Create a Photorealistic Car Render using 3DS Max and Vray
Tutorial Details
- Program: 3DS Max, Vray
- Difficulty: Advanced
- Completion Time: 2-4 hours
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
Whenever you see highly realistic images of CG cars, you may think that it is an incredibly difficult process to arrive at such a high quality result…this is not actually the case. In this tutorial, Sumeet Gupta will show you how easy it can be to create a photorealistic car render using 3DS Max and Vray, as long as you know the right steps.
For this tutorial, Sumeet used “Dodge Viper”, but these steps will let you can achieve similar result using any high-rez car model.
Step 1
In order to achieve similar results as above, you need to model a detailed and clean car. If you don’t feel like modeling, you can use a pre-made model too. Another important step is to find a good HDRI image and a matching back plate. I got one at www.hdrilocations.com/freesample.php, but you can also do your own research to find a good HDRI and back plate, as there are plenty of them available on internet. When you are done with collecting your models and HDRI, fire up 3DS Max and import/ merge the car model into a new 3DS Max scene.
Step 2
Create a long plane in the TOP viewport. Position the plane so that it lies under the wheels and acts as a road.
Step 3
Make sure your perspective view is selected, and go to “Views > Viewport Background > Viewport Background” or (Alt+B). Click on “Files” and load the background image. Use selected settings while loading a background image.
Step 4
Go to the TOP viewport again, and create a standard Target camera. Don’t worry about it’s position and settings, I will explain this later.
Step 5
All good back plates contain information about f-stop number, iso, and other important settings. All we have to do to match some of image parameters with the camera we have just created. So right click the image, and under “properties”, go to “details” and scroll down until you see the “Camera” roll out menu. Currently we will match only the “Focal Length” parameter. As you can see, the back plate image has a “Focal Length” value of 45.
Step 6
Back in 3DS Max, go to “Camera Settings” and and change the “Lens” settings to 45. Also, change the perspective view to your camera (C).
Step 7
Now, we need to match our perspective with the background image. There are several ways to do that, such as camera tracking etc. I, personally find those methods too complicated, so i use the method of trial and error. What i do is try to match the perspective of road with the background image using camera tools such as “Orbit Camera” and “Pan”(Mouse Middle Click). If you think the car is too small then you can use”Dolly Camera” as well. When you are satisfied with your composition, right click the camera, and go to “Camera correction modifier”. Click on “Guess”, and it automatically sets the correct perspective. After couple of minutes of experimentation, my viewport ended up like this.
Step 8
Our scene preparation is now done, so let’s get on with the materials and texturing. Assign a “shellac” material to the car body. Under the “Base and Shellac” material option, use “VRayMtl”, and put a value of “100″ under “Shellac Color Blend”. Go back to the Base material and use the settings shown below.
A Shellac allows you to superimpose one material over another, with the base material being underneath and the shellac material over it. The “Shellac Color Blend” box controls the amount of shellac that gets laid over the base material, and the Subdiv value control the smoothness of material. The more subdivs you have, the material will look noise free in the render, but this will of course increase the render time.
Step 9
For the car body color, go to “Car Color”, under Shellac material options, and use the following settings. I decided to give the car body a deep red color, so I used a Falloff gradient under “Diffuse” slot from light red to deep red. If you want a Black carpaint, for instance, then you can simply replace the light red with Grey, and the dark red with black. I have also used Fresnal reflections this time. Fresnel describes the way a surface’s attributes change depending on the view angle.
Step 10
For the windshield material, apply a VRayMtl to the windshields, and use the settings shown below. Note: The reflect parameter controls the reflection of the material. Black means the material will not reflect anything, and white means it will reflect everything in the scene. The refract value gives transparency to the material where white means 100% transparent, and black means 100% opaque. Also, I used a small picture of a Rainbow gradient under the Diffuse slot, you can find a similar one using Google.
Step 11
For the tire material, apply a VRayMtl and check “BRDF” as “Ward”. The BRDF parameters determine the type of the highlights and glossy reflections.
Step 12
For the rims material, apply a VRayMtl using the settings shown. The reflection glossiness controls the parameters of specular reflections in vraymaterial. The lower the value (0.45-0.75), the blurrier the reflections. Also, if you use less values of reflection glossiness, you need to crank up the subdivs, as blurry reflections produce more noise in the render.
Step 13
Now, assign a “Matte/Shadow” material to the road, so that it catches the shadows from the VrayLight and HDRI. Open the “Material Editor”, click on “Get Material”, select “Matte/Shadow” from the list, and apply it to the road. Use the default settings of the “Matte/Shadow” material.
Step 14
Time to use the HDRI to light up the scene. Press “M” to open the material editor window, and click the “Get material” button. Another window of “Material/Map Browser” will pop up. Select “Bitmap” from the list, and load the HDRI from the browser.
Step 15
Go to the “Lights” menu, select “vray” from the dropdown menu, and create a “VrayLight” above the car using the following settings. You will need to adjust the multiplier value according to your scene. In my scene, a multiplier of “1.5″ worked perfectly.
Step 16
Position your “Vraylight” so that it sits on top of the car.
Step 17
Open the “Material editor” again, and drag the HDRI into the “Use texture” slot of the VrayLight .
Step 18
Press “F10″ to open the Render Setup window. In the V-Ray Menu, go to “Global switches”, and uncheck “Default lights”. Under “Image sampler”, select”Adaptive subdivison”, and select “Mitchell-Netravali” as the Antialiasing filter. Under the Environment tab, check”Reflection/refraction environment override”, and drag in the same HDRI that you applied on the VrayLight. Under the color mapping rollout, select “Exponential” as the type, check “Sub-pixel mapping”, and also “Clamp output”, leaving the “Clamp level” at 1.0.
Below is an explanation of the settings:
Use the following render settings:
Step 19
Now, lets render our first image. Press “F9″ for quick render. As you can see, it’s not quite as it looks in the Final result, so lets tweak some more settings.
Step 20
Press “M” to open the material editor window, and select the same Bitmap material containing the HDRI file. Now here is the tricky part. We need to adjust the position of HDRI till we get good illumination and reflection on the car body….and there’s no other way to do this except Render, Render, and Render!
After hitting several renders, my bitmap parameters came up like this:
Step 21
So, here is the final render from 3DS Max. As you can see, it is still slightly different from the finished image. Don’t worry, we will improve the render in Photoshop in next step!
Step 22
Fire up Photoshop, and open the previous render. Add some warm tones using “Color Balance”. Press shortcut”Ctrl+B” or go to “Image>Adjustments>Color Balance”. Adjust the sliders according to your needs. I used the values of “+16, 0, -13″. I also added some headlight glow using a plugin called “Knoll Light factory”, and adjusted some levels to get a nice brightness/contrast to the image. You can also add some cool lighting effects and try different post treatments using any other plugin or in photoshop itself.
Conclusion
This concludes the tutorial. I hope you enjoyed it and learned something new. If you are unable to understand any step, please feel free to post a comment, and i will try to explain it as best as I can. Thanks for your time!.
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what about the plane which you created as a road? since its projecting shadows, so it means u applied some materials to it! if im not wrong…
It’s Matte/Shadow ;)
See Step 13 – Matte/shadow material
damn..i missed that :D
god job
dear abojung, you should stick to mess up people on Aftereffects forum, not for here with some prof guys’ playground.
READ STEP 13 dude.. you are so wrong and it’s not projecting shadows.
God! you like me so much that u went throught the pain of creating an account for my name.:D :D
as per for the setep 13. i missed that, thats y people prefer video tuts.
and there is no complain from me regarding this tut, its awesome, and there are people who are generous enough to point the mistakes, that i made but was corrected by good samaritans like infaas & Simon.
and as per for the aetuts, i havent visited it for some time.
GET A LIFE!! NOSY IDIOT XD
Wow, I don’t have 3DsMax but will adobt that to other apps later.
Just what I needed for my Lamboghini. Thank you very much! Perfect!
I would love to see a tutorial for 3ds Max on actually modelling a car. Great to see Vray on here.
if u are willing to spend some money, i recommend u go for Digital Tutors…they have a very comprehensive library of video tutorials on car modeling and other interesting stuff…
Hi thanks for this Tutorial, but I think the Result could be better.
I’m missing the Interior, more Reflektion (not much, a very little bit)
And a great video Series about Modeling a Car.
Vray is the best Renderer out there, I need a Demo of the most recent Version because it has now Ambient Light. :)
Good to see VRay tutorials. We can’t have enough.
That said, the car paint is too glossy. There’s no reflection in the front window.
I think it looks very realistic and not too glossy. Also I think there shouldnt be any reflections in the front window at all..
Car reflections have usually a more defined outline (less glossy), as do window reflections. I don’t find that here. It is my impression from the reflection that this car is made from a very soft (grainy bumpy) pvc type plastic. The reflection in the front window is very diffuse which is only possible if there are no shapes on the right from the render, which would be odd given the car is outdoors and that horizon has some well defined outline.
This is a good tutorial. My outcome would be a little bit different because i`ve worked up my own materials that fits my needs better BUT i learned something in this. The camera parameter matching the information in the background is something i tried by trial and error before. So thx for this!
Amazing!
Great tutorial :)
Like the outcome!
Me ha gustado bastante el tutorial. Aunque tambien creo que el resultado podría ser mejor.
gr8 tutorial and excellent outcome too.At last i can see an indian putting such a nice tutorials .Keep it up gupta
what is mean by Back plate???
the backplate is the image used as the location where u place ur 3d model….
Thanx for tutorial I made mustang and this was last part of it which I am missing:)
Muito bom o Tuto, gostei muito, parabens
Hey that nice! My name uriel vasquez. Hope that u can email me and help me make one
hey does anybody know how im supposed to have the renderers? because my render came out a silhouette like which is productions,materials
nice tutorial!!
i think something going wrong with tiling of rainbow in front glass (step 21 pic)
How long is this render at average? im trying to testrender my car out in 240*160 with just a standard material and the estimated time is over 2 hours.. And my computer might not be completely new, but its not bad.
Now it says 4h, thats to much for a testrender in my opinion..
..And i checked the render this morning, its still rendering, and its only at 5%. If this keeps up it’ll take a week for my testrender to be finished, and that makes step 20 a nightmare since it says “render, render, render!”. Can anyone else tell me how long they used on testrenders and other renders for this?
As im very new to Vray, does anyone know wich of the settings i should bring way down for testrenders?
woah….only 5%….thats not fair….usually, u can bring down the render time by simply decreasing the subdivisions, in the subdivision rollout, in this case it will be under adaptive subdivision….make sure the min value is set to 1, and the max, well if its a test render, i suggest u keep it at 2-3…not more than that….u can also increase the noise level in the “adaptive subdivision image sampler rollout”….this will produce noisier results but will decrease the render time…another way to decrease render times is to turn on interpolation in the material editor….in this case, just select the car paint material, and under the reflection section, turn on “use interpolation”….usually render times are high when it comes to images using HDRI images….i cant help u with that:(((….for a better understanding of the various Vray settings and other related stuff, u can visit SPOT3D.com…this is an online manual for VRAY….i personally find it very useful….i usually use Irradiance map and Light cache as the GI elements….always turn on, “show calculation phase”, in the case of light cache, this is really helpful, as it roughly shows u the final output and the lighting….if u really have an issue with render times, u might want to give this a try….
hope this helps…
It’s so good for me and please tell me about the email address of perseon who make this.My email address is auto_1224@yahoo.com
thanks it helped me :)
Man this is sweet thanks. But how did you get that racing stripe down the car? I’ve been trying to figure that out for a while now.
well because u have simple stripes going through the car, u can simply do it by selecting the polygons and than apply a separate material to those polygons….considering the fact that only one half of a car is modeled and the other is brought by using the symmetry modifier, u always have the same number and patterns of polygons going from one end to the other….this makes the task of painting different patterns, esp linear, very easy….for complex patters, we usually unwrap the maps, edit them in any photo editing software (Photoshop), and than bake them onto the 3d model….this works well with stills….
Strange… I don’t get the background right… When I hit F9 I don’t see it… What did i do wrong… (was already doing everything another time… but that doesn’t help)
make sure the image is set as the background in the environment tab….8 is the shortkey…if not press the button and select bitmap and than locate the background image….
Great tut…however, i only used the background to set the camera…I rendered the final image without the BG….finally merged the backplate, the rendered image and an AO pass…the image was rendered at a high res so as to match the backplate…
rien comprit, y’a rien qui marche chez moi
mais merci qd meme
It renders my car grey when i drag the hdri in the ‘use texture’ for the vraylight.
also my road doesn’t receive shadows. In the vray light option is no ‘receive shadows’ to enable (3dsmax2008).
It seems to receive shadows when I do not drag the hdr in the ‘use texture’ of my vray light. Great tutorial anyway thanks :)
dang,i cant get the shadows to show up on the road.
i did the exact same thing as you,but it wont show up.
maybe you forgot to add a step?
oops forgot to say…..great tutorial!
hello sir… i have tried lot to adjust the geometry over the background image ..but i am failed to do that..please help me out regarding hdri images
what crap rip of knowledge. you have stolen the car which is not yours and you have stolen the tutorial made by suurland. same techniques same process. and in the end you ended in some crap basic rander.
But I guess this is impressive if I read the comments from the amteurs around on that site.
where can i get cars already made? i want to learn to make them too, but, that is a bit advanced for me right now.
nice illegal copy of vray you have there, 1.50 sp2 DEMO. the demo would have a watermark on render.
good catch
good catch
cool tut.
There are a lot of useful parts to this tutorial! Thanks for the tips :)
hai friend ..i have one doubt ..in this tutorial you say that adjust the hdri map for the good ref and illumination …..how i adujust hdri …..??
can’t load .hdr … it’s gave me “Memory Error”.
solutions ?
Hey guys. Im having a problem with the tutorial. I downloaded the exact same hdri and back plate files as in the tutorial. I’ve followed everything fine up until I need to bring in the HDRI file. When I try I get an Image I/O error. Now my com isnt old or bad its got 4gb ram, intel i7 quad core processor etc. Any suggestions as to how to fix this problem?
Hi, thanx for the awesome tutorial.
I have a problem :/ my rendered image has a black background :( i followed each and every step! help me plsssssss
Hi, and thanks for such a great tutorial, personally I really enjoyed .
I had the same problem with load HDRI. I changed resolution to half of oryginal and that fix this problem. But now I have problem with black background. Set in environment the same image used in perpective ?
I made the road with matte shadow..but its semi transparent and see its there
ermmm…i followed all the steps there…i got the same prob with that HDRI n it is not a big prob since i change it to another file..but the main thing is, when i rendered the scene..my background image did not appear…is anyone facing the same problem? please help..
I can’t use Matte/Shadow material. Why?
One of the worst Tutorials I have done in a long time. Sure it looks promising, but there are so many pitfalls with it, crucial things that need explaining.
My render came out with a pink tone on the red, and blue chrome. The backplate never showed up either.
If people are going to do a tutorial make sure you do it in depth so people understand exactly what you’re doing, or else its making people more confused than when they began.
thanks heaps man
hi, great tutorial here. . . please where can i download free hdri images with back plates? the site posted by the tutorial guy dont work for me. . . so please if there’s any other link i could follow kindly let me know. thanks