IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! I am George Maestri and welcome to
Maya Essentials 6 Lights and Rendering.
| | 00:10 | In this course, we're first going to go
over the Render Settings menu and also
| | 00:14 | show you some of the differences between
the Maya Software renderer and mental ray.
| | 00:19 | Then we're going to go
through some lights and lighting.
| | 00:23 | We're going to understand light types as
well as things such as shadows and light decay.
| | 00:29 | After that we're going to go through cameras.
| | 00:32 | We're going to create some cameras.
| | 00:33 | We're going to add depth of
field and also do some motion blur.
| | 00:39 | And finally, we're going to go a little bit
deeper into mental ray and show you some
| | 00:43 | of the advanced lighting
features of that renderer.
| | 00:47 | We're going to use Final Gather for
natural lighting, we're going to turn
| | 00:51 | objects into light sources, and
we're going to render some transparent
| | 00:56 | materials with caustics.
| | 00:58 | Let's go ahead and get started with
Maya Essentials 6 Lights and Rendering.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're lynda.com Premium subscriber
you'll get the exercise files for download.
| | 00:06 | Now if you want to follow along with
the exercise files, go ahead and unzip the
| | 00:11 | folder and place it on your desktop and
inside this Exercise Files folder you'll
| | 00:18 | find one folder for each chapter.
| | 00:21 | At the beginning of the chapter go ahead
and set this folder as your project and
| | 00:27 | everything should line up.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
1. Maya RenderingExploring the Render Settings window| 00:00 | Let's first take a look at
the Render Settings window.
| | 00:03 | This is kind of the Grand
Central Station of rendering.
| | 00:06 | All of your rendering
parameters are included in this window.
| | 00:11 | So we can get to it in one of two places.
| | 00:14 | We can go to Window > Rendering Editors
> Render Settings or you can press this
| | 00:20 | little icon here and that's
usually how I get into the window.
| | 00:25 | Now once we're in the Render
Settings window, you'll see that we have two
| | 00:29 | options up here, which layer are
we rendering and we'll get into the
| | 00:34 | Render Layers in a bit.
| | 00:35 | We can also choose which renderer we're using.
| | 00:39 | So this is a pulldown list of
all the different renderers.
| | 00:42 | We're going to stick with Maya Software
for now, which is the default, and down
| | 00:47 | here we're going to have a
number of different tabs.
| | 00:49 | Now this may change depending upon
which renderer you have selected.
| | 00:54 | So for example, if I select the Maya
Hardware renderer, this will change.
| | 00:58 | If I select mental ray, it will change again.
| | 01:00 | So each renderer has its own set of tabs.
| | 01:04 | But every single renderer has this common tab
and we're going to go through that right now.
| | 01:10 | Now these are the attributes
that are common to all of the renderers.
| | 01:15 | First thing that we're going to have
is Color Management and do you want to
| | 01:20 | manage colors or not.
| | 01:21 | I'm going to go ahead and minimize that.
| | 01:23 | The next one is very
important, it's File Output.
| | 01:27 | So basically what is our file name?
| | 01:30 | When we render to a file are we
rendering to an image file or a movie?
| | 01:36 | In this case, we can give this file a file name.
| | 01:38 | So if we want we can type in the name.
| | 01:42 | If we don't, it's going to use the same name.
| | 01:44 | So if want we can type something like file name.
| | 01:47 | Next, we can pick an image format and
we have a whole bunch of different image
| | 01:52 | formats that we can use, everything
from the Maya IFF, which is the default, to
| | 01:56 | JPEGs, to Targas, to TIFFs, whatever.
| | 01:59 | So let's say we wanted to render to a
TIFF, we can render to TIFF or TIFF16.
| | 02:05 | This entry here is very important. It
determines whether we're animating single
| | 02:09 | frames or animation.
| | 02:12 | So if we just do name.
extension it'll only render one frame.
| | 02:17 | If we pick any one of these other
ones, it will render multiple frames.
| | 02:23 | So for example, if we wanted to do name_
number and the extension, you can see up
| | 02:29 | here this is what the actual file names will be.
| | 02:32 | So it will be file nameA_1 to file nameA_10.
| | 02:38 | Now we also have what's called frame padding,
and this is how many leading zeros we have.
| | 02:44 | So if want we can bring that up and as
you notice if I bring it up to the 3,
| | 02:48 | it'll bring it up to three digits.
| | 02:50 | So I can have from 0 to 999.
| | 02:54 | If we want we can use a custom extension.
| | 02:57 | Typically, I won't do that, because
the .tiff or .jpg is what we want. We can
| | 03:02 | also have our Frame Range.
| | 03:04 | So what's the start and
end frame of our animation.
| | 03:08 | So if we want to go from 1 to 10 that's great.
| | 03:11 | If we want to go from 1 to 100, that's fine
too, and this will all be reflected up here.
| | 03:16 | So make sure you look up here to see
what your file names are going to be.
| | 03:20 | Now Maya typically renders out single
image files, and this is usually best,
| | 03:26 | because single image files are better
for network rendering and also if the
| | 03:30 | renderer happens to crash in the middle of a
rendered, you don't lose the entire render.
| | 03:34 | Now we can also render incremental frames.
| | 03:38 | So typically it does by one, but if we
want we can do every other frame, or we
| | 03:43 | can do say every fourth or fifth frame.
| | 03:46 | It doesn't really matter.
| | 03:47 | We can also renumber frames if we want.
| | 03:50 | Now this next one is very important as well.
| | 03:53 | It's the Renderable Cameras.
| | 03:56 | So in other words, which camera in this
scene are we going to render and we'll
| | 04:02 | get into cameras in little bit, but
just remember that this is here, and we also
| | 04:06 | have Image Size, which again, is very important.
| | 04:09 | So we have a number of presets
for all of the standard formats.
| | 04:13 | It defaults to 640x480.
| | 04:16 | But if we want we can do HD, we can do PAL,
we can do all sorts of image file formats.
| | 04:23 | We can also do print formats.
| | 04:25 | So if we wanted to we can do
HD 1080, which is 1920x1080.
| | 04:30 | We can also give it a pixel aspect ratio.
| | 04:34 | So if we wanted to do a D1 format, for
example, we would bring the pixel aspect
| | 04:40 | ratio down to .9 and of course the
device aspect ratio, and then we also have
| | 04:46 | Render Options and this may change
according to the different type of renderers.
| | 04:51 | This one here called Enable Default
Light can be important if you are using
| | 04:56 | global illumination and that sort of stuff,
| | 04:59 | and we'll get to that as we need it.
| | 05:01 | Then once we get through and set all
of our common parameters then you can go
| | 05:05 | over to each individual renderers
parameters and we'll do that in the next
| | 05:11 | few lessons.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Touring the Maya Software renderer settings| 00:00 | By default, Maya uses the Maya Software
renderer and this is a pretty good renderer.
| | 00:05 | It can be used for a lot of different things.
| | 00:07 | So let's take a look at
the render settings for this.
| | 00:11 | I'm going to go into my Render Settings window.
| | 00:14 | I'm going to make sure that my Maya
Software renderer is set as the renderer, and
| | 00:20 | when I do that, you'll see a
tab come up for Maya Software.
| | 00:25 | Now the Maya Software renderer has a
couple of different tabs that we can use to
| | 00:29 | determine the render quality and how it renders.
| | 00:33 | Now by default, we actually only have
low quality anti-aliasing and the Quality
| | 00:39 | is called Custom, but we have a
preset here for a basic quality settings.
| | 00:44 | So typically when you're doing test
renders you may want to do something such
| | 00:48 | as Preview quality, which just gives
enough quality to see how it's going to
| | 00:53 | render without taking a lot of
render time, but we can also go up to
| | 00:58 | Intermediate or Production quality.
| | 01:00 | It typically will set this at
Production quality for the final render and this
| | 01:06 | will also set what's called the edge
anti-aliasing to the Highest quality.
| | 01:11 | It'll set the number of samples up.
| | 01:13 | In other words, it'll start to boost
up the parameters and the attributes so
| | 01:18 | that way we render high-quality images.
| | 01:21 | Of course, this will take longer which
is why sometimes we will want to bring it
| | 01:26 | down to Preview quality
just to get a fast render.
| | 01:29 | But once we've set this you
can go through some of these.
| | 01:32 | One is Number of Samples
and this is for anti-aliasing.
| | 01:35 | We also have pixel filtering, again
this is for anti-aliasing and we have a
| | 01:40 | number of different types of filters
that we can use, and this is just to prevent
| | 01:45 | jaggies on the edges.
| | 01:46 | So you can experiment with these to see
what sort of filtering you want and then
| | 01:52 | we also have Contrast Threshold.
| | 01:55 | Now if we go down further
we can do Field Options.
| | 01:58 | Now typically, people aren't
rendering with fields too much anymore.
| | 02:02 | But if we want we can do Interlaced, Odd, or
Even fields as well, and so you have that option.
| | 02:10 | Then down here we have Raytracing Quality.
| | 02:13 | Now by default, Raytracing is
turned off, which means you will not get
| | 02:18 | reflections or any sort of sophisticated
transparent shadows or anything like that.
| | 02:25 | By default once you turn this on
however you'll get Raytraced Reflections,
| | 02:30 | Refractions, and Shadows.
| | 02:33 | So if you have something that's
reflective and it's not going, make sure that
| | 02:37 | you turn this on in the Maya Software renderer.
| | 02:40 | Now down here we have Motion Blur
which we will get to in a bit, as well as
| | 02:46 | additional render options such
as fog and that sort of thing.
| | 02:51 | So these are some of the basic
options of the Maya Software renderer.
| | 02:55 | Typically, for me probably the most
important one is to make sure you set your
| | 03:00 | quality to production quality
and also turn Raytracing on.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Looking at the mental ray renderer settings| 00:00 | If you want super high quality
rendering you're probably going to want to
| | 00:04 | render in mental ray, which is a much more
sophisticated renderer than the Maya Software renderer.
| | 00:11 | If you doing anything that's
photorealistic you'll probably be using mental ray.
| | 00:16 | So let's take a look at some of
the mental ray render settings.
| | 00:19 | If you do choose to use mental ray you need
to make sure that the plug-in is installed.
| | 00:26 | I've already installed it, but let
me show you where we'd set this up.
| | 00:30 | We go to Settings/Preferences > Plug-in
Manager and then we scroll down to the
| | 00:37 | bottom here and we have Mayatomr and
you will want to make sure that that's
| | 00:44 | loaded, and if you plan to use mental
ray a lot, just go ahead and check Auto
| | 00:48 | load and that way mental ray will
always load when you start Maya.
| | 00:53 | Now it does take a little bit of memory
to load the plug-in, but if you're using
| | 00:58 | mental ray a lot, it's not that big of a deal.
| | 01:01 | So now that we're sure that mental
ray is loaded, let's go into our Render
| | 01:05 | Settings menu and let's set our renderer
to mental ray, and when I do that notice
| | 01:11 | how all the tabs change.
| | 01:14 | Well, the Common tab does not change and
that's basically the same for any renderer.
| | 01:20 | But in mental ray we have a number of
different tabs, one is for the Render
| | 01:25 | Passes which we'll get to.
| | 01:27 | The next one is for Features.
| | 01:29 | Now what do we want to turn on in this renderer?
| | 01:33 | Do we want to use a Scanline, the
Rasterizer or the Raytracing, which is by default?
| | 01:40 | Do we want to use Global
Illumination or Caustics which are what are
| | 01:43 | called indirect lighting?
| | 01:45 | Do we want to use Final Gather, which
gives a much smoother sort of lighting?
| | 01:49 | Do we want to use Ambient Occlusion which
again gives a much more natural type of lighting?
| | 01:55 | We'll be getting into some of
these here and also extra features.
| | 02:00 | Do we want to use things such as Lens
Shaders for depth of field and so on?
| | 02:05 | Do we want to render fur and hair?
| | 02:08 | Now this one here is Quality and this
is very similar to what we had for the
| | 02:13 | Maya Software renderer.
| | 02:15 | We have a preset for any number
of different types of quality.
| | 02:21 | Do we want draft, which basically
allows you to render fast, but you don't
| | 02:26 | get all the detail?
| | 02:29 | Do you want to do what's called a Preview,
which again just changes a few things?
| | 02:35 | And if we scroll down here we have
what it called the Production presets and
| | 02:39 | those bring it up to the highest
quality, but also the longer render times.
| | 02:44 | So we have just a basic production quality.
| | 02:47 | We also have production quality that
turns on Motion Blur, that does Rapid Fur
| | 02:52 | and Hair, and so on.
| | 02:53 | So typically I turn on either
Production or Production Motion Blur depending
| | 02:59 | upon what type of rendering I'm doing.
| | 03:01 | Now we also have what's called
Indirect Lighting and that's where mental ray
| | 03:06 | automatically calculates things such as
bounce lighting, caustics, sophisticated
| | 03:12 | reflections and so on.
| | 03:13 | Now we're not going to get too deep
into this in this course, but we do have
| | 03:20 | other courses in the library that go
through this in very deep detail, and
| | 03:26 | then finally we have Options and
again, these are just basic metal ray
| | 03:30 | overrides, and so on.
| | 03:32 | Now typically, for me, I tend to stick to
Quality and Features just to turn on and
| | 03:39 | off the features that I want and to
set my quality, and then if I do turn on a
| | 03:44 | features such as Global Illumination or
Caustics, or any one of those, then I do
| | 03:50 | go over to my indirect lighting which
allows me to turn these on and off and set
| | 03:56 | the parameters for those.
| | 03:59 | So those are some of the
basics of the mental ray renderer.
| | 04:02 | Now make sure you turn on the mental
ray plug-in and make sure you also turn
| | 04:07 | your quality to Production
for the best quality renders.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Lights and Lighting Types in Maya Exploring light types| 00:00 | Let's take a look at the different
types of lights that are available in Maya.
| | 00:05 | Now we can create lights using the
Create menu, we have Create > Lights and we
| | 00:12 | have a number of basic types of
lights here that we can create.
| | 00:16 | We can create an Ambient, Directional,
Point, Spot, Area and a Volume Light.
| | 00:23 | Now you can get to these through this
menu or if you want you can go to the
| | 00:28 | Rendering shelf and all of
these lights will be right here.
| | 00:32 | So let's take a look at some of
the basic types of lights in Maya.
| | 00:36 | We are going to start off with the Spot
light which is right there, so we can do
| | 00:42 | either select this button here or
do Create > Lights > Spot Light.
| | 00:47 | Regardless, you will see that a little
light comes up here, when I press my Move
| | 00:51 | button here, you'll see that I've got
a light, and you can see that it's also
| | 00:56 | kind of cone shaped like a spot light.
| | 00:59 | Now probably the easiest way to see lights in
Maya is to turn on lighting in the viewport.
| | 01:06 | We want to use All Lights, which is
also is a shortcut of 7, and once I do that
| | 01:11 | you'll start to see that
this light does illuminate.
| | 01:15 | So as you can see, as I move this back,
it illuminates, and if I rotate this, it
| | 01:21 | also illuminates and I can
also move this up or down.
| | 01:25 | Now if I really want to see the effects
of light I should turn on Viewport 2.0,
| | 01:30 | which will give me a much
better rendering of this light.
| | 01:34 | So if I zoom out here, you can see that
the light basically casts a cone, like a
| | 01:40 | spotlight in the movie theater.
| | 01:43 | So if I want I can rotate this or move it
around to create the illumination that I want.
| | 01:49 | Now if I want to add additional
control over this light, I can go over to the
| | 01:55 | Attribute editor, and you'll see that
in the spot light we have a number of
| | 02:00 | Spot Light Attributes.
| | 02:01 | One of which is Color, so if I click
here you can actually use the Color Picker
| | 02:06 | and to pick any sort of color you want
from the light. I am going to go ahead
| | 02:09 | and put that back to white here.
| | 02:13 | We also have Intensity, how
bright or dim is this light.
| | 02:15 | And then we can also Emit Diffuse
which is basically your Diffuse Channel or
| | 02:22 | we can Emit Specular.
| | 02:24 | Now notice the little
highlight here on the sphere.
| | 02:28 | This turns on and off that Specular Highlight.
| | 02:32 | We can also add in a Decay Rate,
which we will get into in a little bit.
| | 02:37 | We also have for a spot light, Cone
Angle, which is how much of this is
| | 02:42 | illuminated, as well as Penumbra Angle,
and how sharp is that edge, is it blurry
| | 02:49 | or is it very sharp?
| | 02:50 | And the number of zero, means exactly
sharp, positive numbers means it blurs to
| | 02:56 | the outside edge, negative numbers
means that it blurs to the inside edge.
| | 03:01 | We also have a drop off which is
another type of Penumbra, but basically it
| | 03:06 | falls off that intensity of
the light from the center.
| | 03:10 | Now if we go up here, you can see
under the Spot Light Attributes it
| | 03:15 | actually has a Type.
| | 03:16 | Now we can actually switch the type
of light here, so if don't want a spot
| | 03:23 | light, I can change it to
any other type of light.
| | 03:26 | So let's change this to a Point Light
and this will be just the same as me
| | 03:31 | creating the Point Light from the
menu, but it's a little bit easier.
| | 03:34 | Now a point light is basically
the bare light bulb in the room.
| | 03:40 | So I can position that however I want
and as you can see it's just a light where
| | 03:47 | the light illuminates in all directions
from a specific point, which is why it's
| | 03:53 | called the point light.
| | 03:54 | Now this has a number of parameters here,
such as Color and Intensity, but since
| | 04:01 | this isn't a spot light, it will not
have the Cone Angle or the Penumbra.
| | 04:05 | Now another very important type
of light is the Directional Light.
| | 04:10 | Now this is kind of like a spot light,
in that it has a direction, but notice
| | 04:16 | how the position of this light does not
affect the scene at all, and also notice
| | 04:22 | how the scene is evenly
illuminated by this light.
| | 04:26 | Now this probably the best type
of light for stuff like sunlight.
| | 04:30 | It's also a great way to do very
even illumination and if I rotate it, you
| | 04:35 | can see how these shadows
on the sphere tend to change.
| | 04:40 | Now this light is strictly
directional, it's not location specific.
| | 04:46 | Now one thing you may notice about
this light is that shadows, particularly
| | 04:50 | depth map shadows may not work.
| | 04:53 | So be careful with
shadows and directional lights.
| | 04:56 | I am going to go ahead
and turn this vertical here.
| | 04:59 | Now let's take a look at the Area Light.
| | 05:03 | The area light emits light from
an area defined by this square.
| | 05:09 | So in some ways it can be almost
like a soft box in photography.
| | 05:13 | Now I do have an Intensity value for
this light, but another way to increase the
| | 05:21 | intensity of the light is to scale it up.
| | 05:24 | In other words make it bigger.
| | 05:25 | So if hit my R key and go into my Scale
tool, as I make this area light bigger,
| | 05:32 | it's actually is
creating a sharper illumination.
| | 05:38 | So as this light gets closer to
objects, it will illuminate them more.
| | 05:44 | It's also directional, but remember
that you have Intensity, but you also have
| | 05:50 | the actual size of the icon that
can determine the type of light.
| | 05:56 | Finally, we have one more type of
light that I want to show you and that's
| | 05:59 | called Ambient Light.
| | 06:01 | That's the bounce lighting in the room.
| | 06:04 | So if you don't want your scene to
have completely black shadows, you want a
| | 06:10 | general wash of light, you
can use the ambient light.
| | 06:13 | So for example, this here adds a
general illumination to the scene.
| | 06:18 | Now ambient light works best with
other lights, so for example, if I were to
| | 06:25 | create a Directional Light here, you
can see how I can still have shading on
| | 06:33 | this light, but it never goes completely dark
because I have some ambient light in the room.
| | 06:40 | So if I select my Ambient Light and
turn it down, you can see how this shadow
| | 06:44 | goes very, very dark, but the ambient
light can increase that overall light
| | 06:50 | level in the room, so that way you
don't get completely black shadows.
| | 06:55 | So those are some of the
basic types of lighting in Maya.
| | 06:59 | Each light has its own specific
way of working and its own purpose.
| | 07:05 | So just be aware of each type of light
as you start to light a scene in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Manipulating lights| 00:00 | Now when you start creating lights, you
are going to want to move them around in
| | 00:04 | the scene and place them so that
they illuminate exactly what you want.
| | 00:09 | So typically, we want to have
precise control over our lighting.
| | 00:14 | Now we can manipulate our lights
simply thorough the Move tools.
| | 00:18 | So if I go to my Rendering shelf here
and click on Spot Light, I can create a
| | 00:24 | spot light. I can move that up and if
I turn on Use All Lights and Viewport
| | 00:32 | 2.0, I should be able to pretty much
see how this light is illuminating the
| | 00:37 | scene, and if I want I can position this
light to say, illuminate this sphere, if I want.
| | 00:44 | But as you can see, it's kind of
a trial and error sort of thing.
| | 00:49 | I'm not getting exact precise control
or even if I am getting precise control,
| | 00:55 | it's not very interactive.
| | 00:57 | So there are couples of ways
to make this more interactive.
| | 01:01 | One is to use what's called the
Manipulator tool; this little button here on the
| | 01:07 | side of the interface.
| | 01:08 | So if I show Manipulator tool, it will
actually bring up some additional handles
| | 01:13 | that allow me to control
this light more interactively.
| | 01:17 | So now I have a light target.
| | 01:21 | So here's my spot light up here, but
down here I have a target onto which
| | 01:26 | this light is pointing.
| | 01:28 | So if I want I can position this
target right in the center of the sphere and
| | 01:34 | then grab the Move tool up here, and
no matter where I move this light, it's
| | 01:39 | always going to be
illuminating or pointing at that sphere.
| | 01:44 | So this is one way of getting
more precise in interactive control.
| | 01:48 | Now in addition to these two handles,
we have this little clocklike icon here
| | 01:55 | off to the side of the light.
| | 01:57 | Now each one of these will control a
different aspect of the lights attributes.
| | 02:04 | So if I click on the Attribute Editor
here, you can see that when I click on
| | 02:08 | this little clock, we get this one here
and that's going to be the light range.
| | 02:13 | If you go down to about 4 o'clock on
this, you will see that you actually get a
| | 02:18 | control that controls the
Cone Angle of the light.
| | 02:21 | So I can interactively set the Cone
Angle, just by grabbing this ring or the
| | 02:27 | yellow manipulator, I
can change that Cone Angle.
| | 02:31 | And if I change it here in my Attribute
Editor, you can see how that reflects it.
| | 02:36 | So I am going to actually make this a
fairly narrow Cone Angle, because if I
| | 02:40 | click this so that it straight down at
6 o'clock, I get another manipulator.
| | 02:44 | So if I grab this little blue icon
here, I can change my Penumbra Angle.
| | 02:49 | Okay, so if I change it here, you can
see how it moves here or I can change
| | 02:56 | it here to affect it.
| | 02:59 | And again, I am going to go
ahead and dial this down a bit.
| | 03:03 | Then we also have some other controls
here which we are not going to get into.
| | 03:07 | This is render regions, this again is
just some more sophisticated lighting but
| | 03:11 | for right now probably the ones that
you want to understand is Penumbra Angle
| | 03:16 | and Cone Angle which are these two.
| | 03:19 | So this is one way of affecting your light.
| | 03:23 | Now another way to control your light is
to simply look through it in a Viewport.
| | 03:29 | So I am actually going to hit my
spacebar here and go into a multi-view mode
| | 03:35 | here, and I am just going to select a Viewport.
| | 03:38 | In this case, I am going to select my
top view, I am actually going to drag this
| | 03:43 | down a little bit so we can see it, and
then under Panels, I am going to select
| | 03:48 | Look Through Selected.
| | 03:50 | Now I have my light selected, so I am
going to look through my light, and now I
| | 03:56 | can see exactly what the light sees.
| | 03:59 | So I am using the light
almost kind of as a camera.
| | 04:02 | So if I smooth shade these, do use all
lights and turn on Viewport 2.0, you can
| | 04:08 | see how I can change how my light works.
| | 04:14 | So I can create what are called barn doors.
| | 04:17 | I can hold down my Alt key and just
move the light just like I would move a
| | 04:22 | camera. So if I don't want it
centered on the sphere, I don't have to.
| | 04:26 | Let's say I just want to illuminate
the edge of that, if I want to keep this
| | 04:30 | sphere front center, I can do that as well.
| | 04:32 | Now these two circles here
show my Penumbra and Cone Angle.
| | 04:38 | So if I go into my Attribute Editor,
you can see how as I increase or decrease
| | 04:43 | that, you can see how that affects it,
and once I am done positioning the light,
| | 04:48 | if I want I can take this panel
and just put it back to a top view.
| | 04:53 | So there's two additional
ways of manipulating lights.
| | 04:58 | You can use the Manipulator tool in
the toolbox, or if you want, you can use a
| | 05:04 | Viewport to look directly through the light.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding depth map shadows| 00:00 | In the real world, all lights cast shadows.
| | 00:03 | In Maya, you have to specify if a light
cast shadows and how it will cast them.
| | 00:11 | So let's take a look at the simplest type of
shadows and those are called depth map shadows.
| | 00:16 | I have a simple scene here with an
airplane on a flat field and I also have a
| | 00:23 | spot light that's illuminating it.
| | 00:25 | So if I want I can move the spot light to
adjust it or use the Manipulator if I want.
| | 00:31 | But really what we want to do is take a
look at this light from the Attribute Editor.
| | 00:37 | So I want to make sure I select the
light, go into the Attribute Editor and
| | 00:43 | let's go ahead and add some shadows to this.
| | 00:46 | So I am going to go down from Spot
Light Attributes until I find Shadows.
| | 00:51 | Then I am going to go ahead and open up
the Shadows rollout, and then we have two
| | 00:57 | options here: one is Ray Trace, the
other is Depth Map, which is the top one.
| | 01:04 | So if we want this to have Depth
Map Shadows, I can just go ahead and
| | 01:08 | collect this to turn it on.
| | 01:11 | Now I am not seeing shadows in the Viewport.
| | 01:13 | If I want to, if want to make sure that
I have Viewport 2.0 turned on, Use All
| | 01:19 | Lights and make sure I have Shadows turned on.
| | 01:23 | Now once I have that turned on, you can
see pretty accurately how the shadow is
| | 01:29 | being cast on this object.
| | 01:32 | Now we have a number of
options here for depth map shadows.
| | 01:37 | The first one is the resolution of the shadow.
| | 01:41 | depth map shadows work by creating a bit map
of the shadow and laying it over the image.
| | 01:48 | So this number here is the
Resolution of that bitmap.
| | 01:53 | Now this number may need to change upwards
if you are rending large high quality images.
| | 02:01 | So this is a specific number, so if you
are rendering larger images, you need to
| | 02:07 | have a larger number.
| | 02:09 | But right now we are just rendering 640x480,
so let's just take a look at how this works.
| | 02:15 | So this will determine the
granularity of the shadow.
| | 02:19 | So a lower number, let's bring this to down
to say 64, will make this very, very blocky.
| | 02:27 | Now what this does is it creates a 64x64
pixel-wide bitmap to cover the entire
| | 02:34 | area that this light is
illuminating and obviously this is not enough.
| | 02:39 | Now if we want we can bring it up.
| | 02:42 | So let's say I will bring it up to 128,
you will see that I get more coverage.
| | 02:47 | If I bring it up really high, let's say
bring it up to 2000, in fact, I am going
| | 02:51 | to bring up to 2048, I
typically use powers of two for this.
| | 02:55 | You can see how it gets very, very sharp.
| | 03:00 | So if you want very sharp shadows, a
larger Resolution Depth Map will help.
| | 03:07 | But if we want say fuzzy or kind of not
so sharp shadows, you can actually use
| | 03:13 | these lower values to your advantage.
| | 03:16 | So I am going to bring this back down to 128.
| | 03:19 | Now as it stands here, this is going to
be too jagged for us to actually use it.
| | 03:27 | But we have some additional parameters here.
| | 03:30 | So if I scroll down, we have one here
called Filter Size and what this does is
| | 03:37 | it blurs the edge of the shadow.
| | 03:39 | So when the filter is at 0 or 1, you
are pretty much getting the edge of that
| | 03:46 | bitmap that you're seeing, but as it
goes up, let's say it goes up to 2, or 3,
| | 03:52 | or 4, you will see how it's actually
adding enough blur so that you are really
| | 03:57 | not noticing the edge of that shadow.
| | 04:00 | Now I am doing all of this in the
Viewport, so you can see how it works
| | 04:04 | interactively, but if I were to render
this, let's say we render this with a
| | 04:10 | Filter size of 0, I am just
going to do quick render right here.
| | 04:13 | You will see that's pretty much what we had.
| | 04:17 | Now if I bring the Filter Size up and
do a quick render, you'll see I get a
| | 04:22 | much softer shadow.
| | 04:27 | So we have two attributes
here that need to be balanced.
| | 04:30 | One is the Resolution of the bitmap;
| | 04:33 | the other is the Filter
which determines the blurring.
| | 04:37 | So higher numbers in the
bitmap make for a sharper shadow.
| | 04:42 | Higher Filter Sizes, blur
that to soften the edges of that.
| | 04:48 | But it only softens the
edges between the pixels.
| | 04:51 | So if you have a really sharp shadow,
Filter Size isn't going to blur it.
| | 04:55 | Now in addition to this, we have a
couple of other parameters here and probably
| | 05:00 | the most important one is Bias.
| | 05:02 | Now what this does is it actually
offsets the shadow from the object.
| | 05:08 | Now remember how depth map shadows work.
| | 05:11 | We take a bitmap that's the size of the
light and use that to create the shadow
| | 05:18 | and then that's projected over the image.
| | 05:22 | So this Bias basically offsets that just
a little bit, so that way you don't get
| | 05:28 | self-shadowing, or you don't get
that shadow overlapping on your object.
| | 05:33 | So if you're getting a little bit of
shadow error, you can always increase this Bias.
| | 05:38 | So as I bring this Bias up if you notice
here, the propeller, it kind of goes away.
| | 05:44 | So what it's really doing is it's
pushing the shadow back or forward
| | 05:49 | depending on this Bias.
| | 05:50 | So typically we want to keep
this at a fairly low number.
| | 05:55 | So those are some of the basics of
how to do depth map shadows and this is
| | 06:00 | probably the easiest and also
fastest to render shadow that you have in
| | 06:06 | your toolkit.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using raytrace shadows| 00:00 | The second type of shadow that we
have in Maya is called raytrace shadows.
| | 00:05 | Now the big difference between these
and depth map shadows is that raytrace
| | 00:09 | shadows will account for
transparency when it does shadows.
| | 00:15 | So a good example is this glass-topped table.
| | 00:19 | So if I have this in the scene and just
do a quick render with no shadows, you
| | 00:23 | will see that I have a semitransparent tabletop.
| | 00:28 | Now if I go over to the Attribute
Editor and select my light, let's go into
| | 00:35 | the Shadow parameters.
| | 00:37 | Now under Shadows we have Shadow Color,
we are going to leave that at black, and
| | 00:41 | then click on Use Depth Map Shadows,
just so that we can see what happens when
| | 00:47 | we render a depth map shadow for this table.
| | 00:52 | Now using depth map shadows we get a
shadow for the table and we get a shadow
| | 00:58 | for the glass, but we don't get transparency.
| | 01:02 | So it sees glass and other
transparent materials as solid.
| | 01:08 | So I am going to go ahead and turn
this off and scroll down just a little bit
| | 01:13 | further until we get to raytrace shadows.
| | 01:16 | Now I am going to go ahead and turn
these on, but before I do any sort of
| | 01:21 | rendering I am going to go into my
Render Settings window, go over to the Maya
| | 01:27 | Software tab and scroll down until I
find Raytracing Quality, and I want to make
| | 01:34 | sure that Raytracing is turned on.
| | 01:38 | Now by default it is not turned on in Maya.
| | 01:41 | So just make sure that it is turned on
for the scene and then once we do that
| | 01:46 | and raytrace shadows is
turned on, let's do a quick render.
| | 01:51 | Now you can see that the glass is
actually casting a shadow on the ground.
| | 01:57 | Now in addition to handling
transparency, raytrace shadows are more accurate.
| | 02:03 | They will give you a
sharper edge shadow typically.
| | 02:08 | Now if we want we can get soft shadows
in a raytrace shadow, and we do this by
| | 02:14 | increasing the Light Radius.
| | 02:17 | So let's go and increase the Light
Radius to say 3, and we can increase the
| | 02:22 | number of Shadow Rays.
| | 02:24 | So how raytracing works is that it
beams a number of rays towards the object
| | 02:32 | and then uses those to create the raytracing,
so the more rays we have the more accurate it is.
| | 02:40 | So if I have a large Light Radius then I
should bring up the number of Shadow Rays.
| | 02:44 | Let's go ahead and bring it up to 16.
| | 02:48 | Now we also have a Ray Depth Limit
and that's for rendering shadows in
| | 02:53 | reflections and that sort of thing.
| | 02:55 | So for soft shadows you want to a higher
Light Radius and the larger number of Shadow Rays.
| | 03:01 | Now when I go to render this you
will see that it takes longer to render.
| | 03:06 | That's because each ray
needs more processing power.
| | 03:10 | So as you can see, with a larger Light Radius
and more Shadow Rays, I am getting a softer edge.
| | 03:20 | So typically raytrace shadows are sharper.
| | 03:23 | They will render transparency, but the downside
is that they do take longer to render.
| | 03:32 | I like to use them only if I have reflective
or transparent materials in the scene.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding light decay| 00:00 | In the real world, the laws of physics
determine how a light falls off, and that
| | 00:06 | would be with the square of the distance.
| | 00:08 | So that means the further you are
away from a light, the less light you get
| | 00:14 | in any specific area.
| | 00:15 | So obviously the headlights on your
car only illuminate so far out before
| | 00:21 | they're too dim to see anything.
| | 00:23 | Now in Maya, lights are actually constant.
| | 00:27 | So for example, this light here, if I
were to render this scene you'll see that
| | 00:33 | the front cylinder is pretty
much as bright as the last cylinder.
| | 00:39 | So this light is not decaying.
| | 00:42 | We can however add in a
more realistic light decay.
| | 00:48 | We can do that in the Attribute Editor.
| | 00:50 | So I select my spot light and go into
the Spotlight Attributes, and under Decay
| | 00:57 | Rate you will see right now it has no decay.
| | 01:01 | So in other words, this light will
illuminate something 10 feet away just as
| | 01:06 | much as it will illuminate
something that's 1000 feet away.
| | 01:09 | But we can change that by
changing how this light decays.
| | 01:13 | Now we have three options here.
| | 01:16 | We have Linear, which falls off in a
Linear fashion, Quadratic, which falls
| | 01:23 | off with the square of the distance, which
is realistic lighting or physically correct.
| | 01:29 | And we also have Cubic which falls
off with the cube of the distance.
| | 01:33 | So this is beyond reality.
| | 01:35 | This falls off faster than reality.
| | 01:37 | So basically we have no decay, slower
than reality, reality, and something that
| | 01:43 | falls off faster than reality.
| | 01:46 | So let's take a look at how these work.
| | 01:48 | If I just select this to make sure I
have Viewport 2.0 on here, you can see that
| | 01:54 | when I select my Decay Rate as
Linear everything goes black.
| | 01:58 | So if I were to render this, well,
actually we are not going to see much at all.
| | 02:03 | Now this is because the
intensity of the light is low.
| | 02:08 | As we increase the falloff we have to
increase the brightness of the light.
| | 02:14 | So now the intensity of
the light needs to come up.
| | 02:18 | So if I bring this up to 10, you can
see now I am getting some illumination.
| | 02:24 | And if I were to render this, you can
see how the last cylinder is illuminated
| | 02:31 | less than the one in the front, and you
can also just see this in the light and
| | 02:36 | how it falls onto the floor.
| | 02:38 | Now if we were to increase this to
Quadratic, again the light goes down.
| | 02:45 | And that's because the
light is decaying more quickly.
| | 02:49 | So we have to increase our intensity,
but by default this doesn't go above 10.
| | 02:55 | Well, let me show you a little secret here.
| | 02:58 | You can always type in a
number larger than the slider.
| | 03:02 | So if I type in 100, you can see that
the slider just goes back to a middle one
| | 03:08 | here, and I can bring it up to 200 or
let's say I want to bring it up to say 400,
| | 03:12 | and this will give me
anywhere from 0 to 800 now.
| | 03:17 | So let's bring it up to somewhere
around 400 and now let's do a quick render.
| | 03:22 | As you can see we've got almost a
hotspot here at the front, because we've got a
| | 03:27 | very intense light, but it falls off
almost to darkness by the last cylinder,
| | 03:34 | and again, this is just basically
falling off more quickly than it did before.
| | 03:40 | Now with Cubic, again, we are
going to get the same thing.
| | 03:43 | We are increasing the decay of the
light and again the light goes dark.
| | 03:47 | Well, let's go ahead and type in a 1000
for this Intensity and you can see that
| | 03:52 | even at a 1000 this isn't quite enough.
| | 03:55 | So let's go ahead and type in 4000,
and as you can see even that might not be
| | 04:01 | enough, because really this light
is falling off even more quickly.
| | 04:06 | So if I do a quick render, again, you
will I have a hotspot here which is
| | 04:10 | almost the same as with the previous light,
but as you can see it decays much more quickly.
| | 04:17 | So I am going to go ahead and put this
back to Quadratic and dial this back down
| | 04:21 | to about 300 or 400 right in that range.
| | 04:23 | And let's go ahead and
change the light to a Point Light.
| | 04:27 | Now we've been using Spot Lights for a
while here, but if I change it to Point
| | 04:31 | Light I can again change my decay.
| | 04:35 | So I am going to change my Decay to
Quadratic and keep it at a Point Light.
| | 04:40 | Now if I select this light and move it,
you can see how I'm getting a nice
| | 04:47 | hotspot right there where it's close to these,
but as it falls off it gets a lot darker.
| | 04:54 | So one of the things you can do and this
is actually a really nice trick is just
| | 04:59 | to put a point light in the room with
some decay and that will give you just a
| | 05:03 | nice general wash of light,
so you can see how that works.
| | 05:09 | By default lights in Maya have no decay.
| | 05:12 | So they will illuminate things
evenly regardless of how far away those
| | 05:17 | things are from the light.
| | 05:19 | If we want we can add decay, we can
have Linear, Quadratic, or Cubic, and each
| | 05:25 | one of those falls off a little bit faster.
| | 05:29 | So as the light falls off faster and
faster, we need to amp up the intensity of
| | 05:35 | the light to compensate.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Understanding Cameras Creating cameras| 00:00 | Once we have lights in the scene all
we need is a camera and then we can
| | 00:04 | actually do some rendering.
| | 00:05 | So let's take a look at how
to create cameras in Maya.
| | 00:09 | We actually do have a basic camera in the scene.
| | 00:13 | By default the Perspective window is a camera.
| | 00:17 | So if I take a look at this, I can
actually move this around and it does
| | 00:21 | work like a camera, and if I wanted to,
I could go into Render current frame
| | 00:26 | and I would get a render.
| | 00:28 | So this does act as a camera.
| | 00:31 | But if I want more control over the
camera then I should create one in Maya.
| | 00:35 | Now we have a couple of
ways of creating a camera.
| | 00:40 | We can go to our Rendering shelf here
and there is a Camera button, or if we
| | 00:46 | want to get a little more
sophisticated we can go to Create menu and under
| | 00:50 | Cameras we have a couple of different options.
| | 00:52 | We have Camera, Camera and
Aim, Camera, Aim, and Up.
| | 00:57 | We also have two types of Stereo Cameras
for those who are doing 3D stereoscopic
| | 01:03 | rendering, and we are not going
to get into that in this course.
| | 01:06 | So let's just take a look at the basic camera.
| | 01:09 | So we are going to go ahead and create
a camera, and when we do you will notice
| | 01:13 | this little icon kind of shows up at
the origin and lo and behold it looks like
| | 01:18 | a little movie camera, and
that tells us it's a camera.
| | 01:21 | So if we want we can move the
camera anywhere in the scene.
| | 01:25 | So all we have to do is select our
Move tool and I can move this up and
| | 01:29 | around wherever I want.
| | 01:31 | If I want to point this camera at the chair,
notice how the lens here is on the right side.
| | 01:38 | So I need to point that lens at the
chair so I can just rotate that around if I
| | 01:45 | want, and I can move it into place.
| | 01:47 | Now I'm not really seeing what's
going on with this camera here.
| | 01:52 | So actually I am going
to hop out to a quad view.
| | 01:55 | I am going to hit my Spacebar here,
and that's going to bring me into a quad
| | 01:59 | view, and under the top view let's go
into Panels and under Perspective I am
| | 02:04 | going to change it to camera1.
| | 02:07 | Now this sees what the camera is seeing.
| | 02:09 | In fact, if I wanted to I could
turn on Shading as well as Hardware
| | 02:14 | Texturing and I can see that.
| | 02:16 | So as I move my camera back, as I
rotate my camera, I can actually move it
| | 02:23 | around, and see what the camera is seeing.
| | 02:27 | Another way to manipulate the
camera is to just move the Viewport.
| | 02:32 | I can rotate, and notice how
the camera is also rotating.
| | 02:36 | If I middle-click I can pan and
notice how the camera is panning as well.
| | 02:42 | If I right-click I can zoom in
and out or actually I'm trucking.
| | 02:49 | In the words, I am actually moving
the camera in and out, I am not actually
| | 02:53 | doing a technical zoom and I can also
right-click and use my middle-mouse button
| | 02:57 | to move the camera in and out as well.
| | 03:00 | Now another way to manipulate this
camera is to use these other options.
| | 03:05 | We have Camera, Camera and
Aim, Camera, Aim, and Up.
| | 03:09 | Now we can create these from scratch or
we can modify our camera to have these
| | 03:14 | additional controls, and let's do that.
| | 03:17 | So I am going to go ahead and make sure
my camera is selected and let's go over
| | 03:21 | to the Attribute Editor.
| | 03:22 | We are not going get in all these
attributes here, but at the top you'll see
| | 03:27 | that we have one here called Controls.
| | 03:30 | And if you pull that down you will see,
oh gosh, those are the exact same options.
| | 03:34 | Those are Camera and Aim, Camera, Aim, and Up.
| | 03:37 | So let's take a look at
what Camera and Aim looks like.
| | 03:40 | I'm going to go ahead and select that
and when I do it adds in an additional
| | 03:45 | control and you can see that
here, this little target spot.
| | 03:49 | So if I select that, you can see how I
can move that so that it is exactly where
| | 03:55 | I want in the scene.
| | 03:57 | So let me go ahead and zoom in here in
my side view here, and if I want to I
| | 04:01 | could place that, say in the center of the chair.
| | 04:04 | So now I'm always aiming
at the center of the chair.
| | 04:09 | So whenever I move this camera it's always
pointing at whatever is on the seat of the chair.
| | 04:15 | So if I move it in and out, if I move
it left and right, no matter what, it's
| | 04:20 | always going to keep that center of
the chair centered in the Viewport.
| | 04:25 | Now this is a great way to aim
cameras at very specific objects.
| | 04:29 | You can also animate that target so that the
camera can follow an object through a scene.
| | 04:34 | Now the other control that we
have is called Camera, Aim, and Up.
| | 04:40 | So let's go ahead and select that and
you'll notice that a little tiny dot comes
| | 04:45 | up on top of this camera
here. So this is the Up.
| | 04:49 | Up controls, where up is on the camera.
| | 04:52 | So if I zoom in here on my Perspective
view you can see that if I move this left
| | 04:59 | and right, it's basically a camera tilt control.
| | 05:02 | So it allows me to control
where that up is on the camera.
| | 05:06 | In other words, how the camera is oriented.
| | 05:09 | So that allows me additional control.
| | 05:13 | So we've got a basic camera.
| | 05:16 | If we want to, we can just place that
in the scene and aim it however we want.
| | 05:21 | If we want to aim it at a
target, we add Camera and Aim.
| | 05:24 | If we want to control orientation of
the camera, we do Camera, Aim and Up.
| | 05:30 | So those are some of the
basics for adding cameras into Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding camera attributes| 00:00 | Once you have cameras created and
placed in the scene, you can further modify
| | 00:05 | them by affecting the camera attributes.
| | 00:08 | Now we took a look at a few camera
attributes in the last lesson, but let's take
| | 00:12 | a look at some more.
| | 00:13 | So I have a camera here in the scene.
| | 00:16 | It's called camera1 and if I hit my
Spacebar and hop out to my four view here,
| | 00:22 | you see there is the camera right there,
kind of in that top right corner of the
| | 00:27 | top view here, and when I select that,
it shows up here and if I want to I can
| | 00:32 | get to the Attribute Editor, just
by clicking on the Attribute Editor.
| | 00:35 | Now an easier way to get to
this is through the Viewport.
| | 00:39 | So I am going to go ahead and highlight
my camera1 Viewport, Spacebar, go into
| | 00:44 | it, and then deselect everything.
| | 00:47 | And if I want, I can either
select the camera or go directly to the
| | 00:52 | Camera Attribute Editor.
| | 00:53 | So let's go ahead and select that.
| | 00:55 | You can see that, okay, I've got my
camera1 Attribute Editor and if I select it,
| | 01:00 | it adds in that camera position node.
| | 01:03 | So my Camera Attributes are here.
| | 01:07 | Now we already took a look at
the controls for the camera.
| | 01:10 | We have Camera, Aim, and Up, and we
can select any combination of those if we
| | 01:15 | want, and in addition to that we have
a number of attributes for our camera.
| | 01:20 | Now probably the most important one is
the Focal Length of the camera, which is
| | 01:25 | also tied to the angle of view.
| | 01:28 | Focal Length is the same
as the size of a 35mm lens.
| | 01:33 | So in this case we have this as a 35 lens
which means an Angle of View of about 54 degrees.
| | 01:39 | Now if I were to create a longer lens,
| | 01:44 | so if I were to increase my Focal Length,
you will see that the camera zooms in.
| | 01:49 | My Angle of View gets
narrower; these two are connected.
| | 01:53 | You increase one, you decrease the other.
| | 01:57 | If I were to bring my Focal Length the
other way and zoom out, you can see that
| | 02:03 | my Angle of View increases.
| | 02:04 | Now let's hop out to our quad view
here and take a look at this camera.
| | 02:09 | As I increase or decrease my Angle of
View and my Focal Length, notice how the
| | 02:16 | camera doesn't move at all.
| | 02:18 | This is because we're
zooming the lens of the camera.
| | 02:22 | So it's like if you had a zoom lens
on a camera and we were standing in one
| | 02:26 | place and we were just rotating that lens.
| | 02:28 | If I were to move this camera in and out,
that would create a different effect.
| | 02:35 | In other words, I am moving the camera closer.
| | 02:37 | I am doing a truck of the
camera to bring it into the scene.
| | 02:42 | But if I wanted to zoom in a little
bit further, then that is basically just
| | 02:47 | going to change my Angle of View.
| | 02:50 | Now if I have my camera in really tight, I
may want to create a wider angle of view.
| | 02:55 | Let's go ahead and put
a 12 millimeter lens on this.
| | 02:58 | I am going to type the number 12 into
Focal Length and then I'm going to truck
| | 03:03 | in pretty close to the scene.
| | 03:05 | Now one of the things you will
notice is that when you have shorter Focal
| | 03:09 | Length, you have a wider Angle of
View, which means that you have a much
| | 03:15 | stronger sense of perspective.
| | 03:18 | This is almost like a fisheye lens.
| | 03:21 | Now as this Focal Length gets longer,
let's go ahead and bring it up to say 135,
| | 03:26 | you will see that I've zoomed in, but if
I go ahead and pull that camera out, as
| | 03:34 | I get to about that same spot, you'll
see that the scene is a lot flatter.
| | 03:38 | It's almost orthographic in nature.
| | 03:41 | So as the Focal Length gets longer,
the scene tends to flatten out.
| | 03:48 | So I am going to go ahead and put this
back to about 50 millimeter lens here and then
| | 03:52 | just go ahead and get this set in my scene.
| | 03:55 | Now we have a couple of other controls here.
| | 03:59 | The next most important one is the Clip Plane.
| | 04:02 | Now this is something you may or may not use.
| | 04:05 | Now what it does is it only allows the
camera to see a specific range of distances.
| | 04:12 | So you can set a Near distance and a
Far distance, anything that's closer or
| | 04:18 | further away will not render.
| | 04:20 | So let's just go ahead and play with this.
| | 04:23 | I am going to go ahead select this bowl
in the table and I need to find out how
| | 04:27 | far away that bowl is.
| | 04:29 | Well, we've got a little option here under
Display > Heads Up Display > Object Details.
| | 04:35 | So this tells me how far
away from the camera it is.
| | 04:38 | So this is about 82-83
units away from the camera.
| | 04:44 | So if I select my camera, go into
the Attributes, you can see that my Far
| | 04:49 | Clip Plane right now is set to 10,000,
but if I set that to say 83, it clips off
| | 04:56 | anything beyond the middle of that bowl.
| | 04:59 | So if we were to set at 90, you can
see I am clipping just a little bit less.
| | 05:05 | If I were to say make it 70, you can see
it clip almost everything but the table.
| | 05:11 | And again, if I bring it up, so let's
just bring it up to say 10,000, you pretty
| | 05:15 | much get the whole scene, because
there's nothing that's 10,000 units away.
| | 05:20 | We can also do that on the other side.
| | 05:22 | So let's say on our Near
Clip Plane, let's type in 75.
| | 05:25 | You can see that it only
renders things beyond 75 units.
| | 05:31 | And again, typically, we like to just
keep this at a small number so that way
| | 05:36 | things don't get too big in the camera.
| | 05:38 | Now finally we have some other options here.
| | 05:41 | We have a Film Back and this is a great way to
match your back to a camera on a live-action set.
| | 05:48 | Then we have a number of other
options here such as Depth of Field, Output
| | 05:52 | Settings, and probably one
that you will use is Environment.
| | 05:56 | So right now we have a default Background Color.
| | 06:00 | So if I render this you'll see that it
renders against black, but I can change
| | 06:05 | and render against any color.
| | 06:07 | So let's go ahead and make that a
blue and now I'm rendering against this
| | 06:11 | color which is a blue.
| | 06:13 | And if we want, we can create an Image
Plane and have an image projected behind
| | 06:20 | the camera as the background color.
| | 06:23 | So those are some of the basic
ways to affect your camera using
| | 06:27 | camera attributes.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating gates and safe frames| 00:00 | Anytime you work with cameras you want
to see exactly what's going to be shot
| | 00:05 | and rendered from that camera.
| | 00:08 | I've got as seen here that's actually
in the Viewport but, I can change the
| | 00:12 | size and shape of that Viewport. I
really want to be able to see exactly what
| | 00:17 | the camera is seeing.
| | 00:18 | So we can do that by using gates and
we can also add in safe frames to add in
| | 00:23 | things such as Title and Action safe.
| | 00:26 | So I have a scene here with a camera
called Camera One. So if I'm in the Camera
| | 00:32 | One Viewport under View, I should have
some options here under Camera Settings.
| | 00:38 | So I've got a number of gates here.
| | 00:40 | Right now it's set to No Gate but if I
set it to Film Gate what it will do is it
| | 00:47 | will set it to whatever the back of
the camera is set to in the attributes.
| | 00:52 | So we go into View > Camera Attribute
Editor you'll see that under Film Back
| | 01:00 | I've got my Film Aspect Ratio and this
will determine the aspect ratio of this gate.
| | 01:08 | So if I bring this up, you will see it gets
wider, if I bring it down, it gets smaller.
| | 01:14 | So if it's at 1 it's 1:1.
| | 01:17 | 1.5 is a 3:2 aspect ratio,
| | 01:21 | so that will be 640x480 NTSC TV, and so on, okay.
| | 01:26 | I also have a Squeeze Ratio, so if
you're doing something like cinemascope or
| | 01:31 | any anamorphic stuff you can do that as well.
| | 01:34 | Now I have another type of gate,
and that's called the Resolution Gate.
| | 01:38 | Now before I get to that,
let me show you how that works.
| | 01:41 | That's based off of the Render Settings.
| | 01:45 | So if I go into my Render Settings
window and you scroll down here, you'll see
| | 01:49 | that my Image Size right now is 1280x720,
so it's a Device Aspect Ratio of
| | 01:56 | 1.77 and this is at 1.5 right now.
| | 02:00 | So this is actually going to be wider.
| | 02:03 | So if I go to View > Camera Settings
> Resolution Gate, it will pick up the
| | 02:09 | Render Settings and use those for the gate.
| | 02:13 | So that's a crucial setting.
| | 02:14 | Once I have this gate I can use it to
position my camera, so for example, I've got
| | 02:21 | this kind of false floor on the set.
| | 02:23 | And if I don't want the edges of that
to show in my render, I can make sure
| | 02:28 | that I frame my scene, so I don't see it.
| | 02:31 | Now if I go in to View > Camera Settings,
I can also turn off the Gate Mask and
| | 02:37 | that's this gray area around the mask.
| | 02:41 | And if I want to, I can turn
that back on to again mask that out.
| | 02:47 | So it's really just how you want to
work, I like keeping it on so that way I
| | 02:51 | very clearly see what's in
frame and what's out of frame.
| | 02:55 | Now in addition to this, we
also have some basic options here.
| | 02:59 | We have a Safe Action and when I
click that on it brings in my Safe
| | 03:04 | Action and Safe Title.
| | 03:08 | And if I want, I can turn on in a
Field Chart which gives you a standard
| | 03:14 | animation field charts, in other words,
it just lays a grid over the scene and
| | 03:18 | sometimes it's really handy to have
this because, at the very least, you know
| | 03:23 | exactly where the center of your frame
is, and if you're doing actual animation
| | 03:29 | on a light table with the animation disc,
you will understand how this works in
| | 03:34 | an animation context.
| | 03:37 | So those are some of the basics of
how to set gates as well as create safe
| | 03:41 | frames and field charts.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding depth of field| 00:00 | Now let's take a look at depth of field in Maya.
| | 00:04 | Now if you're familiar with
photography, you'll know the depth of field is
| | 00:07 | basically the region in
which your camera is focusing.
| | 00:11 | You can use depth of field to
do creative focusing effects.
| | 00:14 | You can create an image where some
stuff is in focus and other things are not.
| | 00:18 | And we can do the same thing in Maya.
| | 00:22 | So we're going to start off by doing
it in the Maya Software renderer, but this
| | 00:26 | will also work for mental ray.
| | 00:27 | So I am going to go into my Render
Settings windows and make sure that I have my
| | 00:32 | Maya Software renderer selected, and
let's go ahead and just do a quick render.
| | 00:37 | As you can see, everything is in focus.
| | 00:40 | So if we wanted to do a focus effect,
we have to add that to the camera.
| | 00:45 | So we can do that by going into
the camera's Attribute Editor.
| | 00:49 | So I go into View > Camera Attribute
Editor, and there should be an option here
| | 00:54 | called Depth Of Field.
| | 00:56 | So if I select that, you'll
see we have three options here;
| | 01:00 | one is Focus Distance and that is how
far away from the camera are we focusing.
| | 01:07 | The next one is F Stop, and if you're
familiar with photography, you'll know
| | 01:11 | that this is how wide the lens is open.
| | 01:13 | A lower F Stop means more blurring,
a higher F Stop means more stuff is in focus.
| | 01:22 | And then we also have what's called Focus
Region Scale and that is basically just a
| | 01:27 | multiplier that allows you to
have more or less things in focus.
| | 01:32 | So a higher number gives you more stuff
in focus, a lower number gives you less
| | 01:37 | stuff in focus with more blurring.
| | 01:40 | So now that we understand all of this,
let's just go ahead and take a quick
| | 01:44 | render with these defaults.
| | 01:45 | So I am going to do a
quick Render Current Frame,
| | 01:48 | and as you can see, well, not much is in focus.
| | 01:50 | And that's probably because our Focus
Distance is set fairly close to the camera.
| | 01:56 | We only have this set to 5 and these are,
I'm assuming, a little bit further away.
| | 02:01 | So let's go ahead and pick
an object to put into focus.
| | 02:04 | I am going to go ahead and select this
middle chair, and we need to figure out
| | 02:08 | how far away from the camera that chair is.
| | 02:12 | We can do that using a Heads Up Display.
| | 02:14 | So if we go into Display > Heads Up
Display > Object Details, this will tell you
| | 02:20 | the distance from the camera.
| | 02:22 | So in this case, we have 46.893.
| | 02:27 | Okay, so if I go back into my Camera
Attribute Editor, I need to remember this
| | 02:32 | number, and then just go ahead and
put that in as my Focus Distance.
| | 02:36 | I can type 46, or if I want, I can
type 46.893 and get very specific.
| | 02:42 | It's really not going to matter if
you're off by just a little bit here.
| | 02:46 | So let's go ahead and just leave that at
that default, and just put in the Focus Distance.
| | 02:52 | Now when I do this, you'll see that I
am getting a little bit of blurring here
| | 02:58 | on this, and on the chair in the back,
and this middle chair is in focus.
| | 03:04 | Now if we want, we can change
that by adjusting the F Stop.
| | 03:10 | So remember, lower F Stop means less
stuff is in focus, higher F Stop means
| | 03:16 | more stuff is in focus.
| | 03:18 | So let's just do an F Stop of 2, which
is pretty wide open for a camera and
| | 03:23 | do one more render.
| | 03:26 | As you can see, we have a much
more enhanced blurring effect.
| | 03:31 | Now this not only works for Maya Software
renderer, it will work for mental ray as well.
| | 03:36 | In fact, if we want, we can select
mental ray, and that's if you have it turned
| | 03:41 | on in the plug-ins and just do another render.
| | 03:45 | And right now, I have draft setting, so I
am getting a little bit of pixelation
| | 03:49 | here, but you can see that it's
pretty much the same in mental ray.
| | 03:53 | You are getting pretty much the same
blurring that you're getting in the
| | 03:56 | Maya Software renderer.
| | 03:58 | Now let's go ahead and take
a look at Focus Region Scale.
| | 04:03 | This controls how much is in focus.
| | 04:07 | So in this case, we've got basically the
front and the back chairs are defocused
| | 04:11 | and this chair is in focus.
| | 04:14 | So if I increase this, we'll
get more stuff in focus.
| | 04:18 | So I am going to make this 2, let's switch
this over to Maya Software and do another render.
| | 04:24 | And as you can see, we've got more
stuff in focus, in fact if we brought that
| | 04:28 | up to say 4, that would probably bring
almost everything into focus, and there we go.
| | 04:34 | Now lower numbers means less is in focus.
| | 04:38 | So by default, it's 1.
| | 04:39 | So let's go ahead and make it half.
| | 04:42 | So I am going to bring it down to 0.5 which will
bring less things into focus, and there you go.
| | 04:48 | So this Focus Region Scale can also be
used to control how much focus you have.
| | 04:54 | Now typically, what I try to do is to
get it with the F Stop and if I can't
| | 04:59 | quite get it exact, then I
will go to Focus Region Scale.
| | 05:04 | Now another thing we can do is
also again, change Focus Distance.
| | 05:08 | So if I were to make this say, a lower
number, say 30 or something like that,
| | 05:13 | then you would get the stuff
closer to the camera in focus.
| | 05:16 | So now at 46, this is in
focus, at 30, this is in focus.
| | 05:22 | So as you can see, we have a number of
different parameters for creating focus
| | 05:27 | effects using depth of field.
| | 05:29 | Remember, use the Heads Up Display to
understand how far things are from the
| | 05:34 | camera, use that as the focus distance,
and then use your F Stop to control how
| | 05:40 | much is in and out of focus.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating bokeh in mental ray using lens shaders| 00:00 | Let's take a look at another way to do
depth of field, and that's using a lens
| | 00:05 | shader in mental ray.
| | 00:08 | So for this lesson, we
do need to use mental ray.
| | 00:11 | So let's go ahead and set that up.
| | 00:12 | I am going to go into my Render Settings
window, and make sure I have mental ray selected.
| | 00:20 | Now let's go ahead and just do a
quick render just to see what we have.
| | 00:24 | As you can see everything is in focus.
| | 00:26 | So let's go ahead and defocus it.
| | 00:30 | We're going to do a similar
procedure to what we did before.
| | 00:33 | We're going to go into
the Camera Attribute Editor.
| | 00:35 | So I am going to go View > Camera
Attribute Editor, and if we scroll down from
| | 00:41 | Camera Attributes, you will see there
is a rollout here called mental ray.
| | 00:46 | And under that, we have three types of shaders:
| | 00:49 | Environment, Volume, and Lens Shader, and
we're going to take a look at Lens Shader.
| | 00:55 | So I am going to click on this
checkerbox here, and this will bring up
| | 00:59 | Create Render Node.
| | 01:01 | Now under mental ray, you'll see
we have a entry here called lenses.
| | 01:06 | So if I select that, you can see these
are the different types of lens shaders,
| | 01:11 | we can add to a camera in mental ray.
| | 01:14 | So we have things that can control Exposure,
we have Depth of Field, a couple of other ones.
| | 01:19 | The one I want to look at is called bokeh.
| | 01:21 | Now this is basically the effect that you
get when you have a camera that defocuses.
| | 01:28 | So we have a number of different options here;
| | 01:30 | one is the Plane, in other words, that's
the Focus Distance, how far away are we
| | 01:35 | focusing. The Radius; this is how much
of a region are we focusing. Samples;
| | 01:41 | this is a quality setting as well as
Bias, and then Blade Count and Blade Angle
| | 01:47 | allow you to further
customize the blurring effect.
| | 01:51 | So in this case, let's go ahead and
just place the front chair into focus.
| | 01:55 | So I need to know how far away
that chair is in order to focus it.
| | 02:00 | So I am going to go ahead and select
that, and go to my Display > Heads Up
| | 02:05 | Display and just look at my Object
Details and it will tell you that it's 31.5
| | 02:11 | units away from the camera.
| | 02:13 | So if I go back into my Camera
Attribute Editor, you can see here is my Lens
| | 02:18 | Shader, we'll go one step down here.
| | 02:20 | And so, for Plane, I am going to go
ahead and type in 31 and then I am
| | 02:27 | just going to leave everything else the same,
and let's go ahead and do a quick render.
| | 02:31 | So with it set to 31, we pretty
much have the green chair in focus, and
| | 02:37 | everything else is out of focus.
| | 02:40 | And you'll find that as you work with
more complex scenes that this Lens Shader
| | 02:44 | is a little bit more accurate,
and it will give you better results.
| | 02:49 | So let's go ahead and play
with some other settings.
| | 02:52 | Now one of the things I'm noticing here
is I am getting a lot of this speckling
| | 02:56 | here, and that's because I don't have
enough samples to really sell the effect.
| | 03:02 | So if I want, I can
increase my number of samples.
| | 03:04 | I am going to increase it quite a bit to 32.
| | 03:08 | Now this will slow down render time,
so you don't want to make this too big,
| | 03:12 | just big enough to get the effect that you want.
| | 03:15 | So at 32, we should get less of that speckling.
| | 03:20 | As you can see, with a higher number
of samples, we get a lot less of the
| | 03:25 | speckling in the image.
| | 03:27 | So just remember that the more samples
you have, the longer it will take to render.
| | 03:32 | Now we also have a Bias which again just
biases where the focal distance is, and
| | 03:37 | we also have Blade Count.
| | 03:39 | Now this allows you to kind of
control the quality of the blurring, and so
| | 03:45 | different types of lenses will have
different number of blades on the iris, and
| | 03:50 | that will affect the way
that the blurring works.
| | 03:55 | So let's go ahead and just take a quick
stab at this and see if we can get some
| | 03:59 | results here that are a little bit different.
| | 04:01 | I am going to increase the Blade Count
to 5 and make the Blade Angle say, 0.2 and
| | 04:09 | let's go ahead and do one more render.
| | 04:13 | So that render created something that was
maybe slightly different, but not that much.
| | 04:18 | You'll probably notice this more on scenes
that have a lot more complexity in the background.
| | 04:23 | Because we have such a simple scene,
we're not going to see much difference
| | 04:27 | between Blade Count, and Blade Angle.
| | 04:30 | But you can also use this to
match the type of lens that you have on
| | 04:34 | your camera as well.
| | 04:36 | Let's go ahead and sum this up.
| | 04:37 | In order to create more realistic
depth of field, you can use the lens bokeh
| | 04:43 | lens shader in mental ray.
| | 04:46 | So go ahead and practice with
this and see if you can create some
| | 04:50 | interesting effects.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating motion blur in the Maya Software renderer| 00:00 | Another important effect to consider is
motion blur, and this is used mostly in animation,
| | 00:06 | but what it does is it simulates how
objects blur when they're moving quickly.
| | 00:12 | So if an object moves significantly,
while the camera's shutter is open, it will
| | 00:17 | appear blurred, and we can simulate
this effect in a number of different ways.
| | 00:22 | So I have a simple scene here with a
submarine, and a propeller that's turning.
| | 00:27 | So when I press Play, you can see how
that propeller spins, and let's go ahead
| | 00:32 | and do a quick render.
| | 00:33 | I am going to go into my Render
Settings window, make sure I am in the Maya
| | 00:37 | Software Renderer, and let's
go ahead and render the scene.
| | 00:41 | Now as you can see, there are
just sharp edges along everything.
| | 00:45 | So we don't have any blur.
| | 00:47 | But we can add that in
the Render Settings window.
| | 00:52 | So if we go into the Render Settings
window, under Maya Software, if we scroll
| | 00:58 | down you'll see an option
here called Motion Blur.
| | 01:01 | If I click that on,
you'll see we have two options:
| | 01:05 | one is 2D, one is 3D.
| | 01:08 | So let me explain the difference here.
| | 01:11 | 2D is for objects that are basically
moving across the field of vision, and in
| | 01:17 | other words, they're moving
left to right or up and down.
| | 01:20 | And what it does is it renders multiple
copies of that scene and then blurs them
| | 01:27 | together. Now this type of motion blur
works for a very specific type of motion.
| | 01:32 | If you want motion blur that works with
more general motion, you can do just 3D,
| | 01:38 | and this basically has one
option here which is Blur by Frame;
| | 01:43 | in other words, it's a multiplier
for how much you want this to blur.
| | 01:47 | Let's go ahead and leave this at the
defaults with 3D enabled and do a quick render.
| | 01:53 | As you can see, we're getting a
quick little motion blur here.
| | 01:57 | We're getting some pixelation here, and we
can change that just by upping our quality here.
| | 02:03 | I have got my Edge anti-aliasing at
Low, let's go ahead and make sure it's
| | 02:07 | highest quality or you can do
Production Quality, just make sure Motion
| | 02:10 | Blur stays turned on.
| | 02:11 | And if we render that again, you'll see
it smoothes that out a lot more, and we
| | 02:15 | get a pretty good blur of the object.
| | 02:18 | So it kind of gives an
indication that it's running.
| | 02:21 | Now if we want, we can
multiply this effect in two ways.
| | 02:26 | If I go back into my Render Settings window,
you will notice that I have a Blur by Frame.
| | 02:32 | A higher number will create more blur.
| | 02:34 | So if I bring this up to 3, do another
render, you will see I am getting the
| | 02:39 | blur over three frames.
| | 02:42 | If I bring it down, say 0.5,
you are going to get less blur.
| | 02:47 | In fact, you almost have no blur at all.
| | 02:50 | Now if I leave this at 1, and render,
you see I get what I had before.
| | 02:57 | And this leads me to the second option and
that's by doing the shutter angle of the camera.
| | 03:04 | So if I go into my Camera Attribute
Editor, in my Viewport here, you will see
| | 03:10 | that if I scroll down here, I have
something here called Special Effects.
| | 03:14 | And when I open up Special Effects,
you will see I have an attribute
| | 03:18 | called Shutter Angle.
| | 03:20 | Now this is basically how
long the shutter is open.
| | 03:25 | So a smaller number means it's open less,
a bigger number means it's open more.
| | 03:31 | So if I bring this down from the default
of 144 to say 80, and do a quick render,
| | 03:38 | you will see I get less effect.
| | 03:42 | If I bring it up to say 300 and
render, I will get a bigger effect.
| | 03:50 | Now this is actually a real-world
number that you can use, if you're working
| | 03:55 | with film, you may actually have a
Shutter Angle number which you can match.
| | 04:00 | Typically, I just like to keep it at the
default and work with the Render Settings.
| | 04:04 | But the nice thing about this is
that you can have different motion blur
| | 04:08 | depending on the camera.
| | 04:10 | So this is camera
dependent which can help a lot.
| | 04:13 | So those are some of the basics for
setting up motion blur in the Maya
| | 04:17 | Software renderer.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating motion blur in mental ray| 00:00 | In mental ray, motion blur is pretty
similar to the way that we set it up in
| | 00:05 | Maya Software renderer.
| | 00:07 | Now I have a scene here with this
propeller turning, so if I play this you will
| | 00:12 | see this propeller is turning.
| | 00:14 | So let's go ahead and set up motion
blur using the Maya Software renderer.
| | 00:17 | I'm going to go ahead and set this to
about frame 20 and let's go and change our
| | 00:22 | renderer from Maya Software to mental ray.
| | 00:26 | And under Quality you'll see I have
a Motion Blur tab. Right now it's off.
| | 00:32 | So let's go ahead just quick render with it
off, and as you can see we have no motion blur.
| | 00:40 | So we can turn it on.
| | 00:41 | There's two options here; one is No
Deformation and that's for solid objects like
| | 00:47 | this propeller, things that don't deform.
If I do it with Full that means it will
| | 00:53 | motion blur things that deform.
| | 00:55 | So if you have a character that's
moving really quick and its skin is deforming
| | 00:59 | this is what you would use.
| | 01:01 | We are actually just can a use No
Deformation and so we have some similar
| | 01:06 | parameters that we had before.
| | 01:07 | We have Motion Blur by how many frames, so
a larger number means more motion blur.
| | 01:13 | When does the Shutter Open,
when does the Shutter Close?
| | 01:17 | So this is basically shutter angle.
| | 01:19 | And then we also have Motion Steps and Time
Samples which allow us to create a quality to this.
| | 01:27 | So let's go ahead and just leave it at
the defaults here with No Deformation
| | 01:31 | and do a quick render.
| | 01:32 | So as you can see, we're getting a
pretty good little motion blur effect.
| | 01:37 | Now if I want, just like before, I can
increase the motion blur just by using this
| | 01:43 | multiplier here and if I do a render,
you can see I get more motion blur, or if
| | 01:50 | I bring this down, say to 0.5,
then we will get less.
| | 01:55 | Now if I put this back at 1 and
render you can see we're getting what we had
| | 02:00 | before, and now we can also dial in when
the shutter opens and when it closes.
| | 02:06 | Now this is a little bit different than
shutter angle in that we actually have
| | 02:10 | control over when it starts and when it stops.
| | 02:13 | So you actually have a
little bit more control here.
| | 02:16 | So if I bring any of these numbers down
and these two are closer together then
| | 02:21 | I'll get less effect.
| | 02:23 | Now if I want to I can bring it above
1, let's say I bring it to 2, that can
| | 02:29 | actually increase the effect, and
again, I'm getting more effect.
| | 02:34 | Now another thing you can do is add
more Motion Steps and Time Samples to
| | 02:39 | increase your quality.
| | 02:41 | Notice how we are getting a
little bit pixelation here.
| | 02:44 | If I bring that up to say 8 and 8, then
I should get a smoother effect, and as
| | 02:50 | you can see it's a little bit smoother.
| | 02:53 | So those are some of the basics for
creating motion blur in mental ray.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Advanced Rendering with mental rayCreating reflections and refractions| 00:00 | Now let's go ahead and go a little
bit deeper into the mental ray renderer,
| | 00:04 | which is probably the renderer you use
the most when using Maya, because it has
| | 00:08 | a lot more features.
| | 00:09 | We're going to start off with
reflections and refractions.
| | 00:13 | Those are created by default
in the mental ray renderer.
| | 00:16 | Let me show you how this works.
| | 00:18 | First off, we need to go into our
Render Settings window and make sure we have
| | 00:22 | mental ray turned on as the renderer.
| | 00:25 | Now under Features, we have Primary
Renderer and do we want to use it as the
| | 00:31 | Raytracing which is the default or the
Scanline which is actually faster, but it
| | 00:37 | doesn't do ray tracing.
| | 00:39 | So if we turn it to the Scanline
Renderer and turn off the Secondary Effect of
| | 00:44 | Raytracing, when we do a quick
render here, you'll see that I'm getting
| | 00:50 | transparency, but no reflections or refractions.
| | 00:54 | That's the result of ray tracing.
| | 00:57 | So if I turn on the Raytracing part of
the renderer and make sure my Secondary
| | 01:02 | Effects are on, then I can actually
start to see reflections and refractions.
| | 01:09 | So if I do another render here,
you'll start to see reflections.
| | 01:14 | Now reflections are controlled
in the Render Settings window.
| | 01:19 | So if I go back into this window here,
you'll see under Quality, we'll have
| | 01:24 | under Raytracing, number of Reflections,
Refractions, and also Raytrace Depth.
| | 01:30 | Now this is the number of
things that can reflect.
| | 01:35 | So in this case, I only
have one reflection here.
| | 01:39 | So in other words, the table can
reflect the bowl, but the table can't reflect
| | 01:46 | itself in the bowl, so you
can't have more than one bounce.
| | 01:50 | So if I turn this up say to 10, that
means I get more bounces on the reflection.
| | 01:58 | What this does is gives me a little
bit more reflectivity on the scene.
| | 02:03 | Now refractions are the lens effect
you get when you look through glass.
| | 02:10 | We can turn on refractions in the material.
| | 02:14 | So if I close all this out and
select the bowl here, we can go into the
| | 02:20 | Attribute Editor, and turn on Refractions.
| | 02:24 | So if I scroll down to Raytrace Options
and turn on Refractions, then I can get
| | 02:33 | refractions in this bowl.
| | 02:35 | First, we have the Refractive Index
which basically determines how the light
| | 02:40 | bends when it hits the surface.
| | 02:43 | We also have the Refraction Limit; how
many different bounces of light can we have.
| | 02:48 | In this case, the default is 6.
| | 02:51 | Then we also have how much light will
the surface absorb and Surface Thickness
| | 02:57 | and Shadow Attenuation.
| | 02:59 | So let's go ahead and leave this at
the defaults and hit a quick render.
| | 03:03 | Now when we do this, you're going to
get this kind of opaque surface here, and
| | 03:09 | this is because we have a Refraction
Limit here of 6 on the material, but we
| | 03:14 | don't have that set in
the Render Settings window.
| | 03:18 | So here, let's go back into Render
Settings, and under Refractions, this
| | 03:23 | needs to be higher.
| | 03:24 | And this is because this is how many times
the light needs to bounce through the material.
| | 03:32 | So if you look at this bowl, we have an
outside surface, an inside surface, and
| | 03:37 | then we also have one on the other side.
| | 03:39 | So the light can come through here and
then refract through here, and maybe even
| | 03:45 | come through here and here.
| | 03:46 | So as we turn this up,
we'll get more and more realism.
| | 03:51 | So I'm going to go ahead and just peg
this at 10, and then when we do a quick
| | 03:57 | render, you'll see that I'm
getting a much better effect.
| | 04:00 | So I'm actually able to see
through this and see the refractions.
| | 04:05 | But I'm not getting much of a
refraction, because in my material here, the
| | 04:10 | Refractive Index is still set to 1 which
basically makes it so it doesn't bend light.
| | 04:16 | So what we can do is we can make
this either positive or negative;
| | 04:20 | so in other words above or below 1.
| | 04:23 | So I'm going to bring it slightly above 1, to
a little over 1.1, and let's do another render.
| | 04:29 | Now when I do that, you can see how I'm
getting a much better refraction effect here.
| | 04:36 | You can see how it's
bending the light here, and here.
| | 04:40 | Now if I go negative with it, in other
words, bring it below 1, say to 0.95, I
| | 04:46 | get a different effect.
| | 04:48 | You can see how this is a much
different effect, and this actually looks a
| | 04:53 | little bit more realistic to
how a bowl like this will work.
| | 04:58 | Now in addition to this, we can add in
shadows and they will also reflect the
| | 05:03 | transparency in the scene.
| | 05:06 | So let's go into our Outliner.
| | 05:08 | I'm going to go Window > Outliner and
under defaultLightSet, I'm going to open
| | 05:13 | it up and select spotLight2.
| | 05:16 | Now because we're using Raytracing
and Transparency, it's probably best to
| | 05:21 | use Ray Trace Shadow.
| | 05:23 | So I'm going to go ahead and turn that on
and let's go ahead and do a quick render.
| | 05:28 | Now when I do this, you can see how I'm
getting a good shadow on the ground here.
| | 05:35 | Now remember, with Ray Trace Shadows,
we have a Light Radius and a number of
| | 05:40 | Shadow Rays and this can
create a more blurry type of shadow.
| | 05:45 | We also have a Ray Depth Limit,
and again, this is like refractions.
| | 05:48 | If we turn this up, it will
actually create more bounces of the shadow.
| | 05:55 | So if I do a quick render of this with
a high Ray Depth Limit, you'll see you
| | 05:59 | get a slightly different shadow effect.
| | 06:02 | So those are some of the basics of how to
do reflections and refractions in mental ray.
| | 06:09 | Now remember, you probably want to
keep the number of reflections and
| | 06:13 | refractions high to create
the maximum amount of realism.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Final Gathering for natural lighting| 00:00 | One of the big advantages of mental ray
is that it allows you to create what's
| | 00:04 | called indirect lighting.
| | 00:06 | Now in the most basic form,
indirect lighting is bounce lighting.
| | 00:10 | So if you shine a light at a wall, the wall
will bounce some light back into the room.
| | 00:17 | Now typically, we can't simulate this
unless we have something like mental ray
| | 00:22 | which has options that allow
us to do this sort of lighting.
| | 00:27 | So let's take a look at how this works.
| | 00:29 | I've got a basic scene here and I want to
make sure that I'm lighting using mental ray.
| | 00:36 | And under Indirect Lighting, we have an
option here called Final Gathering and
| | 00:42 | this is the first step in
creating bounce lighting.
| | 00:45 | Now I'm going to keep this off for just a
second and let's just do a render of the scene.
| | 00:51 | Now this scene has two lights;
| | 00:53 | it has one light shining through the
window, it's a spotlight, and then we have
| | 00:58 | a point light up here just
illuminating the scene in a general way.
| | 01:03 | So I'm going to make sure I'm in my Camera 1
Viewport and let's go ahead and render this.
| | 01:08 | Now it took a little while
to render this on my machine.
| | 01:12 | But as you can see, we've got the
basic lighting from these two lights.
| | 01:16 | Now one of the things I'm noticing here
is we get a lot of darkness right here
| | 01:21 | on the back of the chairs, and the
shadows under the table are pretty dark.
| | 01:24 | This is because we're not getting
much bounce lighting, we have this really
| | 01:28 | white floor and these yellow walls and they
are not contributing any light to the room.
| | 01:34 | So let's go ahead and add in some
bounce lighting using Final Gather.
| | 01:38 | Now before I do that, I'm going to
hit this button here which keeps this
| | 01:42 | image, and that way, we can compare image to
image as we go through the rendering process.
| | 01:48 | So I'm going to make sure I keep my image,
and then let's go into Render Settings.
| | 01:52 | I'm going to go down to Indirect Lighting
> Final Gathering and turn on Final Gather.
| | 01:59 | Now we have a number of
different options here for Final Gather;
| | 02:03 | one is Accuracy, Point Density,
and a bunch of other ones.
| | 02:07 | We're not going to get too into
these, the defaults work pretty well.
| | 02:11 | We also have another one for Quality,
for a Final Gather Map which allows you to
| | 02:16 | make it more efficient and Final Gather Tracing.
| | 02:20 | Do we want to actually gather
reflections and refractions?
| | 02:24 | We're not going to do any of this, we're
just going to leave this at the default.
| | 02:27 | I want you to understand
the basics of Final Gather.
| | 02:30 | So once we turn this on,
let's go ahead and render.
| | 02:32 | Now this may take a little bit longer.
| | 02:36 | Okay, now we've got our image,
and you can see how the backs of the
| | 02:40 | chairs aren't as dark.
| | 02:41 | In fact, if we scroll through these here,
you can see this is the previous image.
| | 02:46 | And Final Gather added in a lot of
bounce lighting, and you can see this
| | 02:50 | particularly on the legs of
the chairs and under the table.
| | 02:53 | Now one of the things the
scene doesn't have is a back wall.
| | 02:57 | I'm going to go ahead and minimize this.
| | 02:59 | I want to keep this window open, but
just minimized, and I'm going to hop out
| | 03:04 | into my three views here, and
let's go into this top view here.
| | 03:10 | In fact, let's change this into a
Perspective view, so that way, I can see
| | 03:15 | what's in the scene.
| | 03:16 | And as you see there's no back wall
to this scene, but conveniently, I've
| | 03:22 | actually created one here and
we can slide that into place.
| | 03:26 | Now the reason I'm doing this is
because this will bounce additional
| | 03:31 | lighting into the scene.
| | 03:33 | So when you start working with things
like Final Gather, you want to make sure
| | 03:38 | that your scene is reasonably realistic.
| | 03:40 | That way, you get the most realistic lighting.
| | 03:43 | So now that I have that slid into place,
I'm going to go ahead and bring up my
| | 03:48 | Render View window here one more time,
and I'm going to save out this image.
| | 03:53 | I'm going to make sure I do a Keep Image
here, so I've got my dark image, and my
| | 03:58 | light image, and we're
going to do one more here.
| | 04:01 | I'm just going to render this one
more time, and again, this may take a
| | 04:05 | little bit of time.
| | 04:06 | Okay, so now we've got our final image
here, and we've got now three separate ones.
| | 04:12 | So I've got my initial image which is
no Final Gather, this one which has Final
| | 04:20 | Gather but no back wall and
this one which has a back wall.
| | 04:25 | Now notice how all I had to do was
turn on Final Gather, and make the room
| | 04:31 | complete, and now I have
much more realistic lighting.
| | 04:34 | And so this is a great way to get
realistic lighting without too much additional
| | 04:40 | effort, but perhaps a little more render time.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Turning objects into light sources| 00:00 | Another really cool thing about Final
Gather is that it allows you to create
| | 00:05 | light sources out of objects.
| | 00:07 | So this is great for creating things
like soft boxes and large aerial lights
| | 00:13 | that create very soft shadows.
| | 00:15 | Now I have a simple scene here with
this little kind of futuristic car, and I
| | 00:21 | want to make sure that I'm in mental
ray, and I am, and let's just go ahead
| | 00:25 | and do a quick render.
| | 00:27 | Now when I do, you'll see that I've
got a basic light source in the scene.
| | 00:32 | But if I actually go out, you'll see that
I don't really have a light in the scene.
| | 00:37 | Let's go into our Outliner here, and
you'll see that I've got a lot of objects
| | 00:42 | in the scenes but no lights.
| | 00:45 | So where does the light come from in the scene?
| | 00:48 | Well, when you don't have a light
in the scene, Maya will create one.
| | 00:52 | So if we go into Display Render
Settings, and go into our Common tab here, and
| | 00:58 | scroll all the way down to the bottom
under Render Options, you'll see this
| | 01:02 | little check light here that says
Enable Default Light, and that was the light
| | 01:07 | that it used to render that previous scene.
| | 01:10 | So if we click this off, we
should have no lights in the scene.
| | 01:15 | So if I render, I should get
black and that's what we want.
| | 01:19 | So what we can do now is we can add an object
into the scene, and pretend that it's a light.
| | 01:24 | So I'm going to go into my Surfaces tab
here, and just create a NURBS plane here.
| | 01:31 | I'm going to go ahead and move
it up and tilt it a little bit.
| | 01:36 | So what I'm going to do is
make this into a light source.
| | 01:40 | Now I can do this by adding a material
onto this that creates a glowing effect.
| | 01:48 | So we can go into our Rendering tab,
and under Lighting/Shading, we're going to
| | 01:53 | assign a favorite material
that's called a Surface Shader.
| | 01:58 | Now if you want, we can also get to
that on the Rendering shelf and it's right
| | 02:02 | here, it's called Surface Material.
| | 02:04 | But under Surface Shader, you'll
see that basically, it's just a color.
| | 02:10 | So we have an Out Color,
Transparency, and a Glow Color.
| | 02:14 | Well basically, all I want to do is just
turn this up, and make it into a white light.
| | 02:19 | Now when I do that, it will
create a light source in the scene.
| | 02:25 | Now when I render, you'll see that
this actually is pretty much just a solid
| | 02:30 | white object, and I'm getting a
little bit of reflection but no light.
| | 02:35 | Now in order to turn this into a light
source, we need to turn on Final Gather.
| | 02:40 | Now before I do that, I actually want
to position this a little bit off screen.
| | 02:45 | So I'm going to hit my Spacebar, go
under my quad view here, and just move
| | 02:50 | this up so that it's basically just outside
of the Camera View and shining on the car.
| | 02:56 | Now I'm going to go back into my
Camera View here, and let's go into our
| | 03:00 | Render Settings window.
| | 03:03 | So under Indirect Lighting, I want to
scroll down and just turn on Final Gather,
| | 03:08 | and again, we're just going
to leave this at the default.
| | 03:12 | Now that Final Gather is turned on, it
will start to do bounce lighting, and it
| | 03:18 | will also take into consideration the
light coming from this Surface Shader.
| | 03:25 | So when we do a quick render, you'll
see that well, it comes up kind of dark,
| | 03:31 | but we are getting light.
| | 03:32 | You can kind of make out the outline of the car.
| | 03:37 | So what we need to do is
to make this light brighter.
| | 03:40 | Well, there are two ways to do that.
| | 03:43 | The first way is to simply
increase the area of the light.
| | 03:46 | So if I were to again hop out to my
quad view, select my NURBS plane, and just
| | 03:53 | scale it up, I would actually get more light.
| | 03:55 | So the size of the surface is
one way to create more light.
| | 04:00 | So if I go into my Camera View here
and render again, you'll see that I'm
| | 04:06 | getting more light in the scene
simply because I have more area projecting
| | 04:11 | light, and you can start to see the
softness and the detail in this lighting model.
| | 04:19 | Now if we want, we can also do another
way of increasing the amount of light.
| | 04:25 | So again, I'm going to hop out to my quad
view here and select the NURBS plane again.
| | 04:30 | Now the other way is to just
increase the brightness of this Out Color.
| | 04:36 | Well, right now my slider has
actually gone over to the very end.
| | 04:41 | I want to go further than that.
| | 04:43 | Well, we can do that simply
by clicking on the color here.
| | 04:48 | When I do that, I want to make sure I'm
in HSV Mode, and then I want to take V
| | 04:54 | and I want to bring it above 1.
| | 04:56 | Right now it maxes out at 1, but let's
go ahead and bring it up even further.
| | 05:01 | Let's go ahead and bring it up to say 8.
| | 05:03 | So when I bring it up to 8, it actually
makes it brighter than 1, and gives you
| | 05:09 | an oversaturated light.
| | 05:13 | So again, let's go ahead and render,
and as you can see, we've got a much
| | 05:19 | brighter light, and we also have a very
nice soft shadow that's starting to happen.
| | 05:26 | Now one thing I'm noticing is that
this car is reflective, and it is
| | 05:31 | reflecting that rectangle.
| | 05:33 | If we want to turn that off, we can.
| | 05:35 | I want to go back out and make sure
that my NURBS plane is selected, and then
| | 05:40 | under the nurbsPlaneShape2, I
want to scroll down to Render Stats.
| | 05:49 | What this is, is it just ways to turn this
object off in certain parts of the renderer.
| | 05:55 | If I want, I can make it cast or not
cast or receive shadows, but really what I
| | 06:00 | want to see here is make it
invisible in reflections and refractions.
| | 06:05 | So I'm going to click off Visible In
Reflections and Visible In Refractions.
| | 06:08 | So now it will not
reflect or refract that object.
| | 06:13 | So if I go into my Camera View
again and render, now I don't see it.
| | 06:18 | So there are some of the basics of Final Gather,
and how to create an object as a light source.
| | 06:26 | So Final Gather is not just for bounce
lighting, you can actually apply surface
| | 06:31 | shaders to objects and
turn them into area lights.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating global illumination in mental ray| 00:00 | Let's talk about a second additional
way of adding bounce lighting into Maya
| | 00:05 | with mental ray, and that's
called global illumination.
| | 00:09 | Now this works similarly to Final Gather,
but you actually get more control over it.
| | 00:15 | Now I have a simple scene here.
| | 00:17 | In fact if I go out to my quad view
here you'll see I have a simple spot light
| | 00:21 | and a sphere on a plane.
| | 00:25 | So if I go into my Camera 1 Viewport
and do a quick render, making sure I have
| | 00:30 | mental ray turned on, I'll get this scene.
| | 00:34 | Now this scene basically has a lot of dark here.
| | 00:37 | We only have one light casting a
shadow here and anything really above
| | 00:43 | that shadow is pretty much black,
and so we really don't have any sort of
| | 00:47 | bounce lighting here.
| | 00:49 | Now if we want we could go into the
Render Settings window, go into Indirect
| | 00:53 | Lighting and turn on Final Gather.
| | 00:56 | And let's take a look at that.
| | 00:58 | Now when we do that, you can see we get
a little bit of bounce lighting up here
| | 01:03 | on the top of the box and so
we don't have a complete shadow.
| | 01:07 | But we don't have a lot of
control over how Final Gather works.
| | 01:11 | So I am going to go ahead and turn
this off and we're actually going to do a
| | 01:16 | different type of rendering and
that's called Global Illumination.
| | 01:19 | So let's go ahead and
turn that on in the renderer.
| | 01:23 | Now before we actually render global
illumination, we have to attach it to a
| | 01:28 | light, and this is where we start
getting more control over it, because we can
| | 01:32 | do it on a light by light basis.
| | 01:35 | So I am going to hop out to my quad
view here and select my spot light here.
| | 01:40 | You can see it's right here, it's a
little small in the Viewport, if you
| | 01:44 | want you can use the Outliner, it's
called spotLight1 and let's go over to
| | 01:49 | the Attribute Editor.
| | 01:50 | Now in order to turn on global
illumination I need to scroll down to the
| | 01:56 | mental ray tab here.
| | 01:59 | When I open that up you'll see I
have an option here called Caustic and
| | 02:03 | Global Illumination.
| | 02:05 | And so what we need to do
is turn on Emit Photons.
| | 02:09 | Now what this does is it actually
turns on a secondary light source.
| | 02:14 | So this light is now emitting regular
light up here through the regular Spot
| | 02:20 | Light attributes, and if we go down
here it's also emitting a secondary
| | 02:25 | light source called photons, and
these are used to calculate the bounce
| | 02:30 | lighting in the room.
| | 02:31 | Now just like with a regular light,
we have a color to the photons.
| | 02:37 | We also have an intensity, in other words,
a brightness to the light, and we have
| | 02:42 | what's called an Exponent and this is
basically the same as your light decay.
| | 02:48 | So the default for Photons is an
Exponent of 2, which means it falls off with
| | 02:54 | the square of the distance,
in other words, reality.
| | 02:58 | If the Exponent is lower, the light
will fall off less drastically and if the
| | 03:03 | Exponent is higher, it will
fall off more drastically.
| | 03:07 | So let's keep everything at the default,
highlight our Camera 1 Viewport and
| | 03:12 | let's go ahead and do a render.
| | 03:14 | Now with Global Illumination on and my
photons on, and my light, you're seeing may
| | 03:19 | be a little bit of
additional light, but not much.
| | 03:23 | And what we need to do here
is actually turn up the light.
| | 03:26 | Now we can do that in one of two ways.
| | 03:29 | We can increase the Photon
Intensity or we can decrease the Exponent.
| | 03:33 | But because I want this to be
realistic I am not going to touch this Exponent
| | 03:38 | which is at the inverse-square law.
| | 03:39 | So we're going to go ahead and
increase our Photon Intensity.
| | 03:42 | So I am just going to go for the heck
of it, multiply it by 10 and make it
| | 03:47 | 80,000 rather than 8000,
and let's do another render.
| | 03:50 | Now once we've done that, you can see
that we're getting a nice secondary light
| | 03:57 | effect, you are starting to get a
little bit of light along the top.
| | 04:01 | And this is actually a different
character that you would get in Final Gather.
| | 04:05 | If you can look closely, you'll see a
little bit of a green tinge on this.
| | 04:09 | That's because this green ball is
actually reflecting that color light.
| | 04:14 | And you're also getting a little bit
of bounce light back on to the ball.
| | 04:18 | Now if we want to really amp this up
we can certainly increase the Photon
| | 04:21 | Intensity a little bit more.
| | 04:23 | So let's go ahead and bring it up a lot.
| | 04:25 | Let's go ahead and bring it up to 250,000
rather than 80,000 and let's do another render.
| | 04:34 | So as you can see more Photon
Intensity really brightens up the scene.
| | 04:38 | You can also start to see how this
green starts to permeate the top of this
| | 04:43 | as well as down here.
| | 04:45 | So you're really also getting a bit of
reflected color which is kind of nice.
| | 04:49 | Now when you're working with global
illumination, you do have to balance
| | 04:54 | your photon energy or your intensity of your
photons against the intensity of your light.
| | 05:01 | So if I go up to my Spot Light here
and go up to my Attributes, and let's go
| | 05:06 | ahead and just turn the Spot Light
completely off and let's do another render.
| | 05:10 | Now what's happening here is that we're
not getting any light directly from the
| | 05:16 | Spot Light, this is
entirely the bounce lighting.
| | 05:19 | You can see how the green of the ball is
reflecting on the top and along the bottom here.
| | 05:25 | You can also see a little bit of
these little circles here, which are
| | 05:29 | basically the photons.
| | 05:31 | So I am going to leave this Intensity
off here, and let's go down to Caustic and
| | 05:35 | Global Illumination and there's one
more value here and that's the number of
| | 05:41 | Global Illumination Photons.
| | 05:43 | So this is the accuracy of the solution.
| | 05:47 | So in order to see how this works, I am
going to take it from the default which
| | 05:51 | is 10,000 and bring it
down to a really low number.
| | 05:55 | Let's bring it down to 50,
and let's do another render.
| | 05:58 | Now again, I am just rendering the
photons, and with such a low number you
| | 06:03 | can see how this works.
| | 06:05 | What mental ray does is it beams these
circles of light all over the scene and
| | 06:12 | those are used to calculate the bounce lighting.
| | 06:15 | Now the more circles you get,
the better the solution.
| | 06:19 | So let's go ahead and
bring this back up to 10,000.
| | 06:25 | And also remember that the number of
global illumination photons will increase
| | 06:30 | render time, so the more photons you
have, the better the solution, but also
| | 06:34 | the longer the render.
| | 06:35 | So you kind of have to balance
that against the needs of the scene.
| | 06:40 | Let's go ahead and bring the
Intensity back up to 1 and then I am going to
| | 06:44 | scroll back down one more time and let's
bring that Photon Intensity down in half.
| | 06:48 | So let's cut it down 125,000
and let's do one more render.
| | 06:53 | Now we have something that looks pretty good.
| | 06:56 | So remember in order to do global
illumination you need to turn it on in Render Settings.
| | 07:01 | And then for each light that you want
to be part of the solution, you need to
| | 07:06 | turn on Emit Photons.
| | 07:08 | After that, it's just a matter of
balancing your photon solution against the
| | 07:13 | solution of your regular
lights and getting a good balance.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rendering transparent materials with caustics| 00:00 | Let's take a look at one more lighting
effect that we can do in mental ray and
| | 00:04 | that's called caustics.
| | 00:06 | Now caustics has basically
two things that it can do.
| | 00:09 | It can create an effect of light
transmitting through a transparent material,
| | 00:15 | or it can also simulate light
reflecting off of highly reflective materials,
| | 00:21 | such as say the water in a swimming pool or
a metallic object sitting next to a table.
| | 00:27 | So basically what it does is it
creates some very realistic highlights and
| | 00:31 | transmission effects.
| | 00:33 | So let's take a look at this basic scene here.
| | 00:35 | I've got a martini glass with a little
bit of martini and an olive in it, and
| | 00:42 | let's go ahead and just render this frame.
| | 00:44 | So as you can see, we've got a
pretty realistic glass going on with this
| | 00:47 | martini glass, some nice refractions,
but we really don't have anything
| | 00:52 | connecting the glass to the table.
| | 00:54 | We need a shadow and maybe also some caustics.
| | 00:57 | So let's go ahead and add in some caustics.
| | 01:01 | I'm going to pop out to my quad view
here and you can see we've got a light
| | 01:06 | right here which is illuminating the
scene, it's called spotLight1, and let's go
| | 01:12 | into the Attribute Editor.
| | 01:14 | Now it's got a Color, it's got an
Intensity, now it does have a quadratic
| | 01:19 | falloff, so it is a fairly realistic looking
light, and if we want we can add some shadows.
| | 01:25 | So let's go ahead and add some Raytrace
Shadows here under the Raytrace Shadow
| | 01:31 | Attributes, and let's go ahead and highlight
our Camera1 Viewport and do a quick render.
| | 01:36 | So when I add in the shadows you can
see I'm getting just a faint, faint shadow
| | 01:41 | from the glass as well as from the
olive in the martini, but I'm not really
| | 01:46 | getting any of that transmission effect
that I will get of a light going through
| | 01:51 | such a glass material.
| | 01:53 | We can fix that by adding caustics.
| | 01:55 | So I'm going to go ahead and reselect
my light and let's go down all the way to
| | 02:00 | Caustic and Global Illumination.
| | 02:02 | Now you might be familiar with this, we
used it in the last lesson, and basically
| | 02:07 | for this light we have to emit photons
just like we did for global illumination.
| | 02:12 | And just like with global illumination
we need to turn it on in the renderer.
| | 02:17 | So I'm going to go into my Render
Settings window, go over to Indirect
| | 02:21 | Lighting, scroll down to Caustics and
turn those on, and we're going to leave
| | 02:26 | those at the default.
| | 02:29 | So with Caustics turned on, let's go
ahead and go into our Camera1 Viewport
| | 02:35 | and do a quick render.
| | 02:36 | Now we're getting a little bit of an
effect but not much, so just like we did
| | 02:40 | before we need to up the level of the photons.
| | 02:44 | The intensity of these photons will
determine the intensity of the effect.
| | 02:49 | Just like with Global Illumination, you
want to balance the intensity of your
| | 02:52 | light against the intensity of your photons.
| | 02:56 | So let's go ahead and bring
this up to really big number.
| | 02:58 | I'm going to bring it up to 100,000,
and let's go ahead and do another render.
| | 03:04 | Now with the light at 100,000 you're
starting to see the Caustic effect.
| | 03:09 | Basically what it's doing is it's
brightening up the area where there is more light.
| | 03:14 | The glass is acting somewhat like a
lens and so it's going to push some of the
| | 03:18 | light into more concentrated areas, and
this is really what we're seeing here.
| | 03:23 | So if we want to get a really strong
effect, we can just keep bumping up
| | 03:27 | our photon intensity.
| | 03:29 | Let's go ahead and bring it up
to 400,000 and do another render.
| | 03:34 | Now this brings it up quite a bit, in
fact this may be just a little bit too much.
| | 03:39 | But as you can see we're getting a
really strong Caustic effect on the floor, and
| | 03:44 | we're also getting light bouncing
around inside the liquid and that's
| | 03:48 | illuminating the olive as well as the stem.
| | 03:51 | We're also getting a little bit of a
highlight here along the lip of the glass.
| | 03:58 | Now this is a little bit too much,
so let's go ahead and back this off.
| | 04:01 | I'm going to bring it back down to say
250,000 rather than 400, and let's go
| | 04:07 | ahead and do one more render.
| | 04:08 | Now that looks like a pretty good
balance between my photon intensity and the
| | 04:14 | intensity of my light.
| | 04:16 | And again, just like with global
illumination, you want to balance your photon
| | 04:21 | energy against the intensity of your light.
| | 04:24 | Now I want to show you one more
thing and that's the number of photons.
| | 04:30 | Now in this case we have 10,000
photons, which is the default.
| | 04:34 | And if you look at the Caustic effect
here you can see it's kind of blotchy,
| | 04:39 | it's not really sharp, and that's
because we don't have enough photons.
| | 04:44 | So let's go ahead and add in some more.
| | 04:47 | I'm going to make this go from 10,000
to 100,000 and let's do one more render,
| | 04:53 | now this may take a little bit longer.
| | 04:55 | Now with 100,000 photons you can see
I'm getting a lot less of that blotchiness
| | 05:02 | and I'm getting a much sharper effect.
| | 05:03 | Now typically I find that caustics
does take a few more photons than
| | 05:10 | global illumination,
| | 05:11 | but what's really nice is that
Maya allows you to set these values
| | 05:16 | independently, so that way you can do
global illumination and caustics and have
| | 05:21 | different numbers of photons for each solution.
| | 05:25 | So those are some of the
basics about how to do caustics.
| | 05:28 | Now remember caustics is not just for
transparent material such as this glass,
| | 05:33 | it can also be used for reflections as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Final OutputBatch rendering| 00:00 | Up until this point we've just been
rendering single frames and that's just
| | 00:04 | using the Render Current Frame, so
if I click this button I get a render.
| | 00:08 | Now if want to get a little bit more
control of the renderer or if we want to
| | 00:13 | render animation, we can do what's
called a Batch Render, so let's show you
| | 00:17 | how to set this up.
| | 00:18 | Now under the Rendering menu set
we have a Render option here, and under
| | 00:24 | this we have Batch Render.
| | 00:26 | Now before I click this we need to set this up.
| | 00:30 | So the first thing we want to do is
tell Maya where we're putting the files, we
| | 00:35 | need to set our project.
| | 00:36 | So I'm going to go File > Set Project
and make sure it's set to the FinalRender
| | 00:43 | folder, go ahead and set that.
| | 00:45 | Now when I know where it's going and
let's go ahead and tell it a little bit
| | 00:50 | more about what we're rendering.
| | 00:51 | So I'm going to go into my Render
Settings window, and I'm going to scroll down
| | 00:56 | here and under File Output we're
going to add in a number of things here.
| | 01:01 | The first one is the File name prefix, in
other words, what's the name of this file?
| | 01:07 | If we don't type in anything it would just
use the name of the scene as the default.
| | 01:13 | If you like that then go ahead and
use that. I'm going to go ahead and just
| | 01:17 | type in the word SUB.
| | 01:19 | Next we need to select the Image format.
| | 01:22 | By default it uses Maya IFF but
we have a lot of other options.
| | 01:28 | For the sake of brevity I'm just
going to go ahead and choose JPEG.
| | 01:31 | Now the next one is the Frame/Animation.
| | 01:35 | So if we want to render a single
frame we can pick these first two options,
| | 01:42 | either the name or the name with the extension.
| | 01:45 | If we go further down you'll see each
one of these has a hash sign, for number
| | 01:52 | and each one of these will render animation.
| | 01:55 | So I'm actually going to pick the last
one which is name_# and then the extension,
| | 02:01 | and when I select that notice how
up here it's telling me exactly what
| | 02:06 | it's going to render.
| | 02:07 | It's going to render from
File name SUB_1 to SUB_10.jpg.
| | 02:14 | Now I'd like to have leading zeros on my
file name and I can do that here in the
| | 02:20 | next option which is Frame padding, so
as I dial this up it gives me leading
| | 02:26 | zeros on the numbers.
| | 02:29 | So now I'm going to do SUB_001 to SUB_010.
| | 02:33 | Now if I want to render more frames I
can scroll down here to Frame Range and
| | 02:38 | type in a new number, so let's go from 1 to 25.
| | 02:41 | And we can also specify in increment,
so if I want to render every other frame
| | 02:46 | or every third frame I can do that here.
| | 02:50 | Now finally, what camera are we
rendering and presets such as the aspect ratio
| | 02:56 | as well as the pixel width and height.
| | 02:58 | Now once I have all of these set
and I've set my project I can render.
| | 03:03 | So all I have to do now is go into
Batch Render, select this option and it will
| | 03:09 | ask me if I want to use all of
available processors or I can specify a specific
| | 03:14 | number of processors to use.
| | 03:16 | Sometimes you'll want to reduce the
number of processors so you can Batch Render
| | 03:20 | in the background while you work.
| | 03:23 | We're going to go ahead and just use
everything we got here and then let's just
| | 03:27 | do a Batch Render and Close.
| | 03:29 | Now once we do that you will see on
the command line here that it's actually
| | 03:34 | rendering, and so as it starts to
render each frame it will tell you.
| | 03:39 | So as you can see it's going through
pretty quickly, each frame, and once it gets
| | 03:44 | through all of these
it'll say Rendering Completed.
| | 03:48 | Now I've created these files in my
project folder and if I want to see them I
| | 03:52 | could go here to View Sequence.
| | 03:56 | And it should bring me to the
\images folder in my project.
| | 04:00 | So all I have to do is select this and
Open and it should show me my render.
| | 04:06 | So those are some of the basics of
how to do batch rendering in Maya.
| | 04:11 | Now you can use this either for individual
frames or for multiple frames as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Backburner| 00:00 | Finally another way to do multiple
renders is to use Backburner which is
| | 00:06 | Maya's network rendering software.
| | 00:08 | Now I'm not going to get into
setting up Backburner, we actually have a
| | 00:13 | course in Maya 2010;
| | 00:15 | it's called Getting Started with
MatchMover, Toxik and Backburner.
| | 00:18 | So the last couple of chapters of that
course will tell you all you need to know
| | 00:25 | about setting up Backburner.
| | 00:27 | But if you want to do multiple
render drops over the network, you can do
| | 00:33 | it using Backburner.
| | 00:34 | So all you have to do to submit a
Backburner job, is go ahead and setup your
| | 00:39 | render settings like you did
before and then create a Backburner job.
| | 00:45 | Now it'll ask you if you want to save
your scene or not. I've already saved
| | 00:50 | the scene so I'm going to go ahead and
ignore this, and then it creates a Backburner job.
| | 00:56 | We can give the job a name, a
description, we can also set a Backburner
| | 01:02 | priority, give it start and end frame
numbers, as well as do you want to choose
| | 01:08 | the Renderer from the scene file or
do we want to explicitly specify what
| | 01:14 | renderer we are using.
| | 01:17 | Then we need to type in the Backburner
Manager Name, and here we type in the
| | 01:22 | Backburner Manager Name which
is the name of the render server.
| | 01:26 | And once you do that, you just
can submit the job and close.
| | 01:30 | So those are some of the basics of
how to do multiple rendering as well
| | 01:35 | as network rendering.
| | 01:37 | Now if you really want to use
Backburner go ahead and watch the Maya 2010
| | 01:41 | course, it will have a lot of good information.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
Conclusion Goodbye| 00:00 | So that's just about it for Maya
Essentials 6 Lights and Rendering.
| | 00:04 | Now I hope you enjoyed the
course and found it valuable.
| | 00:07 | So I'll be seeing you soon and goodbye.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
