Blender...

[Henderson]

Does anyone know anything about Blender? I am looking into working with render scenes so I can start rendering my own cars for my portfolio, eventually. I am getting a Mac this December, so I may wait for Blender, since my current laptop can't do much. Anyway, any short tutorial on lighting would be nice.

I am really just looking for something simple, like Jonathan's scene.

http://www.simracingdesign.com/showroom/42084-official-portfolio-jonathan-patten.html

I don't need fancy objects. Just a nice shot of the car, and realistic lighting. If anyone would be willing to make the scene for me, I wouldn't mind that either. Thanks for any responses!

 

[Phantomguy24]

Abandon all hope lol. Probably not very helpful but the one time I tried blender I was extremely overwhelmed and couldn't get anything to work. Worth a shot though.

 

[Janitor Dave]

blender.org - Lighting and Rendering

There's plenty of tutorials out there for Blender, this one is a good start if you're looking for lighting tutorials. Setting up the materials is a whole other mess on its own.

I always compare Blender versus 3ds Max (the other rendering giant) to the controls of an Xbox 360 vs. a space shuttle. One is hopelessly complicated at times, and one is so simple, a chihuahua could probably design something in it. People who have used both (but cut their teeth in Max) will get what I mean.

 

[Rogue]

Cars are here, have a look through this once you understand the basics.

Rendering a Sports Car in Blender Cycles - part 01 | Blender Cookie

 

[HoosierDaddy]

If you're getting a Mac, look into Maya. It's what they made Gran Turismo with and it it's by Autodesk, same people as 3Ds Max. You'll get good results with that and the learning curve is small. Plus there are LOADS of tutorials. Lots of support.

 

[Jonathan Patten]

My little secret:
I barely know anything about 3DS Max. All I essentially did was take the BR12 and NWS11 scenes and used the viewbox and changed the angle; I also changed the background color and added a footer aftermarket style. It's not that difficult, it's pretty simple stuff that I taught myself. If you're going to get a Mac, get Parallels and use 3DS Max. Turst me, it's loads better.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

I tried the Parallels thing and it never worked right. The thing is is that Parallels and then on top of that, loading windows...ALL while running OSX destroys your processing and ram. So 3ds max is useless. I thought it was awesome at first, and it is VERY stable, yes. But when I built this new PC, scenes that took me 15 minutes, now take me 3. So I installed Maya on the Mac and it was a world of difference. Trust me.

 

[Phantomguy24]

If you're getting a Mac, look into Maya. It's what they made Gran Turismo with and it it's by Autodesk, same people as 3Ds Max. You'll get good results with that and the learning curve is small. Plus there are LOADS of tutorials. Lots of support.

Actually if you're getting this for a mac I highly recommend Cheetah3d. It's relatively cheap at only $100 and I have yet to run into something it can't do in my albeit limited use of it. There's also a fantastic forum of users who've helped me with a lot of stuff. It's a bit more handy in Modeling than rendering but both are extremely easy to figure out.

 

[Henderson]

I think I am good now. Thanks for all the help guys! Just trying to get a good presentation scene together for my portfolio/Facebook page. Thanks again.

 

[Jonathan Patten]

I tried the Parallels thing and it never worked right. The thing is is that Parallels and then on top of that, loading windows...ALL while running OSX destroys your processing and ram. So 3ds max is useless. I thought it was awesome at first, and it is VERY stable, yes. But when I built this new PC, scenes that took me 15 minutes, now take me 3. So I installed Maya on the Mac and it was a world of difference. Trust me.

Yeah, on my older Macbook it ran really slow but with this brand new Macbook Pro it runs really fast. Before I couldn't even run 3DSMax at all, much less run both Photoshop, 3DSMax, and a million other programs at the same time like I can do now. New hardware makes a huge difference.