A 3D model of my bike that I did to practice basic modeling skills and using curves in Blender. I decided to do this after hearing a CGCookie instructor suggest it in a YouTube video. I worked from pictures I took myself and practiced "eyeballing" the proportions. While I skipped a lot of detail and there's definitely some weirdness here and there, I'm reasonably satisfied with the result.
After the modeling was done, I decided to add some rudimentary materials and render a couple pictures. This was a lot of work for me, but I enjoyed it and learned a great deal.
Edit: Added a render with a shadow caster, as the kind people in the comments suggested!
The bike looks great!
If you are using cycles (no pun intended) add a plane, scale it up a bit, go to the object properties, and under visibility enable shadow catcher.
This will give you the shadows and keep the background you are using.
Thanks a lot for the tips and feedback!
Your bike looks great!
Omar's point about getting some shadows is spot on. It looks like it's floating over the field rather than riding on it.
Thanks a lot for the tips and feedback!
Your exercise turned out great. Don't worry about the weirdness here and there, only you can see it because you worked on it and know it by heart, but I can't see anything wrong. The only thing I'd say is that maybe add a ground plane with a simple texture to at least catch the shadows so it doesn't look like it's floating. Should take less that 5 minutes and it makes it look even better.
Thanks a lot for the tips and feedback!