Lighting Review:

Basic Lighting and Rendering:

To select: Create ——> Lights ——>  (type of light)

Types of Lights:

• Directional Light: Works like the sun. Light entire scene in one direction
• Intensity: On all lights: Will change the intensity of the light itself and the brightness of that intensity.
• Spotlight:  Works from a single infinite point. Lights in a cone shape, outward towards an object.
• Drop-off will change the softness of the light itself.
• Ambient lights: Creates a soft light that paints the entire scene in a specific blend of light and light color.
• Point Lights: Operates like a candle. A miniature star that emanates from a single, solitary point in space.  The light gets softer as it moves through the air.
• Area light:  A light that emits in a specific direction, marked by a box and an indicator.
• Volume Light: A light that emits all objects inside a cage. Light will not escape outside that wire cage.

THESE LIGHTS OPERATE AND CONTROL THE WAY LIGHTS AND SHADOWS EMIT.

NEXT, WE CONTROL THE WAY LIGHT BOUNCES OFF THE OBJECTS USING….

• Material Choice
• Renderer Choice

Materials:

• Blinn: Used to generate basic highlights and reflections
• Lambert: Used for a matted look.
• mia_material: The most commonly used shader for Mental Ray Rendering. Used to achieve a variety of effects — like glossiness, reflections, specularity — as well as textures (rubber, concrete, gold, metal, etc.)

Renders:

• Maya Software: Basic render that calculates lighting based on the software controls in Maya.
• Maya Hardware: Basic render that calculates lighting based on the hardware of the computer.
• Maya Hardware 2.0: New(ish) renderer that produces a much more realistic image much faster.
• Mental Ray: Lighting engine commonly used to achieve realistic lighting settings by taking advantage of a number of controls that effect the way light interacts with objects and cameras.
• Arnold: New render to maya that is also used for advanced lighting; used in other applications, comes as part of Maya as of this year.

RAYTRACING SHADOW ATTRIBUTES:

• Light angle: Adjusts the softness of the light.
• Shadow rays: Adjusts quality of the light.
• Ray Depth Limit:  The number of times light bounces off of objects before is dissipates into shadow.

Homework for Monday: 

#1 Get reference of an interior scene.

 *photograph it from different angles*

#2 Build that scene using basic models.

#3 Light that scene as close to your reference as possible.

#4 Pick 2 objects in that scene. Model them with more detail.

One of the greatest, if not greatest factors that determine accurate lighting is TIME OF DAY.

Other factors include the following:

• Weather
• Atmosphere
• Object materials (what the light bounces off of)
• Specularity, Reflections, and Refractions: How materials affect the way light bounces off of them.

Time of day:

• Twilight
• Morning
• Noon (Sharpest Shadows)
• Afternoon
• Sunset (Dusk)
• Night

GRABBING TEXTURES:

1. Make sure texture size is a multiple of 4. (There are exceptions to this rule) Often: creating your own textures involve producing images at these pixel resolutions:

• 512
• 1024
• 2048
• 4096 (4K)

1. YOU MUST CREATE A SEPARATE TEXTURE FOR EVERY OBJECT!

• exceptions:  Objects that are exactly alike and made from the same material.

1. Place your Texture in the (source images) folder.
2. Right Click the object or surface you’re adding a texture to.
3. Right Click ——> Assign material to selection.
4. Click the checkered box next to "Color", and select "FILE."
5. Click the yellow folder that appears in your attribute editor. Locate your texture there!