Step 9: This is where the magic happens! All the above was just preparation :-) Now we will put it all together. We work from back to front.

• Start with a new composition and set the background to a color /gradient u like best.
• Drag the ground shadow composition into the new composition.
• Drag the Detail composition in next. The details have an alpha so they should fit well.
• Time for the base color composition.
• Add the specle comp on top. The falloff in this comp will reveal it where light hits.
• I added the Ambient Occlusion composition next just because it looked cool here :-) NOTE that I set the Layer Mode to Multiply to have a nice overlay/add look going on.
• Add the clear coat comp on top. NOTE that I used the carpaint falloff as luma matte.
• Now add the glass composition.
• The FX Adjustment Layer is optional. In my case I added glow and lense flare FX.

Remember that you can get back into the sub-compositions at any time to make adjustments. The Brightness&Contrast adjusts the hardness of the falloffs, the Hue/Saturation adjusts the color, lightness and saturation of the solid color layers etc. By changing the opacity of certain layers or their layer blend mode (e.g “Overlay” or “Multiply”) you can adjust the amount of specular/metallic or heaviness of the clear coat e.g.

Playing with all these possibilities I got kinda cool results in NO time:


Additional Note: This tutorial is not necessarily an After Effects tutorial. If you understand the meaning of nesting and blending layers you can tranfer the steps to almost any compositing. If you render a normal pass and UW pass you can even decorate the car with decals and dirt etc. in post! Since you can´t import 3D data into After Effects properly I skipped this part here. Entire relighting can be done with the 3D geometry as FBX or OBJ and the normal pass too ;-) I didn’t render Velocity or Z-Buffer because the image is clearly a still image and the most far point in it is aprox. 5 meters in the back. Since I wanted the whole car to be sharp I didn´t need any Z information.


Talking about Falloffs briefly: Below you can see two of the Falloffs I used. Again this is not a shading tutorial so I´ll cut that short here J For the reflection and Color mix of the Base Coat colors I used a fresnel falloff in camera Z-Direction with a bit sharper curve and overriden IOR setings. For the Specle/Metallic blend falloff I used a Perpendicular/Parallel falloff. The glass falloff is fresnel again to cut away reflection as the camera turns away from the object surface.



Lots of other websites and portals released articles and interviews about Speed Racer lately.  I would like to point out one in particular: VFX Guide Article: How to Paint a Digital Car

And again I invite you to go crazy on the settings J This time I used an image as the first base color (instead of the darker red) and shifted the Hue/Saturation effects to a golden yellow…Note that the this was done without UVW coordinates and normal pass renderings. This is straight faking :-) But certainly it does the trick at least for a still. As the great Brandon Davis says: Physically correct is not necessarily aesthetically correct!

And YEEES I admit sometimes I like the cheeeeesy glow :-) especially for show cars! Looks more glamorous and hides minor flaws in the geometry…



About the Author - Anselm v. Seherr – Thoß is a VFX Freelancer who spezialises on ParticleFX and other visual effects such as digital destruction, shading and compositing in general. He is also known as PsychoSilence and 3Delicious around the cg forums and the industry for serveral years. Visit him at www.3Delicious.de

Related Links

Particle Planting - Read Here
Freelancer's Manifesto - Read Here

Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3