Need help lighting

[jeremybirn]

You shouldn't need lights on your sky dome. Use a "surface shader" on it with the color mapped to the out color, and lighting won't matter. Alternately you could increase the Ambient Color of some other kinds of shaders to pure white and it would have the same effect.

-jeremy

[NITRO1250]

What about HDRIs? I have done some experimentation with MentalRay and Turtle 3.1, but Turtle doesn't like my texture layout, but Meytal Ray does... if that makes sence! Anyway, I want the lighting to look decent, but I would like my nice skydome who's textures took me along time to make actually show up. Thanks!

[jeremybirn]

Especially for an environment sphere with HDRI maps, you don't want it to depend on lighting, it should be more like a light source itself.

-jeremy

[NITRO1250]

Ok, I just wanted to bathe the scene in some abstract lighting to make it look better than the Maya default light. So, I would just go and make, say and omni light up near the top of the skydome or would I just go and do an HDRI with mental ray? I am swaying more torward the HDRI... but you have been doing this more than I have :) Your opinion matters :)

[jeremybirn]

Oh, I thought from your first post the light was coming from the dome, as with Final Gather in Mental Ray.

If you're in the Maya Render then there's no light from a dome, you have to add lights to light the subject. But still, the dome should be a surface shader or incandescent so it doesn't need lights to appear in the background or in raytraced reflections.

-j

[NITRO1250]

No, there is no light in the scene right now other than the default light... if you can count that as a light source. I was just looking for a way to light the scene effectively without cranking up my render time. Would an HDRI be the way to go, or what would I do to get that ambient light all over everything that I have commonly seen. Sorry if I seem like a noob, but lighting was gone over very lightly in class and I am best at modeling and texturing and expression-based animations, not lighting (at this point because of the brevity it was gone over in class).

I have an Intel Quad Core CPU oc'ed to 3.06ghz with the fastest motherboard and graphics card (I know that rendering is for the CPU only) and I don't want this simple animation to take longer than a day or 2 on 640x480 resolution. It is due for finals on April 30th. Thanks!

[MinaRagaie]

@NITRO1250

I've been trying to understand wt you're trying to do...
It would be much easier if u posted an image of the wireframe of your scene, just to make it easier for others to help u...
and 1 more thing...
how many frames do u need to render... that's an important factor you forgot to mention...
U did mention the specs of your pc and that u can afford only 2 days for rendring..
knowing the number of frames will help u determine if the rendertime your getting from yor test frames is sutiable for u or not.
and it will help others Help u :)
so...
waiting for your post... :)
Cheers
Mina

[NITRO1250]

Thanks.

I am having domain issues with my hosting site currently so I can't exactly post a screenshot.

3 scenes:

Lava valley with morphing (expression based) torus as the camera (on motion path) flys around the torus.

Expression based deformation sine waved 10,400 poly plots duplicated into a square section of 90 total (not able to be played in real time) which simulates abstract rainfall. Particle emitters are under each of the 90 plots which emit blue particles upward to a newton field. Above everything is 2 simple particle effects which create a warping of particles in the shape of a "+" sign with loops. The camera pans around the "water" drops coming up into the cloud above and then is trapped into the pull and sucked upward into the mass (fade to black).

Last scene is the fairy forest, or the Growth of the Old Oak. A camera chases some particles through the forest until it comes to an oak tree which is shapeshifting using expressions with the "frame" as a variable to increase slowly. The particles fly around the tree as it tweaks more intensly. The camera then moves from its hiding spot to join in, but is seen by the fairys and swarmed (fade to black).

Simple, but alot of work for this being my 2nd course in Maya. This is my first animation in Maya with actual lighting. I am primarily a modeler and texturer, but not so much a lighter/animator. That is why I am asking about the lighting.

Frame count: 1st short, only like 1500 frames @ realtime; 2nd, don't know, probably about 1500; 3rd, more complicated, perhaps like 2000-2500 frames.

I have the first one motion curved already with the camera to my satisfaction, I just have the last 2 to do.


System: Intel Quad Core @ 3.06ghz; ASUS Stryker Extreme mobo; 1GB GSkill DDR800 RAM; eVGA GeForce 8800 GTS @ 640MB; 1TB HDD space; etc etc.

[NITRO1250]

Tried to take some screenshots, but they were too big file-wise. I guess you will have to use your imagination.. sorry.

[MinaRagaie]

woooooo wooooooo,
U seem hell lot experinced than me in expression based animation (who isn't anyway :) )
U could try photobucket.com for image hosting... your scene dsen't sound simple at all... at lest for my imagination :)... anyway....
it seems you want to render 5500 frame (at most) or 5000 frame (at least) in 2 days on one computer, and some of your scenes seem to have hi poly count as well !!!
sorry to say that....
but my first advice is you have to revise that decision...
cause it simply means that in 48 hours of render time you need to render 5500 frame...
i.e 114 frame each hour
i.e 30 secs per frame (a little less than that actually)
I don't mean to b rude...
but I had to make that clear enough .... (sorry again if it did sound rude)

now with 1GB of ram and a 30 sec per frame... let's plan a stratgie...
-Do a playblast of your animations and edit them before you start rendering...
-be sure to sync that with the audio correctly so you won't need to render one extra frame you don't need
-I don't recommend using anything like FG/GI or even AO they simply won't fit into render time
-I suggest u turn off raytracing (I think no one turns it off anymore but with your render time and poly count... old school wins)
-use depth mapped shadows only (even bake them into disk based maps if possiable, so they won't recalculate on each frame.. and mayb use light linking for shadows from moving objects)
-use the least number of shadow casting lights possiable.. (2 mayb)
-if reflection is a must... use enviroment maps (u propably won't have other options if you're turning off raytracing)
-I haven't any experince of real value on lighting particles.. so I can't advise you about that... but check the hardware render types I hear they r alot faster to render... but thatwould mean you'll have to composite them later... so leave time for the compositing..
-if u need to use software rendered particles (plz don't) fake the shadows (if nessecery), u can't afford casting shadows for every particle.
-negative lights can b of help in faking shadows, and you can use it as an artistic tool to add variation in the lighting (or whatever artistic purpose u want)
-for the forest scene... Don't use Fur... I can't advise u about paint effects either... I didn't use it before... but if a texture will do that should be your first choice... may be model some grass and make instances and fake their shadows
-
-...um wt else...
-oh,...
-Work Hard that's hell lot of work to do

hope things turn out fine
let me know wt happens...

-Mina

[NITRO1250]

Um... wow... That is alot. I forgot to mention that with just the default maya lights enabled, my system will render out at high quality at 640x480 1 frame every 1-2 seconds in a batch render. For simplicity sake since most of the camera movement will be around a scene, I am deciding upon rendering with with maya default light since I put alot of work in the expression based animation (tons of math of my own creation) and alot of work in the envornment skydome. I tried lighting the scene, but I am still a very new beginner at lighting. I am primarily good at modeling and texturing for Virtual Reality real-time enviornments, but I have gone into high poly modeling.

I talked with my teacher and rendering out with the maya default light will be ok. He knows that I put a TON of math based animation in my scene already.

As far as music goes, I haven't composed it yet (yes, I do that too... to a degree) and thusly I am going to mold the music around the final result in the animation, not the other way around.

I will take to note some of your suggestions to finetune my project. Thanks again for your help!

[MinaRagaie]

If it's ok with your teacher...
then..... that's a big relieve (even for me :eek: )
but as a side note apart from your project...
using the Maya default light... is strictly considred "Not Lighting the scene"
but if I have to choose between that and lighting the scene quickly (wich might look worse)
I'd choose not to light the scene at all and stick with the default light (wich is by the way meant for preview only while your still working on modleing and other stuff)
Besides tight deadline assiegnments is not where u get to do great stuff...
it's actually your personal projects where u experiment and learn more...
(however it seems u did great stuff with the expression based animation)
Not lighting the scene in my openion makes a bold statment "I'm Showing other skills than rendering"
but textures in this case won't look good (texture is one of the components of rendering)
it might make your work look like an unfinished project...
but don't act upon my words see wt your teacher prefers...
about the scene rendering in 2 secs...
well trust me 30 secs is very tight rendertime for such a scene if you were to light it professionaly (in even the most fast rendering old school methods)

wishing u luck

-Mina

[NITRO1250]

Thanks! I appreciate it!

[MinaRagaie]

anytime :)

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