Hi, I’m currently working on this project and I’m trying to light up this scene properly however i’m facing some problems… I have 1 area light above and 1 on the left and right, and 1 point light above but I still think that i’m not lighting this scene correctly.
Search google for “3 point lighting”… that would be your very basic lighting setup often used for stuff like that you got there.
One thing that I think is missing are reflections, without reflections and highlights things tend to look dull. Lighting could be a bit less pronounced, so you’re still able to add contrasts and dynamics in photoshop which will give you more control.
I’m attaching this image I’ve once done to show you what I mean in regards to reflections (not meant to promote myself, just an example of rendered electronics…)
I agree with pokoy. Highlights and reflections are extremely important, especially in studio renders. You’ll also want to make sure all your sharp edges have bevels, even if just a little bit so they can catch highlights.
And so how am I supposed to add the reflections/highlight in? And how am I supposed to do the reflection on photoshop? As for this current scene I used final gathering, caustics, raytracing for render setting and also shadow ray under the material attributes to create some reflections and hoping that point light could actually give a little bit of reflections/shadows on the motherboard itself however the outcome is not what I wanted… so is there any other options I can do or apply to make it even more photo realistic?
Use an HDR for reflections. There is just not enough in your environment to get better reflections.
Regards,
Mike
You could try one from Digital Tutors:
http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?pid=3470
Not sure if it will be what you need but I used a lot of their stuff in the past and it was very helpful.
There are also HDR spherical images available for free on the net, I bet you find some if you search with google.
Besides of the paid tutorials, there are tons of different forums with tons of similar questions, so it might be also worth looking for them and getting a picture how it works, what it’s for etc.
I’d say, give it a go and play around, that’s a good way to learn the basics of how things work. It might take you a bit of time, but in the end you’ll learn a lot by trial and error. And keep us updated!
Oh by the way what is the material that you used for the example that you had shown me earlier on? I tried to use Mia_material but I just can’t seem to get the same texture as yours…
It’s not mentaly ray nor maya, but I’m 100% sure you can get the same out of it.
What I usually do is to add very subtle noise as a bump map, and, like kanooshka already mentioned, I make sure the objects don’t have hard edges and are chamfered so they catch reflections. This adds very much to the realism and is something we see on every object in real life. I beliefe mental ray does edge softening/chamfering on render time but I’m not sure what kind of shader you need in maya to enable it.
Also, instead of using highlights I always use reflections. Highlights are supposed to fake reflections and you actually can spot the difference. When using reflections, make sure they’re in fresnel mode because that’s the physically correct way.
I’m really sorry that I can’t give you any pointers on mental ray in maya but I’m quite sure you’ll find enough information out there.
You probably know this forum:
http://www.mymentalray.com/forum/
I’m sure you’ll get some advise there as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYLTfG5N78M&feature=player_embedded
(Sorry for the compression it looks slightly distorted)
This is the first version of the completed animation that I did and for the lighting I tried to use HDRI images and the outcome for the lighting was better than the previous time however I feel that the metal chips are not metallic enough or maybe I still need to push more on the lighting aspect to make it even more realistic?
Cool!
For an absolutely photoreal look you’d also need to give attention to your models. A lot of the geometry in the animation is blocky, with sharp edges and simple materials. As mentioned before, edges aren’t sharp in reality in most cases and I’m sure it would look better if yours weren’t either (there are options in mental ray to simulate chamfered edges with shaders).
I agree on the metallic objects - they need to reflect more.
That said, what you’re trying to achieve is difficult, you have many objects with different materials and improving the geometry alone will take a while. Additionally, lighting and rendering technical stuff in a way so it looks good and appealing isn’t the easiest thing, for that you’d need to give a lot of attention to details.
Kyron: No, in the example I’ve posted above I used self-illuminating planes for reflections.
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