image manipulator program

HOW TO USE:
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The quickest way
Minor tweaks
Modifications
Kit Version 2
conclusion
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1. THE QUICKEST WAY
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Install Blender,
Unrar the .blend file
Open it with Blender
Select your car (see the image below).
Check if the car's body is pink highlighted. If not, right-click on it to select it. This operation selects the associated material.
Press F6 to enter the texture menu (if not).

Foto 1

Then press the "load" button to load your skin.

The load window:

Foto 2

Now check if the skin file is loaded:

Foto 3

Press the "gift" button to disable autopack, otherwise the skin file will be incrusted into the .blend file. Select the skin file original path (identical) to avoid autopacking.

Final steps, press F10 to enter the render menu.

Foto 4

The render should take approximately 5 minutes. PRESS "ESCAPE" KEY ON YOUR KEYBOARD TO ABORT THE RENDER CALCULATION ANYTIME. But it can't resume!

When the render is finished, you can press F3 to save the render image.
Note that the background is transparent, so you can put any background you want, even the window parts and shadows are set to transparent.

2. MINOR TWEAKS
----------------------

At first there are some basics navigation commands:
select an object with right mouse button
rotate the view by moving the mouse while mouse wheel button is pressed
translate the view by moving the mouse while mouse wheel button and "Shift" key are pressed
After making some render you probably want to change the viewpoint. I've put and set up some cameras you can use.

To do this, select a camera by clicking on its gizmo

Foto 5

It should turn to a pink color.
To activate it for the render, press Ctrl+Numpad0 on your keyboard. The gizmo top triangle you be turned to black and the right window switches automatically to the new point of view.

I also set another sun lamp to illuminate the car from the rear if you select a rear or above camera. I put it in the fourth layer.

How to select layers:

Foto 6

Layers are very useful to manage a complex scene. We can put anything like we want into them.
To single-select a layer, just click on it. The other ones will be deselected.
To toggle a layer selection, maintain the shift key and click on the layer.

In our example, we want to select the rear sun for a rear-view render. To swap the sun, toggle the third layer to make disappear the front sun, and next toggle the fourth one to make appear the rear sun. I don't recommend to use both suns since the render will be too bright and unrealistic.

3. MODIFICATIONS
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There are some tips to modify the scene setup:

Changing the camera settings

Foto 7

At fist, you must right-click on the camera you want to change, to highlight it.
Press F10 to enter the edition menu.
You can change the lens view angle, to get far or near point of view effect.
You can also move it: Enable the edit mode by clicking on the hand icon on the edit bar. More icons should appear on the right of it, and a gizmo on the camera.
The red triangle is for translating the object (move it in the scene)
The green circle is used for rotating the object around its center point
the blue square is useless to modify a camera but scales an object (I never used it anyway...)
The global/local mode selector, changes the reference of the edition motions. Global mode is the scene reference, it's the "absolute reference", it never moves. The Local mode attaches the reference to the object you are editing, so it's moved in the same time you move the object. Switch between the modes to position perfectly the camera (or any other object) as you want.
To view the numerical values of the object you are editing, press "N" key to spawn the "Transform properties" window.
Take a look to the official manual to obtain better explanation about all of this.
Changing the render image size

You want a larger render image? return to the Render menu (F10) and set desired size values in SizeX, SizeY input boxes.

Foto 8

You can also set the render image output file type if you want. The button "BW" means Black and White, "RGB" 16-bits color image, "RGBA" RGB+alpha channel to get the transparent areas of the image (doesn't work with all image file types).

Don't forget that larger image means longer render calculation 

Create a reflective floor

To get a reflective ground is easy:
Select the big circle that represents the ground in the 3D view
Press F5 to enter the material menu
depress "OnlySha" small button in the "Shaders" menu (need to expand it to see it)
Enter the "Mirror Transp" tab and press "Ray Mirror" button
Set a 0.2-0.3 value in the "RayMir" input. (this is the reflexion amount setting)
Press F12 and enjoy
Note that the circle will be no longer transparent in the renders.

Import custom wheels

Actually I haven't tried to customize LFS models by inserting custom elements but it should not be hard.
Find a wheel which its file is blender compatible
Delete or move into another layer the default LFS wheels of the car.
put the 3d cursor (left-click) where a wheel should be inserted (don't need to be accurate)
perform a File>append (if the wheel comes from a .blend file) or a File>import and select the wheel file.
The wheel should appear at the 3D cursor. Fine position it with the manipulation tools.
Press shift+D keys to duplicate the wheel and re-position it for the three other wheel locations.
The last question is where to find custom wheels? 

How to add car(s)

To add another car is easy but messy.

If it's the same car you want to duplicate:
Select the first layer only of the scene by left-clicking on it. It will show the car only.
Select all the car parts by pressing "A" key (select all command). Check visually if most of the car look pink highlighted. Re-press "A" twice if not sure.
press "shift+D" keys to duplicate the car, and be careful, when you move the mouse, the copy of the car will move with it, FREELY. So to move the copy where you want but to keep it with the wheel touching on the ground, immediately press "shift+Z" to lock the Z-axis movement. It will avoid you to try to Z-level the car.
Position the copy of the car with the mouse and when satisfied left-click. During moving the car you can use the keyboard commands to rotate it ("R" key, then "Z" key to rotate it around Z axis) But I suggest to use the more comfortable manipulation tools.
If the car is not the same:
Select the car-to-duplicate 's scene
Select the first layer only of the scene by left-clicking on it. It will show the car only.
Select all the car parts by pressing "A" key (select all command). Check visually if most of the car look pink highlighted. Re-press "A" twice if not sure.
Move the car in another layer by pressing "M" key (just below the first one for example) to avoid a mess.
Press "ctrl+L" keys and click "to scene..." to copy the car to the other car final scene.
Select the destination car scene to show it.
The two cars should be in two different layers. Select the copied car layer only, select all its parts ("A" key), and make it single-user by pressing "U" key and clicking "object & obdata & materials & text". This operation unlink the copied car and now if you move or modify the car in one scene, the car in its original scene will not be affected by modifications.
Move the cars where you want with the manipulation tools.
4. KIT VERSION 2
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I created a version 2 of the kit to enhance results with the help of users's suggestions. However rendering with this version can take 2 hours instead of 5 minutes because of the higher quality settings.

Use this kit in the same way than the V1. I suggest for newcomers to try the V1 first because of the rendering time.
Note that I removed "LFS" stickers and tire brand markings from the models because they caused ugly glitches. Since the release of the V2 was already late IMO, remapping all the tires would cost too much time for me.

5. CONCLUSION
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I hope this kit can enjoy you to make easily your own renders. However, it might be not enough, you may want to change the light, the background, the camera positions, the materials (make some body more or less shiny...). All of these aspects are not so hard to learn. Blender is not harder to use than 3Dsmax, but the 3D creation is mainly learned with experience. You can't draw a realistic portrait without tried hundred times before, it's quite similar with 3D creation. You can ask questions here to get more information (or make suggestions) , but I recommend you to read the manual, tutorial and practice a lot, like the quite noob like me or the true 3D gurus


MD5 (blender-2.48a-OSX-10.4-py2.3-intel.zip) = 1c56b44dc07e5c87a3b82d96574ad4b4
MD5 (blender-2.48a-OSX-10.4-py2.5-intel.zip) = 4f7b390a17b22e08da2ad593a5e636dc
MD5 (blender-2.48a-linux-glibc236-py24-i386-static.tar.bz2) = b1cff294e0e64fbd9ce4c4c70fdaaee5
MD5 (blender-2.48a-linux-glibc236-py24-i386.tar.bz2) = 972fb7cc07eaff9e4521b69f4cc78390
MD5 (blender-2.48a-linux-glibc236-py24-x86_64-static.tar.bz2) = d62935500d0166bfd33ed49bb134ec2f
MD5 (blender-2.48a-linux-glibc236-py24-x86_64.tar.bz2) = 7abe84e8f7e5812965902e02e255dc5e
MD5 (blender-2.48a-linux-glibc236-py25-i386-static.tar.bz2) = 0163ce09ead4fc5092bc7c67cd862d7c
MD5 (blender-2.48a-linux-glibc236-py25-i386.tar.bz2) = c876ed8ead39a052466a4f1f90ee4e11
MD5 (blender-2.48a-linux-glibc236-py25-x86_64-static.tar.bz2) = 16b100c4a4c870062ebdd354ec023203
MD5 (blender-2.48a-linux-glibc236-py25-x86_64.tar.bz2) = 23abcbdcc8f54d84fe9436a8f1ac46cb
MD5 (blender-2.48a-py2.3-OSX-powerpc.dmg) = 203e0aaf09ac7784497b50fdf22e7953
MD5 (blender-2.48a-py2.5-OSX-powerpc.dmg) = c79b4c6533f950779d7c716d498ee45e
MD5 (blender-2.48a-solaris-2.8-sparc_64-py2.5.tar.bz2) = 4f7eb0d1f39a5d0efdb4e83872194ef4
MD5 (blender-2.48a-windows.exe) = 8bda229c162be1a897146af5616506ac
MD5 (blender-2.48a-windows.zip) = 12319ca89b71766e01a2aa7ed1d5e2b5
MD5 (release248a.md5) = d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e

to verify the integrity of the download. You can safely ignore the warnings about missing files. (Windows users can do this too with a Cygwin installation, or google for 'md5sum win32').