Look development, look development, look development. This week, I worked on the lights of the car itself.
References
I looked at many references of Ferrari's driving at night and how their headlights shine their light. I found these references that helped with how the headlights and the brake lights look.
These videos helped me find the look of the headlights and how it hits the road. This really helped me find the cone angles and how intense the lights hit the ground.
Headlights
In order to get the look of the headlights to match the reference as close as possible, I used IES lights (30) and mapped it on aiPhotometric lights in Maya. I have emission set to 1 on the shaders of the LED lights and I placed a point lights in front of the larger headlight bulbs to mimic the the light emitting from the spotlights. All the lights are constrained to the car so that when the car moves, the lights move with it.
I positioned and angled the photometric lights in front of the headlights to mimic how the light travels from the car's headlights.
Back lights
I found that I had to do some troubleshooting on how to make the tail lights circular. To show this, I created a flat torus and added a red emission on it. I positioned it under the glass and between the chrome light structure. I also have red point lights positioned in front of the tail lights to create the red glow on the ground whenever the car brakes. As for the break light, I created a red area light to fit behind the glass. The plate light is an area light stretched to fit the size of the back plate. All lights are constrained to the car as well.
Updated Turntable
Here is the turntable of the car with all the lights and the scene changing from day to night.
Final Thoughts
Changing the color of our car to red was a team decision that we made in order for the car to stand out from the environment. There will be more iterations of the textures and shaders because we will eventually add more "imperfections" to the car like small scratches or some rough edges.