Being a fan of Tesla and SpaceX, I gotta make a mini video about it.
I use the live-stream reference from SpaceX, when they launched the Tesla Roadster into space. As impressive as the whole event, the video itself doesn't look filmy enough, so I spice it up a bit with some lens flare and grading (the grading might be a bit too much, tho).
Below, I will breakdown some of the process by CG and Comp:
REFERENCE
Real life references are always a good start if you wanna make a full CG shot looks photo-real. So I pick a few screen grab from the SpaceX live-stream.
With the last one being the main reference, in terms of angle, how the reflections would look, how the car paint would look, how the earth looks like, etc
as you can see I didn't match it 100%, because I don't feel the screen grab looks artistically pleasing. The lighting is terrible, color looks wash out and the composition feels off.
CG
lookdev for the 2 assets. Both are from the internet, with some tweaks on the shaders
lighting render from Arnold
lighting slapcomp with minor lens fx
one of the challenges for lighting is to lit the car with a strong key light, and not getting the specular getting too bloom out and flicker on some of the edges.
I tried many methods and eventually used lock AA samples and some comp grading to make the specular not clippy.
COMPOSITING
The real space photographs and the ones shown in the movies are little bit different. Since film being a medium of art, sometimes one will choose artistic over realism. However, in order to avoid being too stylized, it still has to be believable.
Cinematic space scene gotta have the lens flares, am I right or am I right?
all the lens fx stack together
final image with the cliche 2.35 crop
wireframe
just lighting
lighting slapcomp
final image
Overview from comp to final image
I know the final image looks nothing like the reference, but I looks a lot more cinematic (perhaps). or maybe just me putting over did it with too much lens-flares XD.
screenshot of the node graph:
I used this as my opening for my comp demo reel, see it here!