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Working with HDRI and backplates was a bit tricky at first, but I'm now starting to think it's a believable result.
See mini tutorial further down this page.

That looks great!
Aaron

it's great indeed.
the reflections on the side are beautiful. but on the front (especially the front shield) looks like there is nothing reflecting.

kami wrote:it's great indeed.
the reflections on the side are beautiful. but on the front (especially the front shield) looks like there is nothing reflecting.

Thanks!

And, you are right.. the reason is, that there isn't anything to reflect from that angle in the HDRI. The sun it in the back to the right. This is the only free sample scene, alot of the others from hdri-locations are way better, I'm going to check them out once I get 'time' to do it

I love this type of renders but never understand how you get the car on a road!

Is the road modelled and separated to the HDRI? And where does it all join?

Hi Richard

I too, didn't understand how people made these 3D renders in real images, so I did some self study during the past couple of weeks, below here I'll explain how it's done.

You need HDRI light, and matching backplates (2D photos from the same scene) http://www.hdri-locations.com has a lot of great stuff.

Choose an image like this, and look at it for a while.


Next, you take your 3D car, and place it in the distance/angle where it will fit on the road.
In your 3D program, or Maxwell Studio, adjust the HDRI scene to macth the 2D backplate, in order to get the right reflections and shadows. Below the car, place a surface with an asphalt like material, and turn the shadow channel on. Enable the shadow and alpha channel for the render.


Alpha channel to crop out the car. Only problem is, that the road is part of the scene.


Compose the alpha with the shadow, to use as a tool to crop out the car. You can skip this and the last task, if you choose to crop out the car manually.


Cropped out car in 2D backplate. Quite obvious how the whole secret is the shadow! It can be hard to believe, but this is the final image, only thing missing is the shadow pass!


Shadow channel.


Shadow pass composited using multiply as the blending mode in Photoshop. You can link the car and shadow layers, it makes it a lot easier to move around and scale the car. You have to adjust the layers colors, contrast, midtone contrast etc. to make it look as real as possible. Now you're done!

It is like I've just found the holly grail!

I had no idea it was all that simple, though I say that with tongue in cheek as I do also understand just how hard it would be to get the correct location of the car on the backplate!

Great mini tutorial thanks mate!! Really thanks!!

Cheers Richard

Nicely Done Neeper!!

Great render and thanks for the tutorial!

Hey Neeper- really great render and thanks so much for taking the time to share your process! VERY NICE!
Cary

Very clean render, great work. Thanks a lot for the mini tutorial too, it'll be really helpful.

Awesome

There was another method shown in 3d World a few issues back as well using projection mapping in 3ds Max. Not sure if that would integrate well w/ maxwell though.

-Brodie