Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1960512

I tried to do an ad like image for my favorite car, the German Audi A5 Coupé.

I'm a completely newbie in the world of 3D, so constructive critics are welcome and appreciated.

Some technical information:

Model: Victory 4, posed with DAZ Studio, with RM Finnia morphs from Renderosity
Clothing: JacketsGirl For V4 from Renderosity with some own textures
Car: Audi A5 Coupe from 3DEXPORT, completely re-textured by yours truly, wheels from a free download site I can't remember.
Rendering time: 2h 5 min

A VERY big "Thank you" to UVDan over from the Rhino 3D forum who helped me with his knowledge and software to fit the wheels to the car.

Note to mods: if it's not allowed to mention other 3D sites drop me a note and I'll remove it.

That's really amazing for a first render!

I would have the shadows less dark and it also looks like you have a shadow going across the upper part of the sky.  Other than that it's really good !

 Wow, great job!! I bet it will be uphill from here!

pretty good for a first render.  Most of my early ones ended up in the bit bucket :)

Nice so far.

As an experiment:
Set the floor's reflection to 3-5%.
Set the light's softness to 0.2-0.5.
Set the atmosphere to use GR lighting.

tip for lights: ALWAYS edit every light and set it's amountof shadows to aorund 85%, or more if it's a hrash noon day sun, but nto 100% :)

and as Shawn notes, lights should have some softness to them, I preffer 2% for most suns :)

2% is a good number.  But I don't know if it will wash out the highlights on the car or not.  Depends on the size of the model.

Good morning,

first of all, thanks a lot for the feedback. It's mucho appreciated

@ gillbrooks: the shadow comes from the roof of the building above the glass colums. I guess I'll better remove that for this scene.

@ ShawnDriscoll and silverblade: I've changed the atmosphere to GR and dialed in about 50% Shadow density in the light editor. I still have to keep the fill-lights for the car and the girl, but the result is much better.
I didn't like the floor with 5% reflection, so I'll leave it as it is (20% reflection). Goes better with the car.

One question: where's the "light softness" setting? Is this what's called "Shadow smoothing" in the Atmosphere editor? I couldn't find any setting with this name and this value range.
Or did you mean the "Softness quality" slider in the light editor? It's always disabled.

**
Edit:** found it. It's for whatever unknown reason NOT in the light editor but in the preview window on the right side. That was, I must admit, the very last place I would have searched for it.

Aargh...UI designers...Urge to kill someone...

Yep.  The eyes don't think to look up that way for more options to click on.  Most of the GUI is on the left.

you can also do weird effects by altering the light's fall off, but that's complicated, basically you can have a light fall off in ways to fit the scene, like a candle you need it strong to light a scene, but not so strong it blows out what's next to it, you can adjust fall off filter so it fall off with a bell curve not a straight line! ;)

Quote - Hm, it's not the preview winwow...damn, I can't recall that area's name! :p "Object window"?
for most items it's where the material is, for lights it's where you get to edit their properties ;)

For ease of communication lets call it 'Twtidoyssawpeaootrsotlpw' ( "The window that is, depending on your screen's size and workspace partitioning, either above or on the right side of the little preview window").

Easy to remember, isn't it?

"Thingy on Top RIght Side" works even better, eh? :p

Lovely first render; I've had Vue for a while and I don't think I'd know how to get the lovely results.

Are you using a sky backdrop or are they glass panels behind the car?   It seems odd if it's adding shadow to glass that it would effect the sky.

If you have any object that you don't want to receive shadows (including a plane if you're using a photograph for the sky) open the material to edit it and UNCHECK 'Receive shadows' - that'll fix it

Quote - Are you using a sky backdrop or are they glass panels behind the car?   It seems odd if it's adding shadow to glass that it would effect the sky.

There are semi transparent glass panels behind the car. Of course in daylight you can't see anything behind it so it looks more or less like a simple mirror, so what you see is the reflection of the sky behind(!) the camera. The roof is from the same material as the columns. It should protect against rain and wind, but shouldn't block much light.
It makes sense if you'd look at a scene where it was included, but as it is now the viewer wonders where this shadow comes from, so I'll exclude it in the next render.

Quote -
If you have any object that you don't want to receive shadows (including a plane if you're using a photograph for the sky) open the material to edit it and UNCHECK 'Receive shadows' - that'll fix it

Hey, that's cool. I already knew that I can configure light to not CREATE any shadows, but it's new to me that I can have objects which do no RECEIVE any shadows.
Learning something new each day. Thanks a lot

Attached Link: Audi A5 Add V2

Oh, and here's a link to the first original one to  compare: Old version
You've probably to refresh your browser's cache to see the new version.

Very good first render, but I have to say "girl & car" is probably a too common subject. :-)

My 2 cents to what has been suggested so far:

Light/shadow softness: opinions vary a lot in the posts above because in real world the shadow softness also varies a lot. In a cloudy day you can have 5% or 10%, in a bright sunny day you can have 0.1 or 0.2, with all the grades in inbetween, depending on the amount of clouds, haze, fog and even if you are in northern latitudes or southern. In Sweden the light is very different from Portugal, for example.

So, when you choose your softness, you should do it based on the kind of sky, fog and haze that you have in your scene. Depending on the latitude of your scene (a mountain in Germany or a desert in Sahara), you also want to change the softness.

Shadow density: many people recommend 85% or many other values. I absolutely do not recommend using anything different from 100%, for these reasons:

1) It's not what happens in real world. Let me explain: It's true that in real world, the shadows are not pitch black, but this is surely not because the sun change its properties. This is because there's light bouncing from other objects and from difused light in the atmosphere, which makes the shadows lighter. So, that's what we should aim at in Vue as well. There are many ways of doing this, here's some from the top of my mind, which can (should) be combined for a better effect:

• increase sky dome lighting gain (which simulates light that indeed comes from the sky dome in real world)
• make light balance at 30% (or any other value you like) (which simulates overcast skies)
• use glow in sky, fog, haze tab (which simulates diffuse light in real atmospheres)
• use radiosity gain (this is not a real world equivalent)
• use secondary directional lights (fairly dark) (could happen in real world, depending on circumstances)

2) Second reason for not using anything less than 100% in shadow density is that this is a source of noise in the shadows, in certain conditions. To compensate for this, you have to increase the quality boosts in several places, which increases render time.

Hope this helps! :-)

Just to add a quick note about shadow density:

In all my images, I always use shadow density at 100% and, as you can see for yourself in my gallery, my shadows are never pitch black (unless when I want it, for some reason, like in outer space or in a very dense forest, for example). This is because I use a combination of the methods I described above, depending on the scene at hand. The shadows look much more natural using my methods than using small values of shadow density, IMO.

Quote -
1) It's not what happens in real world. Let me explain: It's true that in real world, the shadows are not pitch black, but this is surely not because the sun change its properties. This is because there's light bouncing from other objects and from difused light in the atmosphere, which makes the shadows lighter. So, that's what we should aim at in Vue as well. There are many ways of doing this, here's some from the top of my mind, which can (should) be combined for a better effect:

• increase sky dome lighting gain (which simulates light that indeed comes from the sky dome in real world)
• make light balance at 30% (or any other value you like) (which simulates overcast skies)
• use glow in sky, fog, haze tab (which simulates diffuse light in real atmospheres)
• use radiosity gain (this is not a real world equivalent)
• use secondary directional lights (fairly dark) (could happen in real world, depending on circumstances)

2) Second reason for not using anything less than 100% in shadow density is that this is a source of noise in the shadows, in certain conditions. To compensate for this, you have to increase the quality boosts in several places, which increases render time.

Hope this helps! :-)

Very valid points, thanks a lot.
Actually, besides the overall better illumination, the car itself looked better in the first render because of the higher local contrast, but I didn't want to add even more fill-lights because I already use a ton of them.

I'll try your suggestions next weekend (too much work during the week).