Warning: This is a Maya tutorial, so anyone who reads my blog for the animation, should probably skip this post.
A classmate asked me to show him how I light and render my scenes, so I thought I'd right a quick tutorial in case someone else might be interested as well. Here goes.
Below I will show you the steps neccessary to quickly light and render a simple scene with a box in an "infinite color" background. This technique only works if your scene doesn't have any walls. Indoor scenes require a more complicated lighting scheme and I haven't quite found a quick way to light those scenes.
Step 1:
Create a Maya scene with a polygon box on top of a backdrop. The backdrop is basically a plane with a curved back to it. You can create a smooth curved backdrop by applying a bend deformer to a plane and having the deformer only bend the back half of the plan. The front half is the flat surface that the box will rest on. The backdrop will help make it look like an infinitely empty space behind the object.
Rendering the scene as is with the default Maya Software Renderer will look something like this:
Step 2:
In the Render Global Settings under “Render Using” choose Mental Ray. If Mental Ray isn’t showing up in this box, you need to turn it on first. To do this go to Window --> Settings/Preference --> Plug-in Manager. The Plug-in Manager window will pop up. Scroll down until you see Mayatomr.mll. Make sure there are checks in the checkboxes for both “loaded” and “auto load” for this plugin by clicking in the corresponding boxes. Close this window. Now back to the Render Global Settings. Once you have changed the “Render Using” to Mental Ray, click on the “mental ray” tab below. Under “Quality Presets” choose “PreviewFinalGather”. Close the window.
The rendered scene will look something like this:
Step 3:
Change the Environment color of your camera to a lighter color. To do this, select your camera in the outliner (in this case I have a camera called RenderCam) and open up the attribute editor. Scroll down until you find “Environment” Change the Environment color by either pulling the slider to the right or clicking on the color and choosing a lighter color. The lighter this color is, the brighter the scene. Too light will blow everything out. In this case I just pulled the slider about halfway to the right.
The rendered scene will look something like this:
Step 4:
Add a directional light. Under Create Lights choose Directional Light. Rotate the new light in the direction desired. In the attribute editor for the light, make sure to turn on Raytraced Shadows. You can also change the color and intensity here to for the desired effect.
The rendered scene will look something like this:
So this wraps up the tutorial. One thing to note is that you can get different color combinations by changing the backdrop texture color, camera environment color, or the directional light color. In some of my renders I liked using blue for the environment color (like the sky), and a light yellow for the directional light (like the sun). Anyway, I hope this was helpful. Please feel to correct me if I have made a mistake. If you have any crits or suggestions please leave a comment below. Thanks
Update:
As I have been using this technique for a while now, I have found that shadows can be too harsh. In order to soften them, you may need to increase the brightness of the environment color in the camera and reduce the intensity of the light. Play around with it until it looks right.
Also, I have found command line rendering to be much fast than rendering within Maya. To do this, make sure you have set the project to the appropriate folder within Maya. Command line rendering will put all the files within the last project folder set within Maya before you close it.
Anyway, close maya, and open the "command prompt" in the start menu (usually in the Accessories folder). Once in the command prompt, navigate to the folder containing your maya file for that shot. Type the following with changes:
render -r mr -fnc 3 -of tga -s 1 -e 250 -pad 3 -cam renderCam myshot.ma
You will need to change some of these settings to suit your needs
-r = the type of renderer. In this case "mr" stands for mental ray
-fnc = the filename order. In this case "3" = (filename)(frame number)(format) or in this case myshot001.tga. Typing in a 2 here changes it to myshot.tga.001, I think. I only use 3 because my compositing program can only import files with the proper extension. It thinks its a .001 file and not a .tga file.
-of = file format type. In this case tga = targa. If you want a jpeg file, then this should read -of jpg
-s = start frame. In this case I started on frame 1.
-e = end frame. In this case it ended on frame 250.
-pad = frame padding. 1= myshot1.tga, 2 = myshot01.tga, 3 = myshot001.tga, 4 = myshot0001.tga. I've had a problem in the past where I imported my frames into a compositor and frame 30 was put right after frame 3 or frame 11 was right after frame 1. If you give it the proper padding the program will put it in the right order.
-cam = the camera you wish to use. In this case my shot cam is named renderCam in my maya file.
myshot.ma = this is the name of my maya file. Replace this with the name of your maya file.
11 Second Club : March 08
