Maya 2022 Beginner: Lighting and Rendering

Name: Maya 2022 Beginner: Lighting and Rendering
Author: Stephen Steinbach

Render a scene in Arnold with realistic lighting using a camera in Maya 2022.

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Course: On-Demand

Hello, my name is Steven Steinbach and in these lessons we're gonna be using the Arnold Renderer to light and texture in Maya 2022. Okay, so I have this file here and let's just go to the renderer real quick and go to Arnold. And with this, you're gonna have the play button here. And I don't think I have an HCR lighting for this one yet, so let's just do this real quickly. We're gonna go over here to Arnold and we're gonna go to lights. Let's add a Skydome light. Okay. And then we'll go to the attribute editor for that right here. And we're just gonna add a HCR light. So we'll just go to file here and let's go to HCR. And I have this default here and let's hit open. Okay, so right now, every time I rotate or move it actually tries to render again which can slow your computer up. So let's go to render and go to view port. And so we don't get the render here. And we can just go to render current frame and this will actually render the frame. Okay, so I have this render here and it took about 30 to 45 seconds to do this because a render quality is a little bit low. Okay, let's look at the render settings. To do that, come up here to this icon right here. Go to render settings. The first thing I wanna look at is the image size. So if you wanna make a much bigger resolution, you can do that here and look at the presets. So if you wanna do 4k, that's gonna be really big, but I recommend doing that later on. So keeping it smaller is better. So I'm just gonna keep it really small at 640 by 480. and that's gonna speed up the render time and then later I can increase the size. In the render settings, if you go to Arnold Renderer, you can actually change the amount of passes for each one of these and this will drastically increase the time for rendering, but it will actually make it look better, especially with this first one here. If you're doing a depth of field and everything looks grainy, you're gonna have to increase that. So let's start with a depth of field. Depth of field is the ability for the camera to have a focal point, like in this area here, and have else further away or closer even, out of focus. So let's set up a depth of field. We have to figure out how far these objects are in relationship to the camera. All right, let's do that. Go to display, heads up display, object details. And right here you're gonna see that this object is a value, depending on what if you're on metrics or inches but the value is 16 away from the camera. So, we're gonna focus on this one right here and we'll look at the object display. Basically it's from camera, it's 10 units. Okay, let's go to our outliner here and let's click on the perspective. So we're in the perspective view. We're gonna do a camera later. So just for now, we'll hit perspective. So let's come down to Arnold, click on that, correction, scroll down and go to Arnold. And we'll look for this right here. Enable depth of field right there. And let's go ahead and go to the render and go to Arnold and hit play. And now we're gonna get a live renderer. Now I think our focal distance for this object right here was 10. So I'm gonna go to 10 on this. And then I'm gonna go to the aperture size and I'm gonna increase this like that. Now that's pretty out of focus. Let's dial that down a little bit. Okay, I think I'm in the ballpark now. So what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna actually go back to the renderer and go back to the view port. And then let's just actually do a render and give it a little time to render. Okay, that render in about 30 seconds because it's pretty small and the quality is not all that great. So you can see the quality here. So let's increase the quality. First I just want to increase the depth of field, so you can see this a little bit better. And so I'm just gonna increase the aperture size a bit. And let's go to back correction. Let's go back to the Arnold Renderer to see exactly kind of the focal. I think that looks pretty good right there. But you can see it's a little bit grainy right here. So what we're gonna do is go back to the view port here and then let's go back to render settings here. And let's increase these numbers here. So I'm gonna increase this one to six. And this is how many passes reflections. So like there's a ray trace and how many times does it bounce off an object, essentially. The more you increase these, the better your renderer will look, but it'll take longer to render. I'm still rendering kind of small here, so it shouldn't take too long. Let's try that. And hit render. Okay, so this render took about two minutes to render. And what I wanna do next is, actually let's go back to the render settings here. Click common and we'll come down here to the size. And let's do a 2k and let's try that. And we'll render again. Okay, so you can see this is actually in real time how slow this is going, so it's looking really good. Okay, with these render settings at 2k with the quality up, this took 25 minutes to render. So it's important to keep your render settings quality low when you're working. And then later when you're done then you increase the render settings. Thanks for watching.

Beginner Provider : Stephen Steinbach 5 Lessons · 35m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

In these lessons, you will explore Arnold render settings to improve render quality. You will learn about different types of lights in Arnold and how to control them using light linking. Using various types of lights, you will light and render the lamp.

In Arnold render settings, you will learn how to improve the quality of your renders by adjusting the passes and output render size, as well as optimization for render times. In addition, you will learn how to create draft renders during production. You will also explore traditional 3-point lighting for production, including key light, fill light, and back light. You will discover different types of lights in Arnold, including area lights and volumetric lighting. Depth-of-field for rendering will also be explored. In application, you will set up a light rig for the lamp, including a volumetric light for the lamp bulb. Using light linking, you will create a key light and a rim light. Additionally, you will add a camera and adjust the camera settings for a high-quality render pass.

What You'll Learn

Create and modify different types of lights in Arnold
Control lights using light linking to set up key and rim lights
Apply a volumetric light to a scene, including the lamp bulb
Set up a camera and adjust settings for a high-quality render pass
Adjust Arnold render settings, passes, and output size to improve render quality
Light and render the lamp using traditional 3-point lighting

Key Takeaways

Arnold render settings can be adjusted, including passes and output render size, to improve render quality and optimize render times.
Light linking lets you control which lights affect which objects, enabling separate key and rim lights.
Traditional 3-point lighting for production consists of a key light, a fill light, and a back light.
Arnold offers different light types, including area lights and volumetric lighting.
Depth-of-field and camera settings can be configured to produce a high-quality render pass.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I learn to do with lights in this course?

You will learn to create and modify different types of lights in Arnold, control them using light linking, apply a volumetric light to a scene, and set up traditional 3-point lighting with key, fill, and back lights.

What practical project does this course include?

You will light and render a lamp: setting up a light rig that includes a volumetric light for the lamp bulb, creating a key light and a rim light with light linking, and adding a camera adjusted for a high-quality render pass.

Does the course cover render quality and render times?

Yes. In Arnold render settings you learn to improve render quality by adjusting passes and output render size, optimize render times, and create draft renders during production.

What lessons are included in this course?

The lessons are Arnold Render Settings, Basics of Maya Lights, Light Linking, Lighting the Lamp, and Rendering the Lamp.

What software and skills does this course relate to?

It relates to Autodesk Maya, Corona Renderer, Pixar RenderMan, Rendering, RenderMan Shading Language, and the Autodesk Maya Certified User skill set.