Saab Cabriolet

[Rigel]

This was done in Lightwave v8.5 with a bit of post work in Paint Shop Pro.

Image was done using two model available to Premiere Members. These were set into a large box with a very dark grey surface. There was a second, smaller, box with a city image mapped to the inside of it and made invisible to the camera; this provided an environment for the car to reflect. The scene was lit with a single spotlight and background radiosity set to 4x12 bounces.

[gpdesigner]

pretty sweet render Rigel . . . double box concept is a nifty idea, question . . why did you keep the radiosity at 4x12 base?
gp

[Mikala]

Very nice. Got to love the ability to turn the world invisible in Lightwave!

[bloodtaster]

very nice!

[Rigel]

Thanks everyone, I'm glad you like it.

@gpdesigner; That was the default setting and I figured that would be as high as I could go and keep the render times reasonable.

Oddly, when I originally did the render with a Medium Classic AA and the 4x12 radiosity, it took 3 hours and 40 minutes to render. I was having some problems with jaggies, so I played with the AA settings and decided that a PLD 9-Pass Classic would do the job (and it did). But that only took 1 hour and 58 minutes to render. Not what I expected. I expected 9 passes to take longer than the Medium setting, which does 5 I believe.

At any rate, it came out with the edges of the sign looking non-jaggy, which is what I was aiming for.

Also, the quality of the render lies squarely on the shoulders of the modeller; without that excellent car mesh, the render would not have been so nice. I didn't even have to texture the car *whew*.

[gpdesigner]

I think the PLD settings are not as pumped as the classics, medium in the classics is 9 passes as well . . . I always use PLD except today when I tried to do a DOF render . . .
good image tho . . .
gp

[Mikala]

Glad to see this one worked out for you in the end Rigel.

[Lewis]

Looks interesting :). Somehow it's looking little blurry to me like it's JPG compresion or resized too much ?

[CAClark]

I think it is too soft as well, and I also don't think the environment reflection works in a totally black(pretty much) visible environment. I'd personally like to the lighting a little brighter, and more contrasty (just a touch). I'd also like to see the classic white light box reflections, and this to me is a tried and tested setting for studio rendering. Doing things differently isn't a bad thing, but I don't personally think it works very well in this instance.

Cheers!

[Rigel]

@Lewis; yeah, it's a bit soft. For the life of me I could not get rid of the jaggies on the edges of the sign or the car, until I checked Soft Filter under the camera properites. I was rendering on Extreme High and still getting jaggies. Totally stumped me as I've never had such a problem before.

@Craig; I understand what you mean about the reflection. I tried it just with the environment, but the car looked flat. Question: what do mean by white light box reflections? Would that entail putting in some window size/shaped polygons and cranking up their luminosity? If so, maybe I'll do another set up (front view next time maybe) and try your suggestions.

[CAClark]

Any size flat polygons you like. Take a look at Lewis's renders for good examples.

Cheers!

[Rigel]

Okay, I'll try that and see what happens.