pro automotive raw files willing to share?

[Nanls]

I have been fortunate to provide freelance retouching service across many diverse industries, from TV/film, agency, international brands, fashion, etc.
What I don't have is any automotive in my portfolio.

Does anyone have any professional automotive raw files they are willing to share or information on where I can purchase them? I would also be willing to trade retouching services for some great images.

Thanks in advance,

Nancy

[klev]

Re: pro automotive raw files willing to share?

That seems like a tough one, but I'll try to offer some suggestions. If you can't obtain access to photos, you could try renders. Those tend to be retouched too. They wouldn't necessarily be cad, but there are some professional modelers that also happen to be big into cars. I have seen some impressively detailed work in that regard, once you sift through some of the bad stuff. Someone sent me this guy's site a while back. I know he started off working with just typical 3d models rather than CAD, and he used to have a blog somewhere.

That has a very very sharp learning curve, so I don't suggest picking it up from scratch. There's also the matter of obtaining backplates + hdris for lighting. It's just a thought. I've tried modeling out vehicles in detail, and it's ridiculously time consuming gathering and correlating enough strong reference material. If you obtain raw files, I suggest also looking for detail shots of that make and model for reference. Most car ads emphasize details in headlamps and body lines, so it helps to have as much information about them as possible. Even seeing how the paint reflects is helpful for realism. I wish I could be of more help.

[Nanls]

Re: pro automotive raw files willing to share?

Thanks klev! I'll look into this.

[franko60]

Re: pro automotive raw files willing to share?

I have some transparencies I shot in the late '80s/early '90s I could scan at high res if you were intrested. I'm pretty sure I have a Lambo in there; just have to dig into the archives.

[Nanls]

Re: pro automotive raw files willing to share?

I have some transparencies I shot in the late '80s/early '90s I could scan at high res if you were intrested. I'm pretty sure I have a Lambo in there; just have to dig into the archives.

Thanks so much, that is very nice of you. I was really hoping to get some pics of some current models as when art directors will see late models they may assume that is the last time I retouched auto... if that makes sense. ;-)

[franko60]

Re: pro automotive raw files willing to share?

Ok thought you wanted them for practice :-)

[klev]

Re: pro automotive raw files willing to share?

Ok thought you wanted them for practice :-)

I suspect she needs something to show off her sensibilities with automotive work to attract jobs in that area. It seems like a really tough one without working in a shop that handles that kind of thing. For example these guys have an LA office. Here's another shop that does a lot of car work. There's another sizable one in Venice that does both print and car commercials, but I can't remember the name. The first one used to have an example of something being modeled from scratch, but it's no longer up there. The work looks pretty intense. If you look at their automotive reel, the compositing is extremely good for a commercial. I know I wouldn't be able to get that from out of the box shaders in most rendering packages. I don't know if I could approach that paint and metal work writing them from scratch. Usually the out of the box ones are hard to tune for metal and paint. They tend to be energy conserving, yet they'll allow you to dial in settings that make no sense then just apply a weird normalization to them under the hood. It gives it a slightly flat plastic look, because on screen you'll see highlights of near correct brightness and everything else compressed too near them. Much of that can be fixed in retouching, but it seems like it would be too labor intensive to do that on some of that motion work.