Hey guys, today I did my first render on cinema 4d. Please can you give me feedback and improvements. Thanks!
Edits :
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That looks quite nice and realistic, the vehicle model fits with the landscape and the vehicle itself looks highly detailed.
However the longer I look at it the less detailed the backdrop seems, try adding a landscape and features such as bushes or trees to give it depth.
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Looks good as a start! Just remember that some rules in photography also apply when rendering - such as the rule of thirds:
You can see that the focus of the render - the car - is not in the best place for focus, especially since the opposing corner (top left) is pretty empty. Shift the focus so the center block is focal on the subject 
Additionally, the drop shadow on the tires not only make the car look like it’s floating, but also makes it hard for the viewer to perceive where the sun is. Currently, with the shadow leading under the hood as well as the tires leading towards the front, it makes it seem like there are two suns, or the car is floating 
Finally, the post above me is correct too, there’s very little depth to the render. Try providing close, medium, and wide elements in the shot. For instance, a mountain would look really nice out here:
All things considered, it’s a great model, just the render specifically can be a touch more photogenic 
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Thank you for replying to me. I agree with you I will add some more scenery to the background like bushes and trees.
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Thank you for replying and for going into so much depth with your feedback. I agree with your comments about the shadows, I will be working on them to make sure there in correct place and will also improve on making the car the focus. Thanks again for your response.
It looks great for a first render, but I would suggest showing the reflection of the road and grass on the car, because it would be impossible to have a car that red with those surroundings. the car currently looks like it should be in a solid white room instead of the outdoors. Also inside the headlights there should be more light.
After looking at your most recent reply, it looks like you fixed most of it 
(Though I still think you should do something with those headlights)
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Thanks for your feedback, I will try and make the carpaint into a more realistic colour. Thanks
I will add more scenery like an tree and some bushes and abit more terrain for the background.
Your render looks! really good you’ve done a great job on your first, render but i would suggest adding some dirt. In the grass and add rocks and leaves on the ground when you place the trees in the landscape area, as showed below!
Hope to see the finished render. Keep up the good work man hope to see more of your very soon!!
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Thank you for your feedback, that is a great idea. I will make sure to implement dirt and leaves and small rocks onto it. That will really help. Thanks
dunno if anyone said but
for this type of outside render where you only have the sky/sun affecting your car and no other lights ,
i’d suggest using a HDRI rather than a physical sky,
but for oyur first render? good job man! looks great, you’re on the right the right track!
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Hello, thank you for replying.
I’d had heard HDRI being mentioned alot and I don’t understand what it is, so I’m going to research into and playing around with it and try to implent it.
Nice attempt, however I don’t have a lot of suggestions in my mind. Try using motion blur.
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Great render, especially for your first!
In addition to what tips the other people gave you already, you can consider:
- Changing the focal length of the camera to something higher like 200mm.
- Adding depth of field to the scene. (In C4D you can do this by enabling it in the render settings, then setting your F-stop to a low number in the camera settings. And don’t forget to pick your focus.
) - Reconsider some angles, the rule of thirds has been mentioned in this thread, but is not that important, and can be broken. What can be more important is choosing the right angle for the camera. Consider what parts of the car you want to show and place your camera accordingly. In your first picture for example, it appears that your camera is at a higher height than the car itself, which is not likely for a photographer to do. (An exception would be when shooting circuit cars.) Car photographers often go down on their knees to get a better perspective of the car.
- Another note regarding composition, is your car moving (it is on the freeway, after all) or is it standing still? A method photograpers sometimes use to portray motion is to leave some space in the direction a moving object is going.
)Example (from Google, Unsplash):
The car is (obviously) going to the right, and that’s why the photographer left some space on the right side of the frame.
In this example picture you also see a crucial phenomenon,
-
Motion blur. Because of the shutter speed of the camera, things that appear moving will be slightly blurred in the direction that they’re moving towards. (You can see it in the background in the example.)
Why isn’t the car blurry, you might ask? Because the photographer is tracking the car, moving along with it. Relatively to the car, now, the background appears to be moving.
In renders it can be fairly complex to achieve such an effect. If you want to experiment with this in C4D, you would have to first enable motion blur in the settings. Then you pick a correct shutter speed in the camera. The hardest part is to animate the scene, you would have to animate the car moving along the track for like a couple of seconds (including the wheels if you want to be super accurate.) Then you add a tracker to the camera and make it track the car automatically. -
I want to include some tips on lighting the scene. It appears that you used the C4D physical sky. You can instead (like others mentioned earlier), use an outside/daylight/clouds HDRI. HDRIs are most commonly used for the reflections they cause. In addition to this, I would recommend adding a few lights extra to the scene. HDRIs can sometimes be a little on the dark side and the extra lights will brighten up the scene/car.
Finally, my last tip is about what you can do once you got a render that you like, color grading.
C4D has some basic colors grading tools you can use, but I would recommend Photoshop or Lightroom instead. These tools are way more advanced and allow you to do more things with your image.
With color grading, you can do some basic corrections, like adding some contrast here and there and brightening up a dark scene. Or you can completely change the look of an image.
In nature scenes, you can make the scene look more natural, for example. In other scenes, you can make the look of the image way more dramatic.
One of the easiest color grading tricks you can do, is adding some vignetting, this will redirect the attention of the viewer to the center of the frame. (both Photoshop and Lightroom have these tools built-in)
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Thank you for replying in such detail.
I will defiantly improve on the depth of field, and will work on the composition and leave some space in front of the car so it looks like it is moving. I have looked into motion blur and will defiantly add it in. I will also try putting the camera higher as it currently low.
I was using an C4D physical sky so I will have a look at HDRI and try to add into the render.
For colour grading, I will move the picture in photoshop and will make more edits to the picture.
Thanks again, theese tips will help me so much.
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MAXON’s own video explains it pretty well : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if0VfFt_mzs
my favourite places to get HDRIs, there are other websites but ya :
http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html
the part about content browser most likely wont apply to you (unless you acquired c4d legitimately) so you’ll have to load the hdri texture onto a material and then follow
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Thanks, I have looked into HDRI and I’m using an website called HDRI Skies.
I’m currently using VRAY Dome to load in the HDRI Skies, and I’m already noticing an huge difference from using HDRI.
Thanks again, and I will make sure to use HDRI haven and watch the video.
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