Maya: Rendering Interiors

Learn how to replicate three unique lighting setups for a fully detailed modern office lobby in Maya, starting with direct daylight.

Light has more qualities than you think: temperature, brightness, and diffusion, just to name three. When it comes to replicating it in the digital world, you need strong materials and lighting tools, and Maya offers both. Learn how to replicate three unique lighting setups in interior scenes, starting with direct daylight. After you produce the daylight renderings, Adam Crespi shows how to light the scene with interior lights suitable for night or dusk shots, and then use sky portals to create soft indirect light that blooms through the windows. He follows up with rendering specular, mask, and ambient occlusion passes, and then shows how to composite the renderings in both Adobe After Effects and The Foundry Nuke.

Introduction

• Welcome
• What you should know before watching this course
• Using the exercise files

1. Creating and Applying Materials

• Assessing the design possibilities
• Changing the rendering engine
• Creating basic paint sheens and colors
• Adding luster to wood
• Polishing metals and metallic finishes
• Making glass sparkle and shine

2. Lighting in Direct Sunlight

• Creating the daylight system and positioning the sun
• Softening the sun and shadows
• Adjusting the photographic exposure for stylized imagery
• Using Global Illumination and Final Gathering to change the lighting

3. Lighting Night and Dusk Shots

• Casting light from interior fixtures
• Lighting from pendant fixtures
• Creating a low sun with a directional light
• Adjusting luminous and lit surfaces
• Fine-tuning photographic exposure for dusk

4. Lighting with Sky Portals

• Adding the Physical Sky shader and photographic exposure
• Creating sky portals by the direction of light
• Testing the luminance and balancing the lighting
• Adding interior lighting accents

5. Lighting and Rendering Additional Passes for Compositing

• Creating an ambient-occlusion override material
• Creating an ambient-occlusion rendering pass with custom materials
• Lighting a custom specular pass for sparkle
• Setting up custom masks for compositing flexibility
• Fine-tuning the final gather and lighting
• Caching the final gather and rendering the image passes

6. Compositing and Post Effects in Nuke

• Rendering a depth pass in Maya software
• Importing the imagery and arranging the layers
• Setting blending modes and adjusting opacity
• Fine-tuning color using rendered masks
• Adding depth of field
• Putting on the final polish with glinting highlights and glow
• Rendering the composited images

7. Compositing and Post Effects in After Effects

• Importing the imagery and arranging the layers
• Setting blending modes and adjusting opacity
• Fine-tuning color using rendered masks
• Adding depth of field
• Putting on the final polish with glinting highlights and glow
• Rendering the composited animation
• Viewing the final rendered animation

Conclusion

• Next steps