Texture or Light First???

[BillSpradlin]

Typically lighting is the last thing to do to a scene before rendering, so most of the time you'll want to do that last. That way all the animation is done, textures and shading is finalized and you can set up your lights because they play an important role in all the above.

[Panupat]

Either way. At the end you'll have to test them together anyway.

I usually keep the model file clean. And then reference it into 2 files. The texturing file I work on textures. The lighting file I assign white materials to everything. And at the end I refence my texture and my lights together.

[nofxsapunk]

ok. i am kind of confused what do you mean you reference your texture files from your lighting files?

[mimo8]

File referencing (from the maya help F1)

File referencing is a very powerful tool to help organize complex scenes and manage a production process. Within a Maya scene, you can create references to other Maya scenes and objects within those scenes. These referenced files can be the end product of an entirely separate production process; for example, one group of animators creates and works on the mesh file, which is referenced into the rig file, which is referenced into the shot file.


A technical director create a rigged character used for all the shots; that master rig is then used for various animations. Any issues with the rigged character can then be fixed once, rather than having to re-import the model into many different scenes.

[Zapa]

It's more typical to light your scene first and then apply your textures more often in medium or complex scenes. Apply a gray material to see how light affect objetcts and when you are happy with light, then put the real materials. In that way you can tweak materials separately even fake some ilumination through material. Always is better going from the whole scene to the individual objects.





:thumbsup:
Sorry for my english

[Randolph]

Zapa is right. It's better to test your (rough) lighting first before texturing every detail, for a fully textured scene will extend the time for testing. If you're going to tweak the light colours for the image mode, you'll have your scene textured first of course.

[DaddyMack]

I'm just about finished my lighting roughout for FU bears and am about to go into texturing. I find lighting on a non textrued environment first to get the right feel is less distracting.

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