2010

Table Of Contents
Lighting and camera techniques are one of the most crucial aspects to consider
when working with artificial characters and objects. The more realistic the
lighting and shading appear, the more convincing the scene will appear to
the viewer.
A prerequisite to creating effective 3D rendered animation is to study the
lighting and camera effects used in live-action film. Your goal is to create the
desired scene ambience while keeping the lights and camera view as
unobtrusive as possible.
In Maya, it is possible to simulate both realistic and unrealistic lighting and
shadow effects for your final images and animations. In this lesson, you learn
basic techniques for working with lights, shadows, and cameras. In this lesson,
you learn how to:
Create and position various types of lights in the scene.
Edit the attributes of lights and experiment with their effect in the scene.
Cast shadows on your surfaces using the lights and objects in the scene.
Create and animate an additional camera in the scene.
Open the scene for the lesson
In this lesson, you work with a scene we created for your use. In the first steps,
you open the scene, create a directional light, and compare the directional
lights effect to the scenes default lighting.
1 Make sure youve done the steps in
Preparing for the lessons on page 439.
2 Open the scene file named Lights.mb.
This file can be found in the GettingStarted directory that you set as
your Maya project:
GettingStarted\Rendering\Lights.mb
The scene contains a room with two walls and a floor. Sitting in the room
is a drafting table and lamp, grouped under the name tableGroup. All
objects have a default gray shading.
Open the scene for the lesson | 485