Thursday, November 16, 2006

3D Post No. 6 - Faking Highlights

This time it's all about scanline editing and enhancing. Here's one of our company showroom projects which was rendered, not in vray, but using standard lights. The trouble with standard light setups, as what my previous 3D scanline tutorial illustrates, you may always reach an acceptable output level but it will never look realistic, at least not without spending too much time on preparing the scene. In this example, I skipped the raytrace reflections on the car paint material because they are taking up too much of my render time. Photoshop is an excellent tool in enhancing the areas where I've left off - the highlights of the car finishes. Just set a new layer then spray (brush tool) away.. keeping in mind that those highlights are actual reflections of the light fixtures in the scene..

left: before PS right: after PS

Final Output:
Asked Mir to do his color correction magic in PS, here's what he came up with, a sharper more contrasty look. It's probably a plus that Mir does photography since he knows how to balance the dark and light areas well..


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