Imaginary fighter aircraft

 From:  anto matkovic (AMM)
6748.8 In reply to 6748.7 
Max,
Renderer is path-tracing engine of 3Delight, just because I felt confident with it. If anything went wrong with custom normals from MoI, I'd be able to adapt the shader to take the custom normal property, directly. Afaik there is tricky area - even 3d app and renderer are able to use custom normals, shader still can override them in favor of orientation driven by polygons. But it worked without such workarounds.
Otherwise, perhaps any of dozens path tracers all around, should be able to do that - if there is support for custom normals.
There's simple, procedural glossiness map. Sort of angle based texture for diffuse map too, which makes the diffuse color to spread around parts. Little bit of vignetting in post, to make it more dramatic. For some more ambitious renders, I'd definitively go with full, by hand created textures, this time I was impatient.

Anyway, for purpose of showing the models, I'd say, this is somewhere in portrait category, where is imho most important to make distinction between model and background, by vignetting, blurred background, lower contrast on background, anything along this line. These renders are also 'outdoor', there is no that much of bounced light, so not heavy task for renderer.