hello every one!!
And welcome to dome based lighting, in this tutorial I will show you how to light up your scene using dome based lighting with Maya 8.0, I love this technique because its very fast in rendering and you can save allot of your time using this method.
so lets get started what I mean, launch Maya and or if you already running make sure you have new fresh scene.
1-well in this case I will render my mini (Fiat_Punto) car which is illustrating below, you can use any object regardless.
2-now go to top view port and created a plane with the height and width of 50X50 like the image below.
3-still in the top view port create a sphere with the radius of 25 and subdivisions of 40X40 as in the image showing below.
4-turn your view port to side and then right click on the sphere then from pop up menus choose (Face) like the image indicating right below.
5-select the half faces and then hit delete as like the image below.
6-now set your scene and move your object where you think its looking nice and neat, here is mine in the picture illustrating below.
7-since you have setup your view ports and now its time to book mark our scene to move easily back and forth while working on materials, click on view pull down menu from your active view port and then (Bookmarks>>Edit Bookmarks, as like the image below.
8-from the window hit (New Bookmark) button this will Bookmark your active view port, now when ever you like to have the same position on the view port you will just bring it by clicking on view pull down menu and then your camera name, like the picture illustrating below.
9-now zoom out to see the entire sphere then we will add material, like image.
10-ok go to (Window>>Rendering Editors>>Hypershade) like the picture indicating down.
11-the hypershade window come up, from the materials list click on the (Lambert) material this will appear on your work area inside the hypershade, first select the sphere which is representing the dome and then on the hypershade right click in (Lambert) material then from pop menus choose (Assign material to selection) this will apply the material to sphere, like the image down.
Note: you can also apply your materials by middle mouse button and drag to desired objects.
12-still in hypershade window double click on (Lambert) Material to bring the (Attributes Editor), as in the picture showing below.
13-on the Attributes editor click on the small rectangular button in the front (Ambient Color) like the picture.
14-the render node will appear from the list choose file, like the image below.
15-now from file Attributes click on the small folder to find out your HDRI images like he picture below.
16-now find out your HDRI images from your hard drive or if you don''t have the HDRI images I suggest you go to Paul Debevec website to download your HDRI images http://www.debevec.org, in this case I have few HDRI images in my hard drive so I will use them, on the images below.
17-your file Attributes should look like mine but the HDRI image will be different according to your HDRI image.
18-its time to go back to the original view which we have bookmarked our scene, like the image below.
19-now the time is to setup render attributes to get realistic result, ok go to (Window>>Rendering Editors>>Render Settings) as the picture is illustrating below.
20-from the (Render Setting) Dialogue box change the (Render Using) to (Mental Ray), scroll down to bottom from (Render Options) uncheck the (Enable Default Lighting) like the image below.
21-last but not least click on mental ray tab scroll down a just bit to find out (Final Gather) tab, expand it then use the settings I did below,
Note: the values you are seeing on the (Min radius) and in the (Max radius) set to (0.5) and (5.0), why I put these values? I would like to share something with you I hope this will make your rendering pretty fast, always make sure you have specific dimensions of your objects, like in this case I have the plane of 50X50 which is repressing the ground, so I divided the value of 50 to 10 and I got the result of 5, like this (50/10=5) so I put the value of 5 on the (Max Radius) and then I again divided the value of 5 to 10 and got the result of (0.5) like this (5/10=0.5) and put it in (Min Radius) by doing this technique you can improve your rendering result plus you will reduce the rendering time pretty much.
these are the settings.
so we are finished and the time is for render our scene, this is few of my renders below.
Note: the lighting of your scene is depending on your HDRI images, so here I rendered with different HDRI images which is obviously effected on the scene lighting.
Final Render-1
Final Render-2
Final Render-3
Final Render-4
So guys this was the conclusion of tutorial I hope you have learned something from this, there is allot of settings which I recommend you to do it by your own self just play around the settings I am pretty sure you will find something new.
Till next tutorial permit me have a nice time and good luck!!
Regards Aziz Khan