The Discovery Channel's "Rides" show had Chip Foose's "Impression" on
this week. Amazing, awesome, incredible, ... Here's a good write-up on
the car:
http://www.streetrodderweb.com/features/0509sr_reister/
Be sure to click on the thumbnails.

Hand built the whole way. 7 years to build. And Chip is such a nice
guy. How refreshing after his Ass Holiness Boyd Coddington, not to
forget the Big & Bigger Assholes, the Teutuls. Charley the painter, the
escapee from the Coddington Car Factory, was shown.

Bob

xray wrote:
....
I looked for the tv show but don't see it listed now. Was it on
Discovery HD? I only get the regular DSC and TLC from my satellite now.
....

Yes, Discovery Channel. They don't show a schedule for its repeat, but
I'm sure that it will. Bob

That is some amazing work. That has to be one of the cleanest engine
compartments that I have ever seen.
I think I could work on something like that for the next 100 years and
not get anything even remotely that fine.
Mike

Odd......

Up here in Canada Rides is on TLC

as for the three shows (Monster Garage, Chopper and Hotrod)

Quit showing the arguments and show the building. Yes people argue fot
you dont need to make the place look like highschool. And if it is a
highschool, Cancel the show.



Bob Engelhardt wrote:
The Discovery Channel's "Rides" show had Chip Foose's "Impression" on
this week. Amazing, awesome, incredible, ... Here's a good write-up on
the car:
http://www.streetrodderweb.com/features/0509sr_reister/
Be sure to click on the thumbnails.

Hand built the whole way. 7 years to build. And Chip is such a nice
guy. How refreshing after his Ass Holiness Boyd Coddington, not to
forget the Big & Bigger Assholes, the Teutuls. Charley the painter, the
escapee from the Coddington Car Factory, was shown.

Bob

Brent Philion wrote:

Odd......

Up here in Canada Rides is on TLC
....

Oops - you're right. TLC, not Discovery Channel. It's
www.discovery.com, but TLC. Sorry for the confusion. Bob

mj wrote:
That is some amazing work. That has to be one of the cleanest engine
compartments that I have ever seen.
I think I could work on something like that for the next 100 years and
not get anything even remotely that fine.
Mike


Yeah, it looks a little TOO fine.

The images look rendered to me. It is too clean and too perfect. And the
anti-aliasing perturbations indicate to me that the images were either generated
in a package such as 3d studio max, or captured by a less-than-optimal camera.

I still think they look fake, sorry.

"Mark Jones" wrote in message
...
mj wrote:
That is some amazing work. That has to be one of the cleanest engine
compartments that I have ever seen.
I think I could work on something like that for the next 100 years and
not get anything even remotely that fine.
Mike


Yeah, it looks a little TOO fine.

The images look rendered to me. It is too clean and too perfect. And the
anti-aliasing perturbations indicate to me that the images were either
generated
in a package such as 3d studio max, or captured by a less-than-optimal
camera.

I still think they look fake, sorry.

They do look like they've been worked over in Photoshop a bit, but they also
could be the product of one of the big "soft box" studios that the car
companies use. Anybody can rent time in them.

When I had my ad agency 25 years ago we had a smallish version of one of
those, set up in an old warehouse. It was something we inherited from the
photo studio that had been there before us. Twenty feet by twenty-five feet,
with a sixteen-foot ceiling, it must have had two - or three-hundred yards
of spun-glass fabric over the lights.

We used it to shoot display photos for Casio, which were turned into
8-foot-high Translite (now Duratrans) transparencies for trade shows. We'd
shoot one of their six- or eight-foot-wide displays of big office
calculators, and the measured light intensity was less than 1/4 stop from
edge to edge. Not a shadow anywhere, and perfectly smooth highlights off of
the reflective parts of the plastic.

It can be done. Today, though, a little bit of digital "enhancement" can do
the same thing for a lot less money.

--
Ed Huntress

LOL. I had somewhat that same thought when I first looked at them. I
thought there is no way anyone could build something that perfect. It
had to have been a retouched photo. I have no doubt the photo was
retouched somewhat, but I bet the craftsmanship on this thing is still
outstanding.
Mike

mj wrote:
LOL. I had somewhat that same thought when I first looked at them. I
thought there is no way anyone could build something that perfect. It
had to have been a retouched photo. I have no doubt the photo was
retouched somewhat, but I bet the craftsmanship on this thing is still
outstanding.
Mike


I'm quite experienced with computer graphics and rendered images. While it
might be feasible to design something this perfect, I just don't see it
happening. And you have to consider the functionality of the finished product -
the engine looks too "imagined" rather than functional. It is easy to make an
engine look like that with smoothed polygons. But where is the distributor? The
carburettor? The air cleaner? Why is the firewall "perfect?" No wires? No hoses?
No steering rack? Does the engine run on zero-point vacuum energy?

People in the computer graphics business have an affinity towards modelling
cars - getting the curves just right, making the clear/basecoat look real,
designing all those little parts. Here's a comparison. These are just a few of
thousands of samples available on the net:
http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPrevie....cfm/ID/249122 (the black ones look
especially nice.) Or if you need a "car pack":
http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPrevie....cfm/ID/273218 Or if you want to
learn how to model your own car, any car:
http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/..._modeling_max/

So I guess the thousands of people who have seen this thing in person at
several different car shows are dreaming? The many dozens of journalists who
have written stories on this car are all liars? The judges at the Detroit
Autorama that awarded it the Best of Show are nothing but hacks?

Come on, guys. At least Google the darned thing and see the hundreds of
hits and many dozens of photos of this car before trying to convince us that
it exists only in a graphic artist's computer...


"Mark Jones" wrote in message
news

I'm quite experienced with computer graphics and rendered images. While it
might be feasible to design something this perfect, I just don't see it
happening. And you have to consider the functionality of the finished
product -
the engine looks too "imagined" rather than functional. It is easy to make
an
engine look like that with smoothed polygons. But where is the
distributor? The
carburettor? The air cleaner? Why is the firewall "perfect?" No wires? No
hoses?
No steering rack? Does the engine run on zero-point vacuum energy?

People in the computer graphics business have an affinity towards
modelling
cars - getting the curves just right, making the clear/basecoat look real,
designing all those little parts. Here's a comparison. These are just a
few of
thousands of samples available on the net:
http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPrevie....cfm/ID/249122 (the black ones
look
especially nice.) Or if you need a "car pack":
http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPrevie....cfm/ID/273218 Or if you want
to
learn how to model your own car, any car:
http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/..._modeling_max/

Siggy wrote:
So I guess the thousands of people who have seen this thing in person at
several different car shows are dreaming? The many dozens of journalists who
have written stories on this car are all liars? The judges at the Detroit
Autorama that awarded it the Best of Show are nothing but hacks?
....

Yeah, and on the TV show they ran the engine. It has to be driven into
the show hall (I think this is more code-of-honor among the builders
than auto show requirement). It's real. Bob

"Mark Jones" wrote in message
news

I'm quite experienced with computer graphics and rendered images. While it
might be feasible to design something this perfect, I just don't see it
happening. And you have to consider the functionality of the finished
product -
the engine looks too "imagined" rather than functional. It is easy to make
an
engine look like that with smoothed polygons. But where is the
distributor? The
carburettor? The air cleaner? Why is the firewall "perfect?" No wires? No
hoses?
No steering rack? Does the engine run on zero-point vacuum energy?

Well, the picture may be touched up, and I haven't seen the car in person,
but the things you pointed out are no indication that the car isn't "real".
Crank-fire ignitions have made distributors unnecessary for years. There is
no carburator because the car in injected. The picture doesn't show enough
to see where the air intake is, but the intake manifold is visible so I have
faith that the air gets in somewhere. Smoothed and blemish-free firewalls
have been a feature of rods for years. I don't like the look, but many many
car builders do it. Assuming that sparkplug wires that are clearly showing
on the top of the engine aren't functional, wires and hoses are easily
hidden.

I'm betting that whatever touch ups have been done to these photos are to
get rid of the odd dust speck, not materially change any part of the car.
You need to spend some time around custom cars before claiming that
something that perfect can't happen. While I don't always like the style of
many of the custom cars I've seen, there's no denying the skill of the folks
that build many of them.

Peter

Peter Grey wrote:
You need to spend some time around custom cars before claiming that
something that perfect can't happen.

Actually when I was a kid, my father restored custom cars for a living. We
owned a 1931 Ford Model A truck, completely restored. I even got to drive it a
few times. He also restored Packards, Bentleys, an MG and a spitfire, an older
Jaguar, a couple old Chevy's, etc. I helped on quite a few. He wasn't into hot
rodding at all, just restoring to original condition.

I'm not saying Foose's design CAN'T happen, only that the photos on hotrod.com
LOOK fake. There is excessive anti-aliasing perturbations which indicate a lossy
algorithm. (Anti-aliasing takes incredible processing power, hence computer
artists generally sacrifice days or weeks of rendering time for a little poorer
anti-aliasing quality.) So to me the photos on hotrod's page still look fake
because of this poor anti-aliasing.

Now http://www.chipfoose.com/profile2.aspx shows a photo which looks more
realistic. There's other "photos" there which show slight perturbations also
like the Grandmaster. How the interior of the Grandmaster was illuminated so
uniformly with the roof still in place... that doesn't seem realistic even with
a warehouse full of fuzz boxes. But such "transparent" global illumination is
relatively easy to do in CG nowadays.

I know Chip Foose is a well-known artist, and photos-for-print are almost
always touched-up. But why not have the best photographic quality reserved for
the best cars in show? Surely, he of all people can afford it.

"Mark Jones" wrote in message
...
Peter Grey wrote:
I'm not saying Foose's design CAN'T happen, only that the photos on
hotrod.com
LOOK fake.

Well, you said that you "just don't see it happening" and then went on to
mention the lack of distributor and other things that were meant to
indicate, I thought, that you believed the car wouldn't run or wasn't "real"
(my quotes). I was pointing out that none of things that you mentioned
would preclude the car from running, or from being functional as it's shown.

Peter

What do you expect from a low res graphic posted to the web? Of course it
is compressed with a lossy algorithm - jpeg is a lossy format. You don't
really expect them to post multi-megabyte tiff images do you?


"Mark Jones" wrote in message
...
Peter Grey wrote:

...There is excessive anti-aliasing perturbations which indicate a lossy
algorithm. (Anti-aliasing takes incredible processing power, hence
computer
artists generally sacrifice days or weeks of rendering time for a little
poorer
anti-aliasing quality.) So to me the photos on hotrod's page still look
fake
because of this poor anti-aliasing.

Peter Grey wrote:
"Mark Jones" wrote in message
...
Peter Grey wrote:
I'm not saying Foose's design CAN'T happen, only that the photos on
hotrod.com
LOOK fake.

Well, you said that you "just don't see it happening" and then went on to
mention the lack of distributor and other things that were meant to
indicate, I thought, that you believed the car wouldn't run or wasn't "real"
(my quotes). I was pointing out that none of things that you mentioned
would preclude the car from running, or from being functional as it's shown.

Peter



Not like you'd actually want to DRIVE that thing.

"Mark Jones" wrote in message
...

Not like you'd actually want to DRIVE that thing.

True. Obviously, it's likely to be purchased (if it's sold) by a collector
that'll never drive it for fear of reducing its value.

While I think this car is an interesting sculpture, it has almost no allure
to me as a something to drive, or past admiring the work that went into it,
even as something to look at. Admittedly I'm not a custom car kind of guy,
but the alleviation of all things mechanical (smoothed firewall, hidden
mechanical components, etc...) is a trend I dislike in custom cars. To me,
a car needs to have mechanical components exposed - it's one of the things
that makes it a car. I come from a racing car background so perhaps my view
is skewed, but while I see Foose's car as a masterpiece of fabrication,
overall it's not something I'd care to have in my garage. As a car it's
just...boring.

Peter

Peter