Week 14 - Lighting and Final Renders

During the Project, i was told that Lighting would be the easiest part of the overall project, and for the most part that was true. Having a father who is a professional photographer, as well as having an interest in cinematography, i knew the fundamentals of lighting a scene. Such as the 3 point light (area, fill and back lightings) as well as what kind of strengths they need to be relative to one another (i went for 100% for Area, fill was at 60% and back lighting was at 35%)
However, i had real trouble getting the renders to actually render the light correctly. Many of my renders in the Arnold Render view came out near pitch black and would only just show the model when i bumped up the exposure.
This quite annoyed me for a while, as the renders were taking some 5 minutes at a time, only for them, to come out in black. I eventually discovered the Arnold Render View Preview which gave a live preview of what the render view would look like, which did help speed the process up dramatically, I need to be more aware of the functionality of the Arnold Renderer, as taking as much time as i did to get the lighting to begin to work, i would receive an earful in the Workplace.

Credit: Frameforest.com



My lighting rig in maya 2017

What my original Lighting rig looked like in the maya window


Here was my first attempt at rendering, as you can see it is far too dark, this is with my lights even having a high intensity and the ramped up exposure, to try and solve this problem i moved the lights closer.

As you can see, when i moved the lights closer, the Character now became over saturated and washed put, which just gives an amuater-ish look to it and not something i want my final renders to reflect.

So i moved the lights back and maxed out the intensities, which in the regular maya window washed everything out so much that the window was just white. but in the arnold viewer was again barely visible.

I noticed that the blinn material was doing a better job at picking up the light, but this did not solve my problem i had. I then discovered in the hypershader that the Arnold renderer had its own set of lights, designed to specifically work in the Arnold renderer. So i decided to replace my regular spots lights that i was using with Arnold Area Plane Lights, and i immediately noticed a huge difference.  It was honestly frustrating to find these lights after the amount of time and effort i went through to try and get the other lights to work. It is clear to me that i need to continue to practice with maya in the months and years to come, as it is clear, while i have made massive steps forward, i am still but a beginner at Maya in the grand scheme of things and have many areas to still learn about.


Here are two test renders i did with The new Arnold lights, as you can see, the lights make a huge difference, not only is the character no longer left in darkness, but the blue background is also visible. I will make a few more tweaks to the intensities of the lights before doing my final renders. I am really happy with how this model has come together. i know i have said this many times.  But i have grown very attached to this character, given her a name, a backstory and a personality. And by doing that, this module had become very personal to me, and has driven me not only to get the work done, but also to make sure the quality of the project is what the character deserves.

Arnold Lighting Tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gVku0KLthw

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