In the Maya lesson today it was all focused on lighting, a pretty significant part of what we’re looking into, plus it does help that Maya has a whole dedicated section about it. As it’s probably known, lighting can mean a lot to a model, in terms of how it looks and how it can be presented. Not to mention it’s hard to wrap the head around since there’s so many types of lighting to use it’s not exactly easy to understand.
All the lights serve different purposes, so it’s generally a matter of learning which lights to use in which situations. Some lights are basic enough, like directional light shining in a certain direction, spotlights simulating the effect of one, point lights just covering a general area in light, those are basic enough. Then ambient light and area light are brought in, which handles even larger parts at once, then it starts getting complex, not something I’ve been confident enough with yet.
Shadows also play a big part, though thankfully they’re not nearly as vast or complex. It more boils down to depth map and ray traced, both similar but also different in big ways. Mainly, depth map is the easier one to use, but ray tracing is the better looking one, so it all comes to which is best for which situation. Whilst I haven’t got anything to show for it right now, in the coming blog posts I should have a render made in Maya’s software that uses both my model and the lighting system, so that should come.
Self Proclaimed King 