Datasheet

18 Chapter 1: Texturing and Lighting a Product, Part 1

While adjusting the specular quality of each material, check each of the Reﬂ ectivity

attributes. For any material that need not be reﬂ ective, set the Reﬂ ectivity attribute to 0.

When raytracing is activated later in this chapter, any material with a nonzero Reﬂ ectivity

value will automatically reﬂ ect within the scene.

Adding Depth Map Shadows

After the Key light is in place, you can create shadows. Follow these steps:

1. With the Key light’s Attribute Editor tab open, expand the Shadows section. Select the

Use Depth Map Shadows check box.

2. Render a test. The shadow edge will appear jagged. This is partially because of the

low-quality render settings. Choose Window



Rendering Editors



Render Settings.

In the Maya Software tab of the Render Settings window, change the Quality menu

to Production Quality.

3. Render a test. The overall quality of the render is improved. However, the shadow

remains jagged. To remedy this, you can raise the light’s Resolution value. For example,

in Figure 1.19, the Resolution is set to 2048.

The higher the Resolution value, the smoother the depth map shadow edge will

appear. However, Resolution alone will not affect the hardness or softness of the shadow

edge. You can soften the shadow by adjusting the Filter Size attribute. When adjusting the

Resolution and Filter Size, you can use the following rules of thumb:

For a hard-edged shadow, choose a • high Resolution value and a low Filter Size value.

For a soft-edged shadow, choose a • low Resolution value and a high Filter Size value.

The Filter Size attribute blurs the shadow equally along its edge. The Resolution attribute

determines the pixel size of a depth map bitmap written to disc. The bitmap is the view of

the shadowing light written as a Z-depth buffer. With a Z-depth buffer, the distance from

Figure 1.18

Eccentricity, Specu-

lar Roll Off, and

Specular Color

attributes of materi-

als are adjusted. A

sample file is saved

as headphones

-step3.ma on the

DVD. For a color ver-

sion of the figure,

see the color insert.

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