Interview to Mobimodeler 2007

Ferrari F500 (1951)  circa 2007

3D Max, Mental Ray and Photoshop

INTERVIEW:
Hello Jomar, could you tell us how you first got started in 3d?
- After working for 6 years at MacCann Erickson I went to Thompson
where I've worked for 17 years at their Rio de Janeiro's office.
I used to do story-boards, lay-outs and art to go to print.
The "hardware" was a tradicional one, like pencils, brushes and air-brushes.
In the meantime I was already using my personal computers
(Comodore Amiga and custom built PCs) at home, to do my personal freelances.
When Thompson turned his traditional Studio into the Computer Arts Department
I was one of them to join the changing from brushes to mouse. It was in 1994.
Later I began to learn - Bryce - the first 3D software that I knew.

What 3d software package(s) do you use?
- 3D Max

What do you like most about it the software?
- Easy of use

How did you come up with the idea of the Ferrari F1 scene?
- All the cars that I have made were for fun.
I like these old cars, with all their glamour and mood,
that only time can build.
The Ferrari 500, was the first Ferrari to be a F1 World Championship(1952),
and was a natural choice after I've made another
classical racing car, the Alpine 443, winner of the 24-hour of Le Mans(1978).
It is in: http://www.cg-cars.com/forum/gallery/showimage.php?i=792&postid=1535#post1535

Please take us through you the modeling process of your scene.
- This Ferrari took me 2 weeks to model and texture it,
and 2 days to light and render. You can see by the pictures
that the modelling process was an easy one.

How about your lighting process? How did you light your scene?
- I used one "sun" lighting and a Spot with SPECULAR:on and diffuse:off,
to bring some shine to the metal, but without burn out the car's shader.
Two panels, left side and above, with an output shader
to help showing some details in the dark regions of the car.

And your Materials/Shaders/Environment?
- The Materials are the ones who came with the Max
and some from the Jeff Patton's site: http://jeffpatton.net/Mental-ray.htm

Rendering/Render.
- The render was the Mental ray, with final gather.
Then I  brought the image to Photoshop and used curves,
hue/saturation to give it the colors I wanted.
The original image straight from the render,
had all the steps from black to white, 
so in Photoshop it was easy to bring contrast
and "light up" the whole scene, without lose some menor details.

From start to end how long did this project take you?
- From the looking for references in the Internet,
to the Photoshop pos-production, it was almost 3 weeks.

Do you have any tips for cg beginners?
- I think that we have to pay attention
to the work of the others, we're always learning something,
(composition, light and color)
and practice, practice, practice, all the time.