the end of this project. I am not at home at the moment so I cannot show you what I am talking about, but last night (at 2am) I started to get where I wanted to be with the reflections. basically I have plugged in a reflect node into the transperancy and transperancy edge sections of the material, and set the background of the reflection to white (and removed the background image from it) basically what this does is makes the sky reflection area in my last image into 100% transperant (so you can see the astra and its "reflection" but makes the dark area at the side of the lambo (its non-reflection if you could call it that) opaque. Last night I was working on getting my reflection plains materials to as closely match the tarmac that is in the photo, so that the reflections that are quite opaque look like they fit. I am sure that there will still need to be some doctoring, but hopefully this will minimise it to layer-transperancy painting! As for the size of the lambo, I think it is about the right size (I will try making it a little smaller, and see what you guys think). The reason that I think it is the right size is because I used to work for the Sydney Exhibition Centre as a cleaner (LOL) and they had the car show on while I was working there, and lamborghini had a stand with all the different lambo's that they sell including the murcielego. the car is HUGE, low, but HUGE! people seem to think its like a diablo, that car was big, but this one is bigger still! while on the topic of that car show, while I was working there, this guy came in, and BOUGHT the black murcielego right off the floor! now that one rich bastard! The specular that you see in the images so far isnt the final, although the reflection on the lambo will be very different due to its angled shape, i will show you the end result of the specular as I have it so far when I get home! wow, thats looong post!

and here we have it! the new ground reflect thingy! ok, now there was one undeniable result of this technique, I lost the bright reflection, so what I am going to have to do is render one without this transperancy on it, and combine the two type together! also, some smoothing and blending will need to be done, still I am proud of the result

For a roadster, the Murcielago is larger than most. But not nearly as big as a mid-size sedan.

A few :) car lengths for reference:

2005 Hummer H2 SUV 203.5
2005 Mercedes-Benz CL-Class CL65 AMG 196.6
2006 Mercedes-Benz CL-Class CL65 AMG Coupe 196.6
2005 Mercedes-Benz CL-Class CL55 AMG Coupe 196.4
2006 Mercedes-Benz CL-Class CL55 AMG Coupe 196.4
2005 Audi A6 193.5
2005 Ferrari 612 Scaglietti 193.0
2005 Ferrari 612 Scaglietti F1 193.0
2005 BMW M5 191.1
2005 BMW 6 Series 645Ci Coupe 190.2
2006 BMW 6 Series 650i Coupe 190.2
2005 BMW M6 190.0
2002 Lexus GS 189.2 <-- the Lexus in the picture
2005 Volvo XC90 SUV 188.9 <-- I own one of these - a 7 passenger SUV smaller than the Lexus!
2000 BMW M5 188.3 inches <------- I own one of these too - it is not big but still 8 inches bigger than the Lambo !!!
2005 Jaguar XK-Series XK8 Coupe 188.0
2005 Jaguar XK-Series XKR Coupe 188.0
2005 Saleen S7 Twin Turbo 188.0
2006 Jaguar XK-Series XK8 Coupe 188.0
2006 Jaguar XK-Series XKR Coupe 188.0
2005 Ford Mustang 188.0
2005 Panoz Esperante GT Coupe 185.9
2005 Panoz Esperante GTLM Coupe 185.9
2006 Panoz Esperante GT Coupe 185.9
2006 Panoz Esperante GTLM Coupe 185.9
2005 Aston Martin DB9 Coupe 185.4
2005 Volkswagon Passat 185.2
2005 Aston Martin V12 Vanquish Coupe 183.7
2005 Aston Martin V12 Vanquish S Coupe 183.7
2005 BMW X5 SAV 183.7
2005 Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren 183.3
2006 Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren 183.3
2005 Ford GT Coupe 182.8
2006 Ford GT Coupe 182.8
2005 Mercedes-Benz CLK-Class CLK55 AMG Coupe 182.6
2005 Lamborghini Murcielago Coupe 180.3 <===== not even as big as a Volkswagon Passat
2005 Maserati Coupe Cambiocorsa 178.1
2005 Maserati Coupe GT 178.1
2005 Maserati Gran Sport Coupe 178.1
2005 Ferrari F430 Coupe 177.6
2005 BMW M3 Coupe 176.9
2006 BMW M3 Coupe 176.9
2005 Lamborhini Diablo Roadster 176.4
2005 Panoz Esperante Coupe 176.3
2006 Panoz Esperante Coupe 176.3
2005 Porsche 911 Carrera Base 175.6
2005 Porsche 911 Carrera S 175.6
2006 Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe 175.6
2006 Porsche 911 Carrera S Coupe 175.6
2006 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 Coupe 175.6
2006 Porsche 911 Carrera 4 S Coupe 175.6
2005 Porsche 911 GT3 Coupe 174.6
2005 Porsche 911 Turbo S Coupe 174.6
2005 Acura NSX 3.0 4-Spd AT 174.2
2005 Acura NSX 3.2 6-Spd MT 174.2
2005 Lamborghini Gallardo Coupe 169.3

Ill do several size "tests" and see what you think, maybe Im a midget and the lambo was huge to ME LOL. anyway, Ill do some quick renders and see what comes out looking good, and post them up!

reflection looks awesome - well done:)

Im not at home right now (again!), I will post up the node setup of how I got this to work when I return home. its both simple and complex at the same time LOL

One detail you're missing... Look at the roof of the Astra on the left of the picture. There's a reflection of that lattice tower that's in the background. I don't expect I'd see that on the Lambo, but I do expect to see that white lighting post showing a reflection. I think it should be fairly easy to add, just a cylinder primitive in the right place. And matching to the photo would be a useful check on scale and positioning.