Basic Lighting Concepts
It’s no surprise that Maya’s lighting resembles actual direct-lighting techniques used in photography and filmmaking. Lights of various types are placed around a scene to illuminate the subjects as they would for a still life or a portrait. Your scene and what’s in it dictate, to some degree at least, which lights you put where. The type of lights you use depends on the desired effect.
At the basic level, you want your lights to illuminate the scene. Without lights, your cameras have nothing to capture. Although it seems rather easy to throw your lights in, turn them all on, and render a scene, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Lighting is the backbone of CG. Although it’s technically easy to insert and configure ...
Get Introducing Maya® 2011 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
