We are happy to present our first interview on Vray World in the automotive visualization field. Carlos Colorsponge is a passionate 3d artist with 12 years of experience and an amazing focus on car photorealism. After a very interesting interview lasting and hour and a half, Carlos talks to us about his journey in the 3d world and explains his basic pipeline workflow,enjoy it!
Hi Carlos, first of all I would like to thank you for accepting our invitation for the first interview of Vray World concerning the automotive 3D Design and of course for your general participation in both VW *Group and website.
Thank you for having me.
When did you first get into 3d and realize that you wanted to follow it?
Since i started with 3dsmax about 12 years ago from version 3 if i remember correctly.
Why did you follow visualization of cars, are your projects commercial or personal like more of a hobby?
Good question, for me it's more of an obsession I have had since i was little, everyday I would get my pencils and draw cars, trucks, planes...almost anything in that field, I just love it and found that 3ds max was a good support tool to help me realize my ideas. At this moment though I'm not working commercialy on automotive visualizations, it's more of a hobby of mine.
Please tell us in a few words about what you think are the most important technical qualities someone has to practice to achieve your level of quality and generally for automotive rendering.
I think firstly it has to be something that you like and love doing , from there your progression must be slow but steady. For me techinically speaking I consider two things to be very important and those are photography and materials. Photography is really important to keep in mind, from here it's where we begin to recreate our idea, our sketch or render. Always start with a good reference, it's the best way to have great results.
What can you say helps you the most, as a person, when working to generate such amazing quality? Which is the most important characteristic in your opinion, experience, practice, patients, ect.
I believe it's a balance of many things, technique plays a significant degree, combined with experience in the field, as well as a suitible workflow that works for you is very important, last but not least lets not forget patience.
When I started it was really hard, especially since i didn't know such good english and with almost no internet or tutorials, I almost gave up 3d but patience is very important and to never give up.
Do you model your own cars? Tell us a little about your workflow from beginning to end.
In the beginning i started to model my own cars but i soon realized that what I really liked was lighting, applying materials and rendering. Currently I'm in the process of collecting models, trying to build my library in an attept to streamline my workflow. Archmodels cars, ForzaMotorsport models are a good source for car models, also Squir.com. Once I have the basic props I use a vraydome light with an hdri to light the scene. Finding the correct hdri is always difficult, I could spend an entire day just testing different hdri's and playing with them till I find the one that suits the project.
Which type of Hdri do you use?
I have so many, my favorites are from the Viz people. So to continue with my workflow after choosing one then comes the camera, It's always good to have a clear idea of where the camera and car will be, thats where photography comes into play that we spoke of earlier. Once all those elements are ready I begin to model and build up the scene, high model details, trees, plants, lawn, asphalt, stones, decorating each of the views. Once we have the views and light the materials are what will give us this level of hyperrealism.
Tell us about your workstation specs. How long does it take you to render final images and in what resolution?
I always work at high resolution 3500px more or less and the render time is usually 4-7 hours depending on the image. For video I work at 1920x1080 and try to keep the render time under an hour per frame. As for my pc specs I have a Clone pc i7 Cpu 3.0 Ghz Nvidia Gtx with 24gb of ram, memory is important,it's saved me more than once.
Now about the prize you won at vray world with Mclaren F1 project, tell us some things about it, how did you do achieve this amazing wet look, especially the rainy drops.
For the asphalt the wet effect was created with the use of speculars maps made by me and for the car i used a very basic method, i modeled 4 drops of water and distributed them on the surface of the car with vrayscatter.
Do not say any more, we are waiting for your making of exclusively for VW right?
Right :-) I am working on several projects right now and my time is short but when I free up some time I'm looking forward to make a making off.
We will be very happy to see it in the future. Carlos thank you so much for your time it was a pleasure for us speaking to here on Vray World and we hope that VW *Members will enjoy this interview as much as we did.
It was my pleasure! I also hope that they will enjoy it and I will continue to follow VW and uploading my work on your great community.
