How Do I Make Car Headlights Look Realistic

[kmaylahn]

Hi,

Im doing a lighting integration shot for my reel. Ive bought a very nice car model and am putting it in a background plate. The only bad thing is that the headlights are made by simply putting a photographic texture of a headlight onto the geometry. What would be the best way of creating a realistic headlight in terms of model and shader setup?

Thanks,

Justin

[gmask]

Car lights can be difficult because they have alot of detail and caustic effects.

Most car lights have lots of facets and this can either be modelled or faked with bump and/or color maps depending on how close you need to get. They also have alot of chrome in the reflectors.. again depending on how close it may be easier to use envrionment maps than to try to get the same effect with actual reflections and probably much faster.

[kmaylahn]

i was thinking chrome reflectors inside the lights and a bump map on the glass. The shot is a still at the moment, so might come under a bit more scrutiny. How would I do it with an environment map?

thank!

Justin

[gmask]

Play around with connecting a black N white ramp with noise environment map to the color channel of the chrome.. this way you can still have reflections but you'll beable to get more interesting gradients

[kmaylahn]

great ill give that a try. While you at it, how do I get decent self shadows when rendering in passes? when i do a show pass all i get is shadows on the ground, not the shadow for example inside the car or under the rims. How do I set this up in maya?

thanks again,

Cheers,

Justin

P.S. Will post render when im done so you can have a look