Lighting

At ACCAD:
Start/Programs/Maya Learning Tools/Lighting

Goals of Lighting (based on Sharon Callahan's Pixel Cinematography)

• Direct viewer's attention
• Creating Depth, Volume and Ground
• Conveying Time of Day
• Enhancing Mood
• Enhancing Character Personality

Goals for Lighting a Model

• Make it clearly visible
• Accentuate important details
• Optional: communicate the model's purpose, aesthetics and mood.

Three Point Lighting
http://www.3drender.com/light/3point.html
http://www.andrew-whitehurst.net/3point.html

Maya Lights:
Spotlight- most versatile
Point Light
Directional Light
Area Light

Maya Light Properties:
Type
Color
Intensity
Emit Diffuse/Specular
Decay (quadratic simulates physical light decay)
Cone Angle (10-80 recommended)
Penumbra

Shadow Properties:
Color
Depth Map Resolution (256-512 recommended)
Filter size (3-6 recommended)

Extra info for Project 2

Turntable Animation
1. Follow Turntable Animation tutorial in Maya Help.
2. Render the turntable animation frames:

1. In Render Settings/Common tab specify File Name, Frame Extention (name#.ext or name.#.ext), File type, Image Format (tiff or targa), Renderable Camera, Image Size 640x480
2. In Render Settings/Maya Software tab specify Aliasing Quality as Production.
3. Switch to Render menu set. Render/Batch Render (check all available processors) In File/Project/Set make sure that your project is set to a current project folder structure or a folder where you want the rendered stills to go.
4. Open Premiere. New Project/DV NTSC. Import the file sequence.(select single file and check "numbered stills"
5. Drag files to video track.
6. File/Export/Movie.
7. Under General settings change to Quicktime.
8. Under Video settings change Compressor to Sorenson Video.
9. Save the movie.