It will catch reflected light from the screen and illuminate the sphere from the front. Later the lights will be converted to Mental Ray area lights to create softer shadows.Īs the sphere subject is not receiving any direct illumination a reflector board has been added. Any spill from the lights is being stopped by the black boards. Their light will bounce of the white wall, to create a soft large light, illuminating the back of the ball. Two spot-lights have been added either side of the negative fill and are pointed at the wall. To suck the light from the scene, a Lambert material was again used, with both the color and diffuse set to black. These are being used like large barn doors, stopping the light from spilling. A Phong shader was used to give it a highly polished, chrome like appearance, so as to be able to better study how the light rays are being traced. Next is the sphere, which will be used as a prop to study the effects of illumination. A basic Lambert material was used with color set to an off white (very light grey) and diffuse increased above 0.8. Based on the sketch, the first material will be a white, matte background that has no shine. Lambert has no specular highlights, Blinn has soft specular highlights, Phong has hard specular highlights and Anisotropic has irregular highlights. Maya has four basic shaders to choose from: Lambert, Blinn, Phong or Anisotropic. The basic idea from the sketch was modelled and setup. I have included lighting placement and some material information. As they say, 'If you don't know where you're going, you probably won't get there.' Here is a quick set-up sketch I did in Photoshop. The first thing I always like to do is develop some sort of plan.
#MENTAL RAY FOR MAYA 2022 MANUAL#
It is based on notes from the web, Maya's Help manual and good-old fashion experimentation. The following is a guide for setting up Global Illumination and Final Gather using Mental Ray for Maya. Now, for the first time in 3d, lighting techniques used by photographers and filmmakers can be applied to computer graphics. Mental Ray offers a Global Illumination and Final Gather solution, which when combined, simulates the physics of real world lighting effects. Currently, one of the best ways of achieving photo-realistic imagery is to render using Mental Ray for Maya.