Almost exactly a year ago, I was interning at Top Gear USA, BBC America. I wrote mostly blog entries and photoshopped top-five list headers, but made sure to watch a Top Gear episode weekly and talked about cars all day, I loved it. Before the site was closed and I moved onto doing other stuff for BBCA, we took on a little project, creating an automotive hoax. We decided to make a shooting brake (wagon) version of some car, people either love or hate wagons so no matter what, strong opinions are in order. At first I suggested a Hyundai Genesis, because I think that would be awesome, but to get the strongest reactions we aimed for a much higher horse, Porsche.
I modeled the car in Maya over about two weeks, we shot some video and an HDR in a Brooklyn alley, and rendered it with Mental Ray. I had to composite it in Final Cut Pro due to lack of resources, but the result was semi-successful.
http://jalopnik.com/5310288/porsche-cayman-mule-spotted-with-shooting-brake-shape/gallery/
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/07/08/spy-video-porsche-cayman-shooting-brake-caught-on-camera-phone/
http://blog.caranddriver.com/three-door-cayman-mule-spotted-possible-928-successor/

We did a second part with a screen grab from the then upcoming Forza Motorsport 3 video game, which garnered even more attention and helped remove some doubt on the car’s legitimacy.
http://jalopnik.com/5311903/cayman-shooting-brake-confirmed-in-forza-3-screen-shot
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/07/13/more-evidence-of-porsche-cayman-shooting-brake/
http://cupholder.blogs.topgear.com/2009/07/14/shoot-to-play/
http://www.0-60mag.com/online/?p=14925
http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=4468726&page=1

Then something funny happened that we didn’t expect, someone created a render of our render. Taking our video and the Forza still, they photoshopped what the finished car would look like.
http://www.0-60mag.com/online/?p=15169
http://www.carzi.com/2009/07/13/porsche-cayman-shooting-brake-photo-video/

The last part of our hoax was a fake flickr gallery of a supposed intern at a German photography firm. I created and posted a bunch of images, of myself, a friend, a road and two of the Cayman.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/40860189@N04/3770157784/in/photostream/

The reactions:
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/08/07/spy-shot-porsche-cayman-shooting-brake-revealed/
http://jalopnik.com/5331445/porsche-cayman-shooting-brake-uncovered

From there the NY Times automotive blog revealed the whole shebang.
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/porsche-shooting-brake-is-a-fake/index.html?ref=automobiles

Our producer, Jared Holstein, arranged a little behind the scenes with Jalopnik.
http://jalopnik.com/5336892/how-to-dupe-the-automotive-media

This was a great little reminisce, but not the reason I sat down to write this. The past few weeks I re-textured, relit, re-rendered and re-composited the Porsche, giving it the proper attention it deserved. I tried not to look at the original and just go from what I felt was right now, but every time I would google “Porsche Mule” for reference, the damned thing would pop up in the results.

Here’s some side by sides to illustrate how much a years knowledge, about $30,000 SCAD tuition, and correct compositing software really accounts for:

New:

Old:

It’s interesting to see that previously I desaturated and grained the background plate to match the car, cheap move 2009 Matt. . . cheap move.

And here is my very first render of the project, when I was still honing in on the shape. Simple HDR-lit renders of shiny objects will always make me smile.

Finally compositing, it feels so good to be back in Nuke. The color is still a bit off and I haven’t added all of the elements but it’s finally coming together.

I’ve begun the long process of rendering, these are all straight out of Maya, so they only highlight specific features that the final composite will have. This one shows the light on the wall, which will proudly display the sexy sexy shadows from the smoke. Ground and wall textures are nice and done.

This is a quick render of the first blast, it’s missing the particles and debris, but shows placement of the fire.

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While everything is coming to a close and I’m working on the painful roto of Nate, I decided I wanted to do something unique for the dynamics breakdown. I had a few ideas but I think I’ve settled on a look that harps back to my high school days: The fisheye.

Right now the video is flopped, and none of the details were included in the render, but you get the idea.

I’m doing the Visual Effects on another student film called “Bring on the Wonder”. I managed to find time to texture this firefly model today while at work (nobody buys coffee at the SCAD Student Center where I work). Ibtisam Ahmed modeled the little guy a few months ago, and I used mostly projections to texture. Rendered in Mental Ray, with Linear Workflow, all done in under three hours.