Step 2 - Basic Room Lighting

In this step we will be using an Area Light, Volume Light, Directional Light and Ambient Light to light up a basic room. First you will want to make a simple room, I am putting a Window, Table and Light in mine. Don't go over the top modeling as this is just for demonstration of the perviously mention lights. Make sure to create a new scene and Project folder as this is a new project.



For the next part I am gonna set up Panel br Panel view of Maya, with a Camera I made as one Panel and the other will be the Persp view. The Camera you should postion to how you want the render to come out as we will be using that camera each time we render.




Go to Window > View Arrangments > Two Panes Side by Side. I also then locked all the cameras attributes, so it cant be moved, scaled or turned by accident whilst rendering. If you render the scene now you will have something like this:



First to light this room we are gonna make use of the Window in the scene, we are gonna use a Directional Light to have light coming in from the window. We are not using a Spot Light, because a Spot Light's light is too sharp and projects in a single spot. A Directional Light goes in the way you point it, but acts like natural light and spreads around. So now go, Create > Lights > Directional Light.



Now move the light out side your room, point it towards the window so the light is coming into the room. I lined up the light using the Look though current camera option explain in my last post. Check that the arrows on this light source are facing in towards the window. Once they are in place have a look at what the room now looks like:



Now we have some light coming in from the window. Next we are going light up the rest of the room. ( Make sure you enable HQ, Lights, Shadows and Ray Shadowing on your light) So go to Create > Light > Area Light. This should make a square, this light lights all around the square. You can use this for light flooding in from a door or window, or if you want to give a light source a radial glow. So make your Area Light and place it in the window frame, like so:
( I lowered the Intensity to 0.5 )


1.0 Intensity


0.5 Intensity

Next we are gonna use a third new light, the Volume Light. This Light bounces other light around within its sphere. So what we want to do is make a Volume Light on the floor where the light from the Directional Light is hitting the floor. When making the Light make sure the Sphere of the light lights up the whole scene, because only surfaces within that sphere will be lit. Also at this point we are gonna add some colour to the Volume Light, as light is natural not white and it will make the scene more realistic.

So first go Create > Light > Volume Light. Postion in the spot where the directional light hits the floor. Increase the sphere size to that of the scene and in the attribute editor give the light a soft blue tint. Here my outcome so far:





Intensity 1.0

For next step we are gonna light the rest of the room, using a volume light once more. Place it where you put your lamp, mine is the large circle in the ceiling, we want this lighting the whole room so increase the size of the volume light to that of the scene. You will want to enable Ray Trace Shadows on this light and may want to give it a soft colour tint, I have gone with yellow as most bulb are a dim colour of light. Remember tweet with any settings till what you get as this tutorial is just showing you how to setup.



This is lighting in my room after tweeting with the intensity of each light, making the top volume light cast shadows and just general tweeting. The only problem I have encounter is with my lamp source, you may fine its casting a big shadow, try applying the volume light so its resting above or below your light source, depending if its on a surface or hanging from a ceiling.

Now we are gonna use a Ambient light. This lights up everything and is use for general lighting. Go Create > Light > Ambient Light. Just place this in the center of the room. At first this will be way to bright like so:



So lowered the Intensity a little bit, so the light does flood the scene:


Intensity 0.1


Intensity 0.3

Remeber when lighting a room, keep it simple. At most you will need a light source and a light to bounce the light. Always try and light upwards as natural like like the sun is always heading down and then bounce up and keep lights slightly tinted to give a more natural feel, light is never white. Tweet around with the settings used in this tutorial, lighting is about trial and error at the end of the day. Use what you feel looks right!

To recap:

Spot Light: To light a circular area with a strong light.
Directional Light: Acts like natural light and lights the area in which is it pointed.
Area Light: Use for light coming in from a window, door or any type of hole, it makes a radial aura of light around the shape you fit it too.
Volume Light: Bounces light with the area it is resize too, give light the natural property that it can bounce off surfaces.
Ambient Light: To give a simple light to whole scene and is used for lighting up a scene if its too dimmly lit.

There we have it, a room lit with different lights. I hope you learnt a few things from reading this tutorial and had fun.

Step 1 - Basic Lighting

First, open your copy of Maya. Using a blank scene, set your Project Folder and use all default settings. Click Accept.


Now, make sure you have polygons in your shelf and your Menu Drop Down Box. Make a Polygon Plane, this will be the floor for this shot. Scale it to a reasonable size. Press 5 to smooth shade your Plane.


Next make a second polygon, whatever shape you like, I have chosen Sphere. Postion it in the middle of your plane.






Now for this we are gonna use a spot light. The purpose of the spot light it to light an area with a radial or circular, or to draw the viewer to a single area, due to a Spot Light concreting light in one area. To create a Spot Light go to > Create > Lights > Spot Light. You should now make a light at the center of your stage and your Maya would of automatically selected it. As Spot Lights are lights you need to direct and point, in your Maya window click > Panels > Look Through Selected Camera. You should now be viewing your Maya scene thought your Spot Light. Postion the light into place, with the light facing towards the shape your made at a 45 degree angle. With the whole pane in view of your directional light, so the whole stage is lit. ( I have also opened up the attribute editor, make sure to have this open as well.)

You can move the light in Persp view, just my way is my personal preference.



Go back to Persp view and in Maya window click > Lighting > Use All Lights. Then go back to Lighting > Shadows. So your Lighting and Shadows are both turned on.



In the attribute editor, with your Spot Light selected, go down to Shadows. Your first option can let you change the colour of your shadow, you can use this when light is passing through a colour object, or if your using a colour light.
Now you can use two different options for shadows:

Depth Map Shadowing

Ray Trace Shadows

First we are gonna look at Depth Map Shadowing. Click the check box and turn on Use Ray Trace Shadows. Go down to resolution and you can change this. The higher it is, the smoother the shadow will come out in your render. So go for the standard of 1024. ( I have increase the size of my shape, just so for purposes of this tutorial you can see the shadow and the different changes a bit more clearly) Time to have a look at how this shadow will render out.



Next open up your Render Settings Window. The icon for this can be found in the top right, it's the clapper board with two dots to the left of it. We are gonna use Mental Ray to render out our scene, Mental Ray takes a bit longer in rendering larger scenes, but it does produce a higher quality.

In the Render Settings Window click the drop down box next to the Render Using and select mental ray. Before we rendering we need to change a few settings, in the common tab go down to Image Size, Presets Drop Down Box: Select HD 1080. Next, select the Quality tab in your window and change Max Sample Level to at least 2. The higher this value, the longer it will take to render, but the quality will be more sharper. You can now close the box and now Render out your Scene by clicking the clapperboard. This is my outcome:



The shadow isn't prefect, so you may need to adjust some of the settings. I won't go too in depth with this option, as Ray Trace Shadow gives better results, in my option. So un-click Use Depth Map Shadows and go down to Ray Trace Shadows and click the Use Ray Trace Shadows box. Without changing settings yet, render out the current scene to see how it looks already.



You can see the shadow i much sharper and crisper. To make the shadow look more realistic we need to change the setting for this shadow. We are gonna try to achieve a sharp shadow at the base of the object and then a softer shadow as it draws away.
The two settings to create this effect with is: Light Radius and Shadow Ray. The key is to getting a balance between them and experimenting for yourself, but for now I am gonna use: Light Radius 0.50 and Shadow Ray 15.
( The Higher you put up Shadow Ray and Light Radius the longer your render time, so find a balance between speed and quailty also.) Let's see what we get this time:



The shadow is looking pretty good on the maximum settings, but for a scene that has lots of objects, don't use max settings, unless your computer can run it. Lastly Ray Depth Limit is the setting which affects how many times a light ray can be reflect and still cause objects to cast a shadow.

To summarize Shadow Settings:

Light Radius: This controls the softness of the shadows casted by your light. Higher it is the more softer the shadow.
Shadow Rays: This controls the gain of the soft shadows. Higher it is the more gain the soft parts of the shadow will have.
Ray Depth Limit: This controls the amount of Shadows a single light source can cast. Higher it is the more shadows it gives off.

My final settings I used were.

Light Radius: 0.5
Shadow Raidus: 15
Ray Depth Limit: 1 (As I had a single item in the scene)

Research

For researching lighting I used the following materials:

Youtube Links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqrj9o4uM6g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUS1CMhQmAM&feature=related Part 1 and 2

Maya Autodesk Lighting Tutorial found in the help section

Digital Lighting and Rending, by Jeremy Birn

http://www.amazon.co.uk/digital-Lighting-Rendering-Jeremy-Birn/dp/1562059548/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1301677602&sr=8-2-fkmr0

Help from Students on my course and in my current group for our group assignment

The above are all the sources I used to work out how to light and the advice I give in my tutorial.
I went to Maya tutorial found in the help first as I found this the most easiest accessible and accurate piece of help I could get. I then looked up video tutorials too see what I read being done in motion, after these I moved away from internet based material and found the Digital Lighting and Rending, by Jeremy Birn to be rather helpful in giving me the idea to show how to light a room, as lighting a room uses all the basic lighting and is simple to show to others.

Introduction

The brief for this assignment saids we have to make a tutorial for use by a person working in the industry. So they can learn from it and be able to do anything covered in the tutorial. The tutorial needs to be clear and cover anything they want to know about the chosen subject.

The tutorial I am gonna write will be for Maya 2011, I will go over the following tasks:

• Lighting


• Shadows


• Rendering

I have picked lighting because I feel its a skill that is needed for most users when they are making they own scenes, if you can't see what you've made then there's not much point in rendering it out, and I also feel I am not too good with lighting. So I am using this assignment as a learning curve too.

For lightening I will go over how to do simple lightening, how different sorts of lights can be used and option controls for each. For shadows I will be giving a few ways of changing how your shadows look in Maya and how they render out and lastly for Rendering I will be showing different setting to make your lighting and shadows look correct.

I shall do some research into the subject myself. How can each be used, what levels of effect can be achieved and how important they are in the industry. After finding out my research I shall make a step by step guide, with screenshots, of how to do lighting, shadows and Rendering.