Imitation really is the best form of flattery: GM caught photoshopping Rivian photo

[Moon]

Heh they literally warped the r1t image and reused a variety of its design features. Look at the reflection in the rear window, the side panels, the wheels and the rear fender.

Does not look like it, RIVIAN on the tailgate is all wrong, both are morphed images.

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[godfodder0901]

Does not look like it, RIVIAN on the tailgate is all wrong, both are morphed images.

Just mirrored. That's also the very first prototype.

 

[Rivian_Hugh_III]

Fired, they just got 150,000 free clicks and raised awareness about the GMC Sierra EV by ten fold! . . . look out for the new head of marketing as that was an Elon-like move . . .

Yep, and people looking at both side by side may just decide they prefer the Denali. It sure is beefier.

 

[AdamsFan1983]

Teehee. GM Design Insta yanked the photo this morning.... This is where it used to be posted.

 

[MountainBikeDude]

They probably just both used the same scene in (insert favourite 3d graphics package here)

It's actually a snippet from a video they shot back in 2018. Rivian-Real, GM-Photoshop

 

[AdamsFan1983]

Teehee. GM Design Insta yanked the photo this morning.... This is where it used to be posted.

Heh, they burned the whole post now.

 

[dleewla]

damn, they got caught huh? what a spectacular goof.

 

[Bee]

You guys understand we just got a freelance 3D artist in trouble who made the simple and understandable mistake of reusing an HDRI, right?

Edit: I'm being way too forgiving, he literally just plopped a new model into the old scene and hit render.

 

[godfodder0901]

You guys understand we just got a freelance 3D artist in trouble who made the simple and understandable mistake of reusing an HDRI, right?

Edit: I'm being way too forgiving, he literally just plopped a new model into the old scene and hit render.

And I don't think that was stock imagery. I am 99.99% sure it's from the photo shoot they did in NYC just before the NY Auto Show, the same weekend of their first customer event.

 

[Bee]

And I don't think that was stock imagery. I am 99.99% sure it's from the photo shoot they did in NYC just before the NY Auto Show, the same weekend of their first customer event.

So this is my literal profession. The identical particles, the reflections, the direction of the lighting and frankly the quality of the reflections of the GMC are all heavy evidence towards a render. Perhaps the Rivian itself was an original photo (doubtful, I'd definitely bet against this) but everything else is so perfectly translated from car to car. The reflections especially are suspect because it would be specifically an HDRI in a 3D setting that would give you them. The color temperature can be easily changed in either the production our post production environment.

Think about it, in order to do this, they'd have had to go in specifically trying to recreate the Rivian photo. The photographer would have to get the same exact angle. Match the lighting, or they'd have to match the angle then go back into photoshop and make it all exact.

All of us have industries we work in, and guess what, when you work in an industry across many brands you recycle your work. A lot. I don't think I'm ever dumb enough to do it with consumer-facing stuff, but I certainly do it.

This could have happened in any number of ways. Could have been an agency employee or could have been a hired gun by an agency (more likely). But without a doubt, I can see the person opening up Cinema 4D in my head right now, plopping in a model they didn't create, changing the materials to Redshift materials and hitting "render."

We all have sets of HDRIs and they're not very large sets and that's how we get our backgrounds, especially on still photos. The reason is because they're very specialized photos and there just aren't huge libraries of them out there nor are the good ones free. The leaves we're seeing here? I bet they're from like Turbosquid or CGTrader. Also possible the photo was just a photo he literally put on a plane behind and that's why it's the exact angle. I'd still bet HDRI and it's the same angle cause it's the only direction that worked for the shot for some reason.

It's an extremely time consuming and deadline oriented job, this seems open and shut to me. What makes you 99.9% sure? The only mistake the artist made here was recycling his work publicly, because again, if I'm doing something for company A's c-suite presentation I'm sure as hell re-using whatever I can for company B's c-suite presentation.

Edit: Scratch that, I'm betting the leaves were done entirely in post, overlayed in Photoshop at the end. No matter what, still not real photo.

 

[godfodder0901]

So this is my literal profession. The identical particles, the reflections, the direction of the lighting and frankly the quality of the reflections of the GMC are all heavy evidence towards a render. Perhaps the Rivian itself was an original photo (doubtful, I'd definitely bet against this) but everything else is so perfectly translated from car to car. The reflections especially are suspect because it would be specifically an HDRI in a 3D setting that would give you them. The color temperature can be easily changed in either the production our post production environment.

Think about it, in order to do this, they'd have had to go in specifically trying to recreate the Rivian photo. The photographer would have to get the same exact angle. Match the lighting, or they'd have to match the angle then go back into photoshop and make it all exact.

All of us have industries we work in, and guess what, when you work in an industry across many brands you recycle your work. A lot. I don't think I'm ever dumb enough to do it with consumer-facing stuff, but I certainly do it.

This could have happened in any number of ways. Could have been an agency employee or could have been a hired gun by an agency (more likely). But without a doubt, I can see the person opening up Cinema 4D in my head right now, plopping in a model they didn't create, changing the materials to Redshift materials and hitting "render."

We all have sets of HDRIs and they're not very large sets and that's how we get our backgrounds, especially on still photos. The reason is because they're very specialized photos and there just aren't huge libraries of them out there nor are the good ones free. The leaves we're seeing here? I bet they're from like Turbosquid or CGTrader. Also possible the photo was just a photo he literally put on a plane behind and that's why it's the exact angle. I'd still bet HDRI and it's the same angle cause it's the only direction that worked for the shot for some reason.

It's an extremely time consuming and deadline oriented job, this seems open and shut to me. What makes you 99.9% sure? The only mistake the artist made here was recycling his work publicly, because again, if I'm doing something for company A's c-suite presentation I'm sure as hell re-using whatever I can for company B's c-suite presentation.

Edit: Scratch that, I'm betting the leaves were done entirely in post, overlayed in Photoshop at the end. No matter what, still not real photo.

I agree that the GMC is CGI.

The reason I think the Rivian photo is legit and real is because I talked to the team that did the photo shoot and saw the video of it when I was in NYC for the event. I remember when that whole set came out years ago.

 

[AdamsFan1983]

I agree that the GMC is CGI.

The reason I think the Rivian photo is legit and real is because I talked to the team that did the photo shoot and saw the video of it when I was in NYC for the event. I remember when that whole set came out years ago.

Truth. The Rivian photo is legit. And I find it strange that someone the edits photos for a living thinks this is a perfect rendering:

 

[Bee]

I agree that the GMC is CGI.

The reason I think the Rivian photo is legit and real is because I talked to the team that did the photo shoot and saw the video of it when I was in NYC for the event. I remember when that whole set came out years ago.

There are some elements about the Rivian photo that are highly suspect but nothing I would call a slam dunk. It's a bunch of little things, like the fact that we don't see a floor, that lead me to believe someone was in an artificial 3D environment. By skipping the floor you no longer have to worry about its shadows and floor textures which can potentially be another time consuming step when working with things like HDRIs.

At least with the Rivian photo the final details of the photo are obscured enough that I can't tell you for certain. You can reasonably conclude some of the things that looked fake were done in Photoshop to a photo like how the tail lights glow. The GMC photo, I think anyone should be able to zoom into that tailgate, even apart from any other evidence, and see there's something very wrong and not real about it.

The one thing, that really keeps me from entertaining it's a real photo is the identical reflections from every angle on both the GMC and the Rivian. That might even be impossible to do without reflecting the same images back on a computer generated model. It would at least be incredibly time consuming, and then, why would you do it.

 

[Bee]

Here's a real possibility we haven't considered, and frankly if my department made this mistake this is how it would happen.

Scenario: PR firm has folder of assets from internal presentation. For said internal presentation design was tasked with filling in images with the not yet modeled (or prohibitively expensive for an internal meeting to hire someone to render) new images. This was 100% fine and is done all the time and no one would ever look down on them for doing this. You need to talk to the CMO about what you're doing and have pretty pictures, all good.

So now you're launching and you need new assets. Perhaps you're an SAE who wasn't even on the account 2 months ago. How would you possibly know the origin of this image? Heck, in this scenario, because no one knows the origin, it would probably even make it past the brand manager at GM.

The above scenario? Frankly. it could have even been for the new business pitch for the agency. When you're doing new business pitches you have no reference for the client's brand at all and are making presentation with their branding in it. You don't hire a 3D artist for a $5k / month retainer, so, voila, this image is born and completely acceptable in that context. GM won't give you their unreleased model to make a new business pitch with, you gotta be creative, too. (though it looks like whomever had the model in this instance, hence the angle match)

Edit: Or even another scenario, the agency was brought on for the R1T launch, finished that work and just nabbed GM and the Denali as a client and again any of the above scenarios or similar come directly into play. That agency is still going to have all its work from Rivian and will use said work in their pitches for new business.

This whole thing is unfortunately somewhat understandable and not shocking.

 

[Dark-Fx]

Maybe they just ran it through DALL-E until they got something they liked.

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