Shelby Cobra 427 SC

[leoni-k]

Feedback Welcome.

Still a few things to change yet but it's getting there!

Check out the photo gallery of the progress from scratch here

My 2011 Showreel here

[rivard]

Very nice. What exactly do you want feedback on? The modeling is pretty good, but there are a few glaring things you need to work on:

• Things in the real world are made of thousands of parts that are assembled and held together.. think about how the car is manufactured and try and add some of those elements around, like screws on the windshield.. things tend to be welded together by car manufacturers.. so have some weld seams like this for example

• Change the environment for a studio!!! It will be much less work to make it look real.. because once again this is what happens in the real world  of course car manufacturers do outdoor stuff too.. but focus on getting one thing right.. from the looks of it doing an outdoor shot will be too much work.

• Stick with real camera movements, i.e pan, zoom, tracking etc. you can even zoom while changing the aperture.. play with the depth of field.. but don't have 'flying cameras' that's too 3d. Bear in mind that a real car advert will never have the camera at an angle where you would expect to see its own reflection.. which you did. I was expecting to see the reflection and a shadow of a camera, but they weren't there.

• Surfaces are never 100% clean.. add scratches and dirty, even if really subtle. Also cars tend to have polished metal or paint with special optical properties.. tone your reflectivity down that's for certain.

• You have 100% reflection on your disk brakes.. disk brakes get in contact with ceramic each time you break.. and therefore look a lot more polished  use this as a reference.

EDIT: Oops sorry I've realised that's not the problem.. I thought those were reflections but instead we can see straight through to the other side since there isn't an engine.. so model stuff inside.. again just quick booleans will probably do the trick. Also seats.. your car needs seats.

• When looking through the air vent we can see the hollow inside of the car.. either stop that from happening, or model a quick engine.. you can get something done really quickly using booleans and a darkish looking shader.

• You've put modern racing tires on a vintage car.. this is giving your image an identity crisis. Put older tires on there.

• Put some "anchor objects" in there.. things like ventilators.. objects which we are used to seeing in real life.. this will make it more believable.

• For your depth of field try using something like frischluft lensecare if you want a photographic quality to your lense

• Finally you could add some chromatic abberations for that final touch of realism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic\_aberration

Sorry I know there is a lot here... but every step will take you closer to reality. You have a great model that you can now take the extra mile.

Take care.

Shydo

[leoni-k]

Hey Shydo, thanks for the help, seems you put some effort in.  I really appreciate that!

I've had to put it on hold for a while though as i'm now in my final year and my dissertation/research and project are taking over.  I'm also trying to improve in after effects and learn cinema4d a little more as the maya-ae workflow isn't great for motion.

This project was a big learning curve for me but i've really enjoyed it.  There's still an infinite amount i need to learn in maya but i'm sure it will come.

I was thinking about the welds, wasn't quite sure how to tackle them though!

I was also going to model an engine and have a full turntable of the car covering it all in detail as it is precisely modelled with a lot of detail, so why not show it off.  Never really thought about the camera moves either, i just did what i thought looked good but i will take that into consideration when i get back to this project.  Hopefully it wont be too long!

Thanks again.