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.)
• mudbox shader: Shader specifically for mudbox properties.
• Arnold Shader (arn_shad): Used for arnold rendering properties

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 more realisting lighting:  Lights via QUADRATIC lighting setups with realistic dropoff. Part of using Arnold's render settings involves setting your lights to either CONSTANT or QUADRATIC dropoff.
• Intensity may need to be turned up as well on your lights, as your lights calculate for realistic space and resistance.

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.