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Lighting Techniques and Maya Light Types  13
soft-edged shadows. A focused light, on the other hand, creates parallel rays of light that
create hard-edged shadows. Diffuse lights are often referred to as soft. Focused lights are
often referred to as hard.
Adding Lights to a Scene
When adding lights in Maya, it’s generally best to create one at a time. That is, each light
should be satisfactorily positioned and adjusted before additional lights are created. As
such, it pays to follow the lighting conventions used for cinematic and photographic light-
ing: Each light is assigned a specific task that ultimately determines its position and inten-
sity. The tasks are generally broken down into the following:
Key A key light is the most intense light in the scene. The key light’s source is generally
identifiable (the sun, a lamp, and so on). The key light usually produces the strongest
shadow in the scene. If two light sources are equally intense, as is the case with the glam-
our photography in Figure 1.13, they both may be considered key lights.
Fill A fill light is a secondary light that is less intense than the key. This light “fills in” the
dark areas of a subject and the shadows produced by the key. Fill lights often represent
light from a key that has bounced off a surface, such as a wall.
Rim A rim light is an intense light source that arrives from the back of a subject so that it
strikes the subject along the edge. Rim lights, when used in photography and cinematog-
raphy, are also known as back lights or hair lights. When a rim light is used to fill in the
dark side of a person’s face, it is known as a kicker.
Figure 1.14 is included as an example of lighting in Maya that adds a key, fill, and rim light.
The color and shadow quality of each light is determined by the real-world light source
it’s attempting to replicate. For example, if a Maya directional light is acting as a midday
sun, it should arrive from a high angle, create hard-edged shadows, and carry a color that
is slightly blue. (Light replication is discussed in more detail throughout the remaining
chapters of this book.)
Understanding Maya Light Types
Maya provides six basic light types (see Figure 1.15). This chapter and Chapter 2 use an
area light and volume light, and the remaining lights are utilized throughout the remain-
ing chapters.
The key qualities of each light type follow:
Directional The directional light creates parallel rays. As such, the light has direction but not
position. Hence, the position of the light icon will not affect the light quality. Directional
lights are suitable for emulating the sun or other light sources that are a great distance from
the subject.
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