Here's how I've been doing Clay renders in KT:

1. First Download and install the higher quality clay render presets (you will find them in the helpful link Numbthumb provided, look for Fletch's response) - you want these because they have anti-alias

2. Open up your model in KT, either from SketchUp when it asks, or from the .xml file

3. If you don't have a ground plane for shadows, add one in KT and make the color off-white

4. Click on Sun and Sky settings, change the sky color to white, and then go to the Hue/Sat/Value and drop the value down to 97% so it is not perfectly white.

5. Click on the render button and choose a render setting such as 21b (Clay Render Medium + AA)

6. Don't forget you can adjust exposure and gamma in KT when you view the image

That'a all I do, unless I decide to overlay edge lines from SU in Photoshop later on.

AWESOME ISSUE!

Very Nice!!! Is Moby a shipping line in Italy?

This is super cool...I love the jet taking off...great model!

wow...that is perfect!

@hellnbak said:

Thanks for sharing your fantastic model! Don't know if you're concerned about file size, but I played with parts of your model and the results are shown below. And I only worked with the tires and the drive cog, I could easily get it down even further. Like I said, I don't know if file size concerns you that much, just thought I'd throw it out there.

Thanks...I wasn't too worried about it because I have a pretty good PC and it was orbiting fine with the shadows off.
I'm sure that a lot of the arcs are much higher resolution than they needed to be...I'm still learning how much I can get away with in rendering before seeing facets.

@bryan k said:

Wow!

I have question though: is the mountain background a flat pic or an HDRI?

I used an HDRI probe to illuminate the model, but masked it out.
The background you see is a flat pic added in PS.

@solo said:

Sharing model?

Great stuff mate, and good render.

Thanks! I'm happy to share it...I put a copy of the .skp in my public Dropbox folder. You can download it here:

Dropbox - 404

(dl.dropbox.com)

For anyone not familiar with Dropbox, it is a way to store files of any type and size in the cloud and sync them between multiple computers. I use it all the time, even with SU files. It is free to sign up and you'll get 2GB of storage space.

If you use this link to sign up, you get both of us will get an extra 250MB of storage space:
http://db.tt/Wj5fyuW

@hellnbak said:

This is amazing! Well beyond my meager capabilities. I'll give you five bucks to teach me your methods (not all at once of course, we'll have to work out a payment plan)

You've got to be kidding...that Roadster is waaay better than anything I've ever done!!!!!

@pbacot said:

Beautiful. How did you put the snow on the tracks? (and tracks in the snow?)

Thanks! I used the clone brush in Photoshop to clone snow from the ground onto the tracks, varying it with density, brush size, and shading.

For the tracks in the snow, I used some ski tracks that were already in the scene and moved them behind the crawler, and then used the clone brush to cover up the spot where they originally were.

Here's the final image...Kerkythea render and Photoshop.

Last couple bits of trivia for you about these...info I found on a forum from a guy named Lyndon that collected them...

"Snow Trac's were built in "Batches". The factory made all the parts and "Stockpiled" them in a warehouse. The sales Division would request assembly of a "Batch" which would then be assembled from parts. Batches were generally 10,25, or 35. Their biggest single sale was in 1961/62 when the Canadian Phone company ordered roughly 100 machines. If you look at the production chart it's the only year that sales exceeded 200 machines."

"When VW discontinued the Beetle they figured that they wouldn't be able to get engines and discontinued the line. Later on it was indicated that had they known that VW production was going to continue in Mexico that they might have continued. The story is that the entire last year and a half of production was made from 'Spare Parts'."

Thanks so much for the incredibly helpful info!!!

Halloween will be here before you know it, so I thought that I would put up a link to my all time favorite Flickr stream.

These are candid photos taken from a hidden camera of visitors to a haunted house in Niagara Falls - "Nightmare's Fear Factory" (I've been there!)

Nightmares Fear Factory's Photostream

Nightmares Fear Factory's photostream

(www.flickr.com)

Absolutely hilarious stuff...here are few examples, but it goes on and on and gets funnier and funnier.

Great work...can't wait to see more!

I'm curious, are you using physical dimensions taken from an actual car or blueprint, or are you doing this by eye from photo references or something else? I'm always amazed when someone successfully captures the complex body shapes of a car ..it would be interesting to know your workflow.

Awesome model AND render! A+++++++++

Here's my first attempt at a render for this model. I used Kerkythea with HDRI lighting + an omni light for shadows. No post-processing or any attempt to make things look grungy yet...

Any comments/advice from the render experts will be very helpful from this point on, because I'm such a newb with rendering and feel like I'm shooting arrows at a target in a dark room half the time...

My next step is to find a good background and see if I can composite this in some kind of realistic way.

@dave r said:

That looks really nice. It would look great in my driveway and it would make my neighbors wonder.

Yeah...wouldn't that be great!!!! Thanks for nice comments Dave!

@hellnbak said:

Perfect. How did you get the soft ground shadows?

I selected the shadow and added Gaussian blur in Photoshop. I also used a filter from Topaz Labs to give the red paint a bit of a rendered feel, and I put the profile lines on a separate layer so I could control them separately. That's about it...

I'm going to try some renders in Kerkythea next...I'd like to composite it on top of a nice winter landscape.

A couple views out of SketchUp...

I'm blessed to have this in my town. Try not to be too jealous!