Lighting and Rendering

By now, you will have worked through the various types of modelling, the UV mapping process and texturing. Now, you will add  lighting and rendering to your digital repertoire. Learning how to work with lighting, can make scenes look more realistic by simulating natural light sources, shadows, and reflections, helping to create a believable environment. 

As with the modelling and texturing topics, some of the subtopics in lighting and rendering are paired with corresponding subtopics outlining integral system steps and videos that you will need for your learning tasks and assessment preparation.

The main subtopics you will explore in Texture include: 

• Lighting and Rendering
• Create and Set Up an Image-Based Light Process
• Light Types
• Recreate a Studio Lighting Setup Process
• Direct Lighting Workflow
• Light Linking Process
• Digital Sculpting
• Mudbox- Basic Sculpting Process
• Texture 2.0

Learning tasks that will support your skills in digital production have been outlined in the following table. 

Well done! You have made it through modelling and texturing, and now we will explore lighting and rendering.

Before you render a model or shot in Maya, you must go through lighting that shot or model. The lighting process involves creating and setting up lights of various types around your shot or model to enhance the mood or feeling of a shot or model. If done well, your lighting will improve the look of your final scene.

You can compare lighting a scene or model in 3D to how a photographer lights a model, or a Gaffer lights a set in a film or TV show. Many fundamental concepts are the same from the physical to the digital world, with the added benefit of far more flexibility for the digital lighting artist.

The Digital lighting artist can create an infinite number of lights. 3D lights can be placed in almost any position in a scene without regard to safety or physical limitations. 3D lights can be linked to particular objects in your scene to only illuminate that object. You can choose whether lights create shadows or not; you can also decide what type of light a light can make, whether specular light only, ambient light only or both. Lights can be any colour in the spectrum or even suck the light out of an area.

In short, the area of lighting in 3D is a rabbit hole that only gets deeper the more you learn. In this course, we can only scratch the surface of what lighting can accomplish; it will be up to you to dive deeper and further your understanding of the initial concepts discussed.

Indirect Lighting Workflow - Image based Lighting

Image based lighting (IBL) is used mainly in Indirect and Physically Based Rendering (PBR) workflows. PBR rendering is used in the games industry to render games in real time as a player is interacting with a game. Because rendering lights, textures and materials is so intensive on computer or console hardware there was a need to develop a system to light an environment with as few lights as possible. This is because for each light that is added to a scene or environment, it also adds to the calculation load the renderer must process resulting in longer render times.

Another main use for Image based lighting is the area of visual effects for film and TV, were any computer-generated elements need to match the lighting conditions or a set exactly for them to be seamlessly composited into a shot. To capture the lighting conditions on set at the time of filming the VFX team will use a chrome and matte grey sphere to capture reference of lighting and reflection conditions, and then use a special 360-degree camera to capture a high dynamic range image (HDRI) of the light information on set. Then the reference and HDRI can be used by the production and post-production artists to exactly match lighting conditions on set.

There are many resources for IB lighting online, you can download HDRI files from https://polyhaven.com/hdris all images and assets on polyhaven are free to download and use in your work.

HDRI images are downloaded as an .HDR or .EXR file depending on the program you want to use them in, Maya can recognise either.

There are also several HDR Images that are prepackaged with Maya.

In the following example of an HDRI image the 360-degree image is the HDRI file that will be used as an image based light source. The rendered spheres below are examples of the lighting, shadows, and reflections this HDRI will produce.

Another benefit of using an Image based light to light a model or shot, is that they are relatively quick and easy to create and set up compared to the standard direct lighting workflow of lighting a shot.

Setting up and creating image based light

You will need to set and render your image based light using Arnold.

This subtopic will take you through the process of creating and setting up an image based light. You can return to this subtopic at any time, via the navigation menu by clicking the ‘create and set up an image based light’ subtopic.

How to create and set up an image based light

Follow the steps below to guide you through creating and setting up an image based light.

• Go to the Rendering Menu set by choosing “Rendering” from the pull-down menu at the top of the screen.

This will give you access to the rendering specific menus for Maya.

• Create an Arnold, Skydome light by going to: Arnold>Lights>Skydome Light

A sphere will appear around your scene in the viewport. Currently the Skydome is emitting white light because the colour of the light is set to pure white by default.

To connect an HDRI to the Skydome follow the steps below.

• go to the attribute editor (Ensure you have the Skydome selected to access its attributes).

Connect a file node to the colour attribute

• click on the checker box button on the right and from the picker
• select “File”.

Using the attribute editor

• use the folder icon next to the image attribute and navigate to an HDRI file
• downloaded HDRI files should be saved in the source images folder of your Maya project filing system.

To render the scene

• open the render settings window
• select the Arnold renderer from the dropdown list.

• Click on the render button.

As you are rendering using Arnold, you may find that you need to tweak your Maya materials so that they render as you initially intended. Materials will behave and render differently when rendering with different render engines. Native Maya materials will look far shinier and more reflective than you initially intended when rendering using the Arnold render engine.

After some material tweaks, the following is an example of the spacecraft being lit by only an HDR Image in Arnold.

There are some attributes in the Skydome light that you can use to adjust the look of the render. The main ones that you will want to adjust are:

• Intensity: Controls the brightness of light emitted.
• Exposure: Works like the exposure settings on a camera and multiplies the exposure settings. Positive and negative values can be used to brighten further or darken the render.

The exposure attribute is helpful if you are used to working with cameras and camera equipment. It is also helpful if you are asked by someone who is used to working with cameras “to increase the exposure by 1 stop”. You can then go to the exposure setting and increase the exposure to 1.

If you are not used to exposure, then you can just use the intensity value to control the brightness of a light.

You may also want to adjust the attributes in the Visibility area of the attribute editor. Each of the sliders control a specific type of light that is being emitted by the Skydome Light giving you individual control over each.

Click on each of the following headings for more information.

The Skydome itself can be rotated and scaled to adjust the direction of the light source.

Watch the following video on Image based lighting set up.

Common Render Settings

With a model textured and the scene lit, it is time to start thinking about rendering your project. The following are the main render settings that you will need to adjust and setup before making a final render of your shot.

The Common Tab

All the render engines in Maya have a Common Tab. The common tab contains all the render attributes which are shared from render engine to render engine.

The first area inside common render settings to set is the File Output section.

Here, you can set your file name and file format, determine whether you want to render a single frame or a sequence (any pull-down options with a # will render a frame sequence) and choose the number of digits (frame padding). Maya is to add to the frame numbers if you render a sequence of images.

The following section Frame range can only be set when you have chosen to render a sequence of frames by setting a Frame/Animation ext to one option that includes a # in the name.

In the below example, we have selected name#.ext, which means that we are going to render a sequence of frames, and each frame will be output with the name you set in the section before, e.g., SpaceshipColour, then the frame number, e.g. 001, and lastly the file extension, e.g. .jpg..

With the output set to a sequence and the name set you can now set a start and end frame in the Frame Range section.

The By frame option allows you to skip frames in the sequence. With it set to 1, Maya will render every frame in the sequence from the start frame to the end frame.

If you change the “By frame” option and set it to 2, for example, Maya will skip every other frame in the sequence and render out frames 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc. Set to 3, it will render every third frame, for example, 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, etc.

Most of the time, you will leave this option set to 1 and render every frame of your sequence.

In the Renderable Cameras section you can select which camera you wish to render from.

The above option will render the perspective camera view. If you have created any other cameras in your scene, they will be listed and selectable in the drop-down menu.

The last of the common settings is the Image Size section.

Here, you can set the frame size of the images rendered from Maya. There is a list of preset sizes at the top of the section, which you can select from the pull-down menu, or you can set your size manually by setting a width and height.

Maya Software

The first tab in Maya software is literally a quality tab. You can choose the quality settings you want to use for your render from the pull-down menu. The general rule of thumb for quality settings here is that while you are working on a scene, you want to leave the settings on a low-quality setting like the default one you see here. Once you are ready to render a deliverable version of your scene, you would set the quality settings to a higher setting like “Production Quality”, for example.

Note: The higher quality settings will take longer to render than the lower quality settings according to how heavy your current scene is.

Then, you can enable raytracing in the Raytracing Quality area. Raytracing allows Maya to calculate how lights bounce off glossy surfaces, calculate refraction in transparent materials, calculate and render reflections, and calculate raytraced shadows.

With this setting turned off, reflections, refractions, and raytraced shadows will not be displayed in your completed renders.

Turning Raytracing on using the check box will give you access to the quality sliders below. These sliders control the number of steps that maya will calculate each of these attributes. The higher the number pushes the quality levels up and closer to real world conditions and will also result in increased render times.

Click each of the following headings to learn more.

Maya hardware 2.0

The Maya hardware renderer uses your GPU to render the scene. The hardware renderer generally uses this to render any work as it currently has limitations on what the render engine can accomplish, which do not align with the rendering demands of most productions.

At the time of writing the hardware renderer-supported features are:

• File Output settings in the Common tab in the Render Settings window are supported.
• Rendering from different camera types (including stereo cameras) is supported.

Limitations of the Hardware 2.0 renderer

• In the Render View window, the Render region is not supported.
• IPR is not supported.
• Render layers are not supported.

Only colour output is supported. Depth channel is currently not supported.

Arnold Renderer

The Arnold Renderer is a high-quality raytracing renderer that can produce high quality and realistic renders.

You can adjust the quality of the render in the main Arnold Renderer tab. To increase or decrease the quality of the render you use the samples sliders which are divided into 6 different categories.

Note: Increase in the number of samples = less noise in the final render.

Each category controls a specific area of the render quality which means that you can tailor your render to each scene that you need to render. If a scene is heavy on one of the areas: for example, if there are characters with realistic skin which has subsurface scattering in its material properties, you can boost the number of samples for SSS (Subsurface Scattering) resulting in less noise and higher quality in the SSS attribute of the skin material calculation.

Click on each of the following headings to learn more of each category.

There are a considerable number of settings that you can adjust in the Arnold Renderer tab, but for the most part, you will only need to change the sample sliders and leave the rest of the settings at their default values.

The System Tab

In the system tab, you can choose whether to render using the CPU or GPU in the render device pull-down menu.

All the settings below the rendering device drop-down menu control how your system handles how it will render a scene. Generally, leaving these attributes and settings at the default values is recommended.

All the settings below the render device drop-down menu control how your system handles how it will render a scene. Generally, leaving these attributes and settings at the default values is recommended.

The AOVs Tab

The AOVs, or Arbitrary Output Variables, are settings that control how you deliver your render output for post-production. Specifically, how your render is arranged and if it is broken up into passes that go together in compositing to make up the final image.

If you do not need to adjust the render when compositing, you can leave the AOVs and not select any. The render will process usually, and the output will combine all the different passes in a final combined image.

However, do you want or need to adjust a render when compositing? In that case, you can select from the Available AOVs list and add them to the Active AOVs list. This will tell Arnold that the active AOVs should be made available for compositing and not combined during the render process.

AOVs that are common in compositing have been illustrated in the following table.

AOV	Description
A	Alpha
ID	Random number assigned ID pass to identify and isolate materials or objects in the frame.
RGBA	Red, Green, Blue, Alpa pass Containing the full rendered image.
Z	Depth of the shading points as seen from the camera. Used in compositing to add depth blur or environment fog to a shot.
Diffuse_albedio	Diffuse colour without any lighting or shadowing
Diffuse_direct	Direct lighting
Diffuse_indirect	Indirect lighting
Specular_albedio	Specular colour without lighting or shadow
Specular direct	Specular direct lighting
Specular indirect	Specular indirect lighting

Many AOVs can also be selected depending on the requirements of the compositing team.

When rendering Active AOVs, they are stored in layers inside a single.EXR file. You will need a compositing program that supports EXR files to access the layers. Adobe After Effects does support the EXR format and Arnold AOVs.

Diagnostics Tab

The Diagnostics tab allows you to tell Arnold how to handle errors and where to save error logs. Error logs can be useful when trouble shooting rendering problems for a scene.

You can choose whether to display errors only in the console or to save them to a file, set the maximum number of warnings to display and what type.

Watch the following two part video series on render settings.

Render Layers

Using render layers gives you more flexibility, allowing you to render out passes as separate files. You can choose the file extension that you want and not be locked into using an .EXR file.

Arnolds AOVs also don't do all the things that you may want to render out of Maya. For example, separating characters into different renders or separating the background into its own render or creating a render with the wireframe of the geometry visible for presentation purposes.

Sometimes you want to render out these things as separate files, in these situations you will need to create what are called render layers. You will need to create a render layer for each of the separate render passes that you want to render.

How to set up render layers

The following steps will guide you through setting up your render layers.

To set up a render layer we need to access the Render Setup Editor:

• to open the editor there is a button at the top of the screen clustered with all the render buttons.
• the Button for the Render Setup Editor looks like a clapperboard with 2 layers in front.

The editor will open and look like the following window. Render layers are added in the area in the bottom left of the window, with attributes and options for the layers appearing on the right side of the window.

• Create a render layer by clicking on the Create a Render Layer button.

• This will create a new Render layer in the area on the bottom left.

• Give the Layer a meaningful name, for example Spacecraft_Colour.

The Name should indicate what is going to be included in the layer in this example the “Spacecraft model” and should indicate something about the render type, in this case it is the “Colour” information.

Currently the render layer is empty, so we need to add all the objects that we want to render into our render layer.

To add objects

• add a collection to the render layer
• right mouse clicking and selecting Create Collection from the options.

• Give the collection a name

With the collection selected you will see some options on the right side of the window. This area tells you what is currently included in the collection. Currently the collection is empty.

To add geometry and lights to the collection, follow the steps below.

• select all the things you would like to add to the collection using the outliner.
• add them to the collection using the Add button on the right.

The spacecraft and the Skydome light have been added to the collection and will now be rendered as a separate layer. When you render a scene, Maya will create a folder inside the Images folder of the Maya project file system called “Spacecraft_Colour”, the render layer name. All the images for this layer will then be rendered into this folder to keep them separate and organised from any other render layers you may have set up.

If you want to create a special render layer for Ambient occlusion or a wireframe render, you will need to create what is called an override for the collection.

To create an override follow the steps below.

• right mouse click on the collection
• select which override you want.

For Ambient occlusion you will use a “shader override”

• add the aiAmbientOcclusion shader using the right-hand window checker box.
• search for occlusion in the picker and the shader will appear.

For Wireframe you will use a “material override”

• add the aiWireframe material using the right-hand window checker box
• search for wireframe in the picker and the material will appear.

For the full set up process for Colour, Ambient Occlusion and Wireframe we go through the process of setting up each of the render layers in the following video.

Cameras

Maya has three main camera types (excluding the two stereo cameras). The first is a standard camera on its own, and the other two both have extra control handles to help align and frame the camera on a subject.

To create a camera in your scene you can find cameras in the create menu.

• Create>Cameras

The standard Maya camera

The standard Maya camera has all the same controls and settings as a physical camera with the added benefits of being able to go beyond the bounds of what a physical camera and camera lenses can achieve.

As animators and artists, the only attributes that you need to concern yourself with when first starting to work with cameras in Maya are:

1. here is the camera pointed?
2. How to move the camera around your scene?
3. What is in the frame?

Moving the camera

The steps below will guide you through moving the camera.

To move a camera around your scene:

• select it
  • move and rotate it using the standard move (W) and rotate (E) tools.
• You can also select the camera in the outliner
  • middle mouse click and drag it into the viewport to switch views
  • look though the selected camera.

This then allows you to use the navigation tools:

• hold the Alt key and use left middle and right mouse buttons to move, tumble and pan the view to move and aim the camera in your scene.

To change what is in frame we can adjust the focal length attribute, essentially changing the amount of zoom on the camera lens.

The focal length attribute simulates the effect of real-world lenses inside Maya. Using a low focal length will give you a wide-angle view out of the camera but will also start to distort the image like a fisheye lens at extreme low ranges (below 10).

A high focal length simulates a telephoto lens (above 70), a high focal length will flatten the field of view which gives the appearance of less depth between objects in the shot.

You can also use the controls drop down menu at the top of the camera attributes section to change the camera into any one of the other three main camera types at any time without the need to delete and create a new camera if you find the camera type is not working for what you need in your shot.

Camera and aim

The camera and aim have all the controls and settings of the standard Maya camera, with the addition of an aim point constrained to the camera's point of view. This is helpful if you have a particular area of a model that you want the camera to be focused on throughout a camera movement.

The aim also allows you to have a static camera position and then move the aim point to simulate the camera panning as a fast-moving object like a car or bike going past the camera position.

Camera, aim and up

The camera, aim and up again, has all the controls and settings of the standard camera with the addition of the aim control of the camera and aim. It also has a new controller that is constrained to the Y axis of the camera, allowing the up-direction of the camera to be animated along with the aim control and the camera's position.

Presentation techniques

When creating work, at some point, you will want to show it either online or in a portfolio or to someone for feedback. You will need to set up and render a single frame to show parts of your work to do any of those things. Or, render a moving sequence for a more dynamic and, in the case of how light interacts with your models and textures, a more accurate representation of your work.

One of the first ways you can create a presentation is to create a shot showing an area of your model or texture work that you want to showcase and then make a slight camera movement over 100 frames or more to either pan, rotate or move in/out on the area being showcased.

Creating Slow camara movement to display parts of your model

To create a camera movement, we will first need to know how to set keys on the timeline, fortunately that is a very easy thing to do in maya.

To create a movement, we need to create two keys: The starting position and the ending position.

Before you start creating keys it is a good idea to have a clear idea of what you want the movement to look like. The demonstration below will create a slow push on the model.

• First move the camera into a position where you would like the movement to start from.

Remember if you have your resolution gate active you can see where the outer edges of the frame are in the viewport.

Position 1

• With position 1 set we need to tell Maya to save this position as a keyframe.

To save this position as a keyframe:

• make sure that you are on frame 1 in the timeline.
• The play head in Maya looks like a slightly grey bar which can be harder to see on the timeline

With the current frame set to 1 in the channel box

• select all the camera attributes in the translate area
  • using the left mouse button and the shift key.

With the attributes selected you can either:

• right mouse click on any of the attributes
  • then select Key Selected.

    

  • Or you can use the keyboard shortcut “S”.

When you have successfully set a key on the timeline a key will appear as a red line and in red in the channel box. Keys can be set for individual attributes independently from each other, so it is a good idea to keep all attributes keyed on the same frame so that your keyframes do not get overly disjointed and confusing on the timeline.

• Next move to the last frame of your camera movement, frame 150 or approximately 6 seconds at 24 frames per second.

• Then move the camera into the second position.

Position 2

In position 2, you will need to:

Set a new keyframe by:

• selecting the attributes in the channel box
  • either right mouse clicking and choosing Key Selected or
  • using the set key shortcut “s” on the keyboard.

For these sort of presentation shots, you will need to keep the camera movement subtle and slow moving so that the audience has a chance to view the model or texture that you would like to showcase. Fast or sudden movement will jar the audience and worst of all make it very difficult to see any of the details of your model or texture work.

Playback your animation to see how it moves.

In the categories area:

• select “timeslider” and on the right side of the window in the Playback area
• ensure that your Playback Speed is set to 24 fps x 1

If you find the camera movement not to your liking, you can delete keys on the timeline by selecting the frame that the keys are on. Right mouse clicking and choosing the delete option.

Turntables

The turntable is another very good way of showcasing your work from all angles. As the name suggests a turntable is a camera movement that spins around your model. In Maya crating a turntable animation is very straightforward.

The steps outlined below will guide you through creating a turntable animation.

• First set your beginning position where you would like the turntable to start. You can do this just using the perspective view.
• Next select the object that you would like the turntable to spin around (Maya uses this selected object as the pivot point of the turntable).
• Enable the Animation menu set using the drop-down menu at the top of the screen.

• Visualize>Create Turntable> (optionbox)

The Turntable option will appear. Here you can set the number of frames and the direction of the turntable.

• Click “Turntable” when you are happy with your settings.

• Maya will create a new turntable camera and group with the set number of frames and movement direction.

Once you have added the turn table, if you play the animation, you will notice an ease-in and ease-out automatically applied to the movement at the beginning and end. This Ease may look good if you only want to play the animation once, but if you'd like to create a loop where the turntable turns multiple times, you must adjust the animation to remove the easing.

To edit the timing of the motion we need to use the Graph Editor. To open the Graph Editor:

• Windows>Animation Editors>Graph Editor.

The Graph Editor will open and with the turntable camera group selected you will be able to see the animation curves for the turntable movement.

When the animation curves for the turntable have been created, the S curve line that goes from the first Key at frame 1, to the second key at frame 300. The curve in-between the two keys represent the movement over time. From the S shape of the curve, you can see that the movement is pushed closer to the beginning and end of the animation which is what gives you the easing of the animation.

To change how the animation goes from frame 1 to frame 300, you need to reshape the curve so that it is a straight line which is what constant speed looks like in the Graph Editor.

To reshape the curve, we will change the weights of the tangent handles for the keys on frame 1 and frame 300.

First select frame 1

Frame 1

When you have selected Frame 1, you will see that there are two very hard to see handles that stick out of each side of the key frame. These are the tangent handles and how you adjust the weighing of the Bezier curve in-between the keys.

Either manipulate the handle manually of you can use the tangent weighting buttons at the top of the window.

We want the one that looks like a straight diagonal line.

This one is for linear tangents.

• Apply linear tangent to both frame 1 and frame 300, your graph editor should now look like this.

Batch Rendering

You will need to send the file to batch render to render an image sequence or animation. The batch render will take the settings from the render settings window and then render each frame of your animation, saving them into the images folder of the Maya project file system.

Before you send your scene to be rendered, it is good practice to have a final check over the render settings for your scene in the render settings window, you would not want to be half way through and realise the render is not correct and need to start over.

Before your render, remember to check:

• frame name
• image format
• frame padding
• start frame
• end frame
• renderable camera
• image size.

Once you are happy with the render settings follow the steps below:

• click close to accept the settings
• send your scene to batch render
• enable the rendering menu
• set and go to:
  • render>batch render.

Your batch render should now start, and you will start to see feedback about the progress of your render in the command line at the bottom right of the screen.

To see your render happening in real time:

• open the script editor using the script editor button in the bottom right of the screen.

The Script Editor view.

The image below illustrates how the script editor appears when opened.

Once the render finishes, all the text will stop updating and there will be a rendering completed message at the bottom of the script editor screen.

Suppose there are any problems with the render. In that case, a log is generated in the main Maya folder inside “documents” on your computer, which may give you more information about the error and help you troubleshoot why the render was unable to start or finish.

Watch the following videos as Geoff demonstrates presentation turntable and moving camera.

Direct lighting workflow

Now that you have covered lighting and rendering, it is time to look at the direct lighting workflow and the light types and attributes.

Indirect lighting workflows rely on simulating light coming from a large dome-shaped image-based light or a physical sun and sky simulation and then using calculation to process how light bounces and scatters around a scene and interacts with all the materials and objects. The downside to this approach to lighting is that the artist does not have much control over the overall look or feel of a scene or shot; once you have set up your image-based light, the only absolute control you have is its orientation and intensity. Then the render engine does its magic, and you get what you get.

The Direct Lighting workflow is the complete opposite; it uses many individually placed lights to precisely control the lighting and narrative feel of a shot or scene. The lighting artist has infinite control over the look of the shot; the downside to this approach is that crafting the lighting for a shot can take a long time, and the artist places and tweaks individual lights, slowly honing the look of a shot.

Like many other areas of this course, we can only scratch the surface of what is possible in each area. If you find an area enjoyable and wish to delve further into what is possible, you should take the initiative and dig deeper in your own time.

For more information on lighting and lighting workflows check out the following book.

There are several distinct types of lights in Maya that each create a different lighting effect or simulate a specific type of lighting condition.

All lights share a two common attributes: colour and intensity. These attributes have been outlined below.

Colour

Sets the colour of light that the light emits. The colour attribute can also be connected to a texture or file node to create a textured light with variation. This is handy when you want to create the effect of dappled light as if coming through the canopy of a forest or lights from a TV screen, for example.

Intensity

The intensity of a light is basically how bright a light is. Intensity values vary from light to light, so you must experiment with this value as you create and set up your lights to get the effect you need in your shot. The intensity value can also be set to a negative value, which will result in a light that removes light from the scene; this can be useful to create darker corners of a composition or remove unwanted light from under a bed.

In Maya, there are now two different groups of lights: the first group is the Maya standard lights, and the second group are lights that will only work when rendering using the Arnold render engine.

Maya standard lights

Click on each of the following headings to learn the six Maya Standard lights.

Arnold lights

Click on each of the following headings to learn the five Arnold lights.

Each of Maya’s lights are created to perform different lighting tasks, each has its own attributes which are explored further in the following videos.

The light Editor

Maya’s light editor has some great organisation and productivity features for the lighting artist. The editor can be opened using the “lighting editor” button found at the top of the screen.

Creating lights

Both standard lights and Arnold lights can be created directly from the lighting editor window using the create lights buttons ate the top left of the editor window.

Grouping lights

Lights can be grouped together by job, or you can group lights by lighting setup.

Using groups and the handy enable/disable and isolate buttons allows for fast and easy switching between lights and different lighting setups. Viewing lights in isolation mode conveniently turns all other lights off at a single click, so you can quickly work on one light at a time.

The look through window

The look through window is particularly handy when placing and orienting lights. It opens a separate window that shows the viewpoint of a selected light, this viewpoint can be manipulated in the same way as the Maya viewport for fast and intuitive placement of lights.

Property editor

The Property editor gives your fast access to a selection of the most used attributes for a selected light source allowing the lighting artist to quickly place and setup lights all from one editor window.

In the following video, Geoff provides an overview of the lighting editor.

Now that you have a basic understanding of the different types of lights and their attributes, it is time to explore and put that knowledge into practice and recreate some studio lighting setups using digital techniques.

As our subject, you will use these amazing Creative Commons licenced 3D scans of the Alexandre Dumas bust by Jean Baptiste Carpeaux provided by the NY Carlsberg Glyptotek (Copenhagen). You can download this and many other 3D scans from www.myminfactory/scantheworld.

Watch the video below where Geoff takes you through simulating studio lighting.

Recreate the 3-point lighting setup demonstrated in the video using the supplied Maya file. Try creating the same effect using the Maya software render engine and the Arnold Render engine.

• Can you create soft shadows using the Maya Software renderer and depth map shadows?
• How do you stop depth map shadows from looking pixelated?

Try recreating different studio lighting setups, such as 2-point or Rembrandt lighting.

• How does changing the light types and colour affect your lighting setups and overall look?

The Digital Camera website has a good cheat sheet for studio lighting setups.

Once you have recreated a few different studio lighting setups, can you create an exciting lighting setup of your own? Try looking at some lighting reference material from any movies by Alfred Hitchcock or the fantastic cinematography of Roger Deakins.

Now that we have covered lighting and rendering, we will look at direct lighting in workflow and lighting an environment.

When lighting an environment using a direct lighting workflow, the number of lights and attributes the lighting artist must track can quickly get out of hand. To help keep lighting scenes organised and straightforward, we need to break downlights and their effect on a shot into several different categories and work on each category one at a time, slowly building up the lighting in the shot.

Click on the headings below to view the different lighting effect categories used in lighting workflow.

Not all scenes will need all these categories of light, but it helps when working to work on each category one at a time slowly building up a lighting scheme for the scene. Working in this way helps to keep large, complicated scenes manageable and stops them from becoming too overwhelming.

Generally, when working on lighting a shot, you should follow a structured workflow. The ideal workflow has been outlined in the following step action table.

Step	Action
Step 1	Receive a shot to light. The shot may already come with notes on the time of day or night with notes on the narrative of the sequence. If there are no notes, then create some of your own. For example, this is a night shot, everything is quiet, moonlight streams in through a window illuminating the room.
Step 2	Identify and place Keylights in the shot/scene.
Step 3	Identify and place Ambient/Fill lighting in the scene.
Step 4	Identify and place bounce lights.
Step 5	Spend this stage dialling in the lights that are currently placed in the scene. There will be some backwards and forwards here with light settings and placement to refine the lighting.
Step 6	Identify and place Bloom lighting.
Step 7	Identify any areas of the composition that need accenting with more lights to create any: rim lights Highlights extra shadows or darker areas in the composition.
Step 8	Hone the lighting attributes, placement, colouration, intensity etc.
Step 9	cycle through step 7 and 8 several times iteratively crafting the shot making sure to stay within the required composition and shot notes/brief.

Lighting Reference – Case Study TV Room (Night) 3D Render

Now let’s look at a completed shot and look at the different lights and their placement in crafting the lighting scheme.

Keylights

In the TV room night lighting setup, there are four main Keylights. Two are area lights, one for the TV and one for simulating moonlight coming through the window. There are also two spotlights for the lamp in the corner of the room.

As all the key lights cast shadows, the TV cast the most obvious shadows. The TV light has an image attached to the colour attribute, so some colour variation is cast into the scene from the TV, as you would expect if a TV was on in the room.

Ambient or fill Lights

There are three fill lights in the lighting setup. One to fill in some light for surfaces facing the front of the room and one to fill in light on surfaces to the left of the room. There is a smaller extra fill light that is adding some extra light on the cactus plant on the windowsill. The cactus fill light has been light linked to the cactus and only affects the cactus models geometry.

The images below show examples of ambient or fill lights.

Bleed or Bloom lighting

In this lighting setup, no bright lighting would create the exact conditions required for true bleed or bloom lighting. However, there is a need to create extra lighting around the lamp in the scene. Currently, the lamp only lights up the immediate areas above and below the lampshade, so some added lighting that illuminates the walls and area around the shade is required.

Three area lights have been arranged around the lampshade to cast some much-needed light onto the surrounding surfaces.

A last light has been created inside the lamp to help brighten up the lampshade and make it look more like it is switched on in the shot.

Rim lights and highlights

With some moonlight entering through the window, there is an excellent opportunity to create some rim lighting on the cactus plant on the windowsill, which will help define the plant's edge and help it stand out more from the dark background behind.

An area light placed outside the room facing the cactus plant creates the rim light around the edge of the plant's surface. The light has been light linked to the cactus plant, so it only illuminates the cactus model geometry.

Extra Lights

There is an extra light in this scene that is placed outside the room facing a plane that has an image of a night sky mapped on its surface. This area light illuminates the plane making the night sky visible from inside the room.

All lights combined before any postproduction processing or colour corrections added.

Post-production

In addition to the raw colour pass above, an occlusion pass, and depth pass, of the scene were rendered and then brought into Adobe After Effects for post processing. These have been illustrated in the images below.

The colour occlusion and depth passes were combined in post-production to create the final image. The shot has been colour-corrected to create more contrast in the light-to-dark areas of the scene. The depth pass was used to add depth to the field lens blur.

This subtopic will guide you through the steps needed to create a light link in Maya. You can return to this subtopic at any time via the navigation bar by clicking the ‘light linking’ subtopic.

In the previous case study of the TV room, a few lights were linked to specific geometry. Light linking is a feature in Maya that can be great when you add accent lights that only affect one or two areas or objects in a scene. In the TV Room example, the light linking has been used on the cactus plant as an accent to add a rim and fill light that only affects that geometry, not the window frame or walls surrounding the plant.

Creating a light link in Maya

To create a light link in Maya we use the Light Linking Editor.

Follow the steps below to guide you through creating a light link in Maya.

• You can find the light linking editor in the Lighting/Shading menu which is part of the Rendering menu set.

You can arrange the Light linking editor to be Light-Centric or Object-Centric. This means if you choose light-centric, the lights will be arranged in the editor's left column, and vice versa if you choose Object-Centric.

If you select a light in the editor, you will see that it is currently linked to everything in the scene as all the objects in the right-hand column are highlighted.

To edit the light only to illuminate the geometry you want to:

• break all the light connections to the light.

To do this, with the light that you want to light link selected, go to:

• the Edit menu on the light side of the editor
• choose “Make Highlighted Lights Not Illuminate by Default”.

This will break all the connection to that light in the scene and the editor should now look like this with only the light highlighted.

Now that you have broken the connection you can select the geometry that you want to link the light to in the right-hand column.

Now with the light highlighted and the geometry highlighted the new light link has been created and the light will only affect that geometry in the scene.

Light Room

In this basic environment we will practice the workflow detailed in the previous pages. Have a go at lighting the scene first using the Maya Software renderer. Once you have completed your lighting scheme. Save you scene as a new version and try to relight the scene using Mayas Arnold Renderer and Maya Arnold lights (you can use standard lights in Arnold too).

• What differences did you find between the two different render engines?
• Was one harder to use than the other?
• Which did you enjoy using the most?

Watch Geoff in the following demonstration videos as he shows the process of lighting this scene using Maya software lights. 

Watch Geoff in the following demonstration videos as he shows the process of lighting this scene using Arnold lights. 

Lighting an environment

For your next activity you will light a premade environment. Light it first as if it is the daytime, you may choose what time of the day you would like to try and recreate.

Remember to light the scene using the ShotCam as your render view. The Shot cam has already been setup and locked in the project file.

To help you get started there are some good examples of lighting reference at the following link.

Lighting reference https://in.pinterest.com/geoffind/lighting-reference/

Now that you have completed lighting the environment for a daytime scheme. Save your scene as a new version and relight the scene for a nighttime shot. Again, light the scene using the ShotCam view.

This subtopic will look at how we can use a digital sculpting tool like Autodesk Mudbox or Maxon Zbrush to add surface detail to a base mesh we have modelled in Maya.

Design Sketchbook

To begin, spend some time designing a treasure chest in your design sketchbook that you can model in Maya later.

While designing your chest, consider the materials from which it will be made. How old is it? What condition will the chest be in? Try several different shapes and sizes, and experiment with different proportions and details.

Try to keep your design relatively simple; the idea is to create a model that we can then add detail to using the sculpting programme.

Model your Treasure Chest

Your next task will be modelling your treasure chest.

Watch the video demonstration below to guide you through modelling a treasure chest.

Using your design as a reference, model, and UV your Treasure chest in Maya.

If you need any pointers for the modelling and UV process, you can watch the modelling videos for your treasure chest design.

This subtopic will teach you how to use Mudbox for basic sculpting. You can return to this subtopic anytime via the navigation bar to revisit the process and system steps by clicking the ‘Mudbox Basic sculpting’ subtopic.

Setting up your scene

Follow the system steps below to set up your scene in Mudbox.

• You can send models directly to Mudbox from Maya by clicking on the file menu option and choosing:
  • Send to Mudbox>Send as a new scene option.

• Your model should open inside Mudbox automatically.
• You can also export models from Maya by:
  • clicking on the File menu option and choosing either Export All (Exports the full scene) or
  • export Selection (exports only the objects that you have selected).

There are several different file formats that you can choose in the Export options, so select the option that you need for the sculpting programme that you are using and save out your model.

Sculpting detail

For the Digital sculpting portion of the activity, we will be using Autodesk Mudbox. Mudbox is a straightforward sculpting tool with some nice sculpting and detailing tools and features.

Introduction to Autodesk Mudbox

Watch the video, Introduction to Autodesk Mudbox below as Geoff takes you through a general overview and introduction to Autodesk Mudbox.

Mudbox tools

Let’s take a closer look at the tools you will be using in Mudbox. The screenshot below illustrates the various sculpt tools in Mudbox.

The main Mudbox tools can be found at the bottom left of the screen, and they are grouped in tabs. We will be focussing on the sculpting tab. The basic sculpting brush will be your main tool when sculpting detail onto your base mesh shapes.

Sculpting tool

Using the sculpt tool will pull parts of the mesh out from the surface.

• hold the Ctrl key while using the sculpt tool the tool will push into the mesh.
• to add levels of detail to the mesh by using the Shift + D key on the keyboard.

Each time you add a level of do detail the number of polygons in your model will quadruple, so be sparing with the level of detail and only add more detail if you find you need it to sculpt in the details you need.

To go up and down through the levels of detail in your project:

• use the page up and page down keys on the keypad.

Sculpt any detail on your model on a sculpting layer so that it is easy to erase and remove sculpted details from your model. Try not to sculpt on the base mesh.

Stamps

Mudbox comes with a range of stamps that you can use to add texture to your sculpting strokes. Just select the stamp you want to use from the ones available.

There are settings for the brush strokes size strength etc on the right of the screen in the properties area.

Stencil

Like the stamp option, you can also use a stencil to add detail to a model.

The stencil mode creates an image that is super imposed over the model which you can then use to paint texture into the model geometry.

You can adjust the stencil position, scale and rotation to get the detail into the exact position that you need to add detail to your model.

The steps for adjusting the stencil position have been outlined below.

• Move stencil S + Middle Mouse Button
• Rotate stencil S + Left Mouse Button
• Scale stencil S + Right Mose Button
• For a full list of Keyboard shortcuts go to Windows>Hotkeys.

Exporting Maps

With sculpting of the main details complete, you can export a displacement and normal map from the highpoly model in Mudbox and use those maps to recreate the sculpted detail on the low poly model in Maya.

Click the arrow to view the examples of normal and displacement maps.

The Low poly base mesh with the normal map was applied to the shader material. The Displacement map is applied to the shader group node.

In the treasure chest example, you may notice some artefacts happening in the bump information in the area around the lock and on the chest surface directly above and below the lock.

This is caused by the large number of extra loops in this area because of how the lock was modelled. This disparity between the level of mesh detail on either side of these loops is creating some unwanted artefacts in the normal map.

To resolve this issue, it would have been better to either model the locking mechanism using a separate piece of geometry rather than try to model the lock into the chest geometry or to localise the topology in the area around the lock without taking the loops all around the rest of the model.

Watch Geoff in the video below as he demonstrates fixing the topology.

In addition to the adjusting model topology video demonstration, watch the videos below on scuplting to help you with the learning task.

In this subtopic, you will go through the additional textures that you can use on your models. You can return to this subtopic at any time via the navigation bar should you wish to revisit the steps.

Substance 3D Painter is a PBR workflow texture program. It allows you to create textures that fit into a physically based render workflow like Arnold for Maya or many other game engine workflows.

Substance 3D painter uses layers, masks, paint tools and a vast library of completely customisable materials to create detailed, stylised, or realistic textures.

Watch the Introduction to Substance 3d series of videos in the software section of the course module, by clicking the links below or in the Software topic via the navigation bar.

• Materials and masking
• Filters and generators
• Brushes and painting
• Exporting and rendering.

Texturing and importing models into substance 3D process

Follow the steps below for texturing the treasure chest model and importing the models into substance 3D.

To begin the texturing process:

• create a project and import the model we want to work on into Substance 3D
• to create a new project, go to File>New (Ctrl + N).

• First select a Template from the dropdown menu.

The templates correspond to the workflow that you are currently creating. There are templates for Unity, Unreal, Blender and many others.

Follow the template steps below.

• Leave the template on the default PBR – Metallic Roughness option.
• Next select your model file using the “Select...” button.
  • (You will need to have exported the model out of Maya as a file format that Substance 3D can recognise .obj or .fbx both work)
• Then chose a document resolution, it is recommend changing the resolution to 2048 pixels.

2048 pixels is a reasonable map size for detail but not too large to make the program slow down while working.

Texture maps in Substance are completely non-destructive. This means that they can be up or downscaled at any time with any destructive changes to the textures.

Lastly, we need to:

• change the Normal Map format to OpenGL.
• with your settings decided, click on the OK button.

Your model should load, and you should see the model in the viewport.

To navigate the 3D viewport, you can use the same navigation keys as in Maya.

Hold the alt key:

• left mouse button to rotate/tumble
• right mouse button to zoom in/out
• middle mouse button to move the camera up/down left/right

Holding the shift key and right mouse button rotates the IB Light around the model.

Tools and Asset libraries are on the left of the screen, layers and properties are on the right.

The properties area to the bottom right of the screen is context sensitive and will display different options depending on which tool, layer, or mask you have active at the time.

You can also change the viewport view using the F keys on the keyboard:

• F1: Side by side view of the 3D model and 2D UV Texture layout
• F2: 3D view only
• F3: 2D UV layout only

Baking mesh maps

A very important step before you start painting and applying any materials or textures to a model is to bake the mesh maps. This step analyses the model and create a series of maps that Substance 3D uses to help generate different masking effects that we will want to use later when texturing the model.

To bake the mesh maps, you can either:

• go to the baking window by clicking on the baking button at the top right of the screen (looks like a croissant).

• use the shortcut key F8
• or you can also find a hidden button for baking mesh maps in the texture set settings tab on the right of the screen next to the layers tab.

• Scroll down the list until you see the Bake Mesh maps button.

Use one of these methods to bring up the baking options window:

Here you can set your mesh map options.

• start by setting your preferred output size
• setting the output size to be the same as the texture size you set earlier (2048x2048) is recommended.
• then under mesh map bakers in the bottom left of the window select the maps you want to bake.
  • Leave these at the default options.

With your baking options set:

• use the big blue Bake selected textures button to bake the texture maps into the project.

Substance 3D Layers

In substance 3D there are 2 main types of Layers that you can use to create textures for your models. Let’s take a look at these layers.

Paint layers

The first is a Paint layer which functions in a very similar way to Adobe Photoshop.

To create a paint layer:

• click on the paintbrush icon in the layers tab.

Paint layers can be painted on using the brush, eraser, and pen tools from the Toolbar on the left of the screen.

The brush settings can be changed either at the top of the screen, or to quickly change the brush size you can also use the keyboard shortcut:

• Ctrl and right mouse drag left and right to increase decrease the size of the brush.
• Ctrl and right mouse drag up and down will change the hardness and softness of the brush.

There are more properties for the brush tool in the properties panel underneath the layers area on the right of the screen.

The brush display image shows you both the shape of the brush strokes on the left and the material that you are painting with in the sphere on the right. You can select any of the materials from the library area while you have the brush tool selected to quickly change and paint with a material on your model.

Fill layers

The second layer type is called a Fill layer. The fill layer floods a model with a selected colour, texture, or material type.

To change the colour of a fill layer:

• choose a Base colour from the properties area on the bottom right of the screen.

• Click on the colour bar to bring up the colour picker or
• use the eye dropper to select colour from an image.

A procedural texture can be added at this point from the library by:

• clicking on the base colour button above the colour bar and
• selecting from the pop-up window.

To Add a material to the Fill layer:

• select one from the materials library on the left of the screen
• drag it into the fill layer in the layers tab.

Masks

As you create increased layers with varied materials and painted textures in your layer tab, you will see that only the top layer is displayed on the model. This is where we need to create and attach masks to each layer, allowing the materials underneath the uppermost layer to be displayed.

Group layers together that are in the same material family, for example, all the layers that are being applied to the wooden part of the chest are grouped together.

Creating groups

Follow the steps below to create groups.

• click on the folder icon in the layers tab
  • then click and drag the layers you want into the group.
• do not forget to rename your layers and groups so your project stays organised.

It is recommended to apply the main mask that tells Substance where on the model you would like the material to display to the group.

Putting the mask on the group means that all layers inside the group folder have the same mask applied to them.

Creating a mask

To create a mask follow the steps below:

• right click on the group
• select “Add black Mask”.

This creates a mask and floods it with black which tells Substance to display nothing from this layer in the 3D view.

You can now either paint or select an area to display, this is the next step.

• Using the “Polygon Fill” tool from the tools on the left of the screen.

• Ensure you have your mask layer selected (the blue box around the mask shows that it is currently selected).

• Change the tool properties in the properties area on the right of the screen so that you are using UV Chunk Fill- it’s the button with a Checkerboard pattern.

Now we can select and fill whole UV shells on our model, or you can also select UV shells in the UV view.

• select and mask all areas of the model that you want to display the material inside of your group
• create all the materials and material groups you need for your model.

For the chest model there are two groups; one for the wooden parts of the model and another for all the metal parts.

Using Generators

One of the reasons why Substance 3D has become so popular is because of the generators feature. Generators use the information stored in the baked mesh maps we created at the beginning of the project to create procedurally generated effects on the texture layers and materials of the object.

The mesh maps include ambient occlusion, which calculates how close surfaces are to one another. This is precisely the type of information you need to create a mask that references all the cracks and crevasses in a model (for adding dirt in corners, etc).

Another of the mesh maps calculates where a model's edges and corners are. Again, this information is what you want to know if you want to create a damaged edge look to a material.

We will use a generator to create some algae on the surface of the timber parts of the model.

Follow the steps below to guide you through using the generator.

• Start by creating a new fill layer inside the timber group.
  • arrange the fill layer on top of the timber material.
• Select a suitable colour for your algae using the colour bar in the properties area.
• Here you can also set how Rough the fill layer is (roughness in substance 3D relates to how reflective/specular a material is)
• create a black mask for the algae fill layer.
• with the mask selected
  • right click on the mask
  • choose add generator from the options.

There should now be an empty generator option in the properties area.

To add a mask to the generator, use the Smart masks in the library are on the left of the screen. To access the smart masks:

• open the smart masks tab
• select one from the list
• drag and drop it onto the generator button.

Each mask has its own set of options and settings so have a play with the sliders to see what each one does.

Isolate and display

You can isolate and display the mask on your model. The steps below to guide you through isolating and displaying the mask.

• Alt clicking on the mask you are working on.

This makes it a little easier to see what the mask looks like and consequently what each attribute does.

To return to the material view:

• press the M key on the keyboard.

The generators are where you can really add layers of detail and real-world textures to an object in Substance. So have fun playing with all the layer types, materials, painting, and generators.

For a more in-depth demonstration of the texturing process for the Treasure chest model you can watch the video demonstrations below.

Exporting Substance textures for use in Maya

Now that you have completed texturing your model using Substance 3D, you need to export the texture maps and set them up for use back in Maya.

Follow the steps below for exporting the maps.

To export the maps from Substance 3D go to:

• File>Export Textures (Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+E)

In the export texture window, you can adjust the export settings to match the requirements of your production pipeline.

The first step is to:

• change is the Output directory.

This is where substance will save the generated maps. Because we will be using the maps in Maya you will need to:

• change the output directory to the “Source images” folder in your Maya project file system
• export the files directly where Maya reads them from.

Next, you will need to

• select an output template.

We will be using Maya, so ensure you:

• select the Arnold (AiStandard) Template. 

The output template tells substance how to export the maps in a format that is optimised for the software that the maps will be used. There are many preset output templates you can select in the dropdown list.

You can also create your own template in the output templates tab at the top of the window.

Next, you will need to

• select a File type from the dropdown list .png is a good all round file format but there are many others to choose from.
• select a map size.

If you leave this set at the default option, then Substance will export a map of whatever size your project is set at currently. You can export maps all the way up to 8K if required.

With the settings set, you can go ahead export our texture maps by:

• clicking on the Export button at the bottom right of the window.

The AiStandard template exports six different maps that when combined create the surface textures simulated materials and colour for the model.

You may find that one or more of the maps do not contain any information and appear black. In this example the Emissive Map is black, which is because that are no materials used in our treasure chest model that emit light and therefore there is no information to include in this map.

Watch the following video to guide you through exporting texture maps to Maya. 

Importing the maps into Maya

Bringing your substance generated maps into Maya is an extremely easy process. You will first however need to make sure that the substance plugins for maya are loaded and ready for use.

In Maya go to:

• Windows>Settings and Preferences>Plugin manager

In the search area of the plugin manager:

• search for Substance.
• four plugins should be displayed
• ensure that the checkbox next to each is “Loaded.”
• Check the “Auto Load” box for each, this will ensure that the substance plugins are automatically enabled when you start Maya in the future.

With the plugins enabled you should now have a new Shelf called Substance and a new Substance menu at the top of the screen.

The substance plugin has a nifty feature that enables you to import substance maps and automatically create the shading network for the material.

To import the texture maps and create a shader:

• click on the “Apply workflow to Maps” button in the Substance shelf (three checker boxes going into a material icon).

The Apply Workflow to Image Maps window will open.

• click on the Select Multiple Maps button
• select all the maps that were generated by Substance when you exported your texture maps
• click ok
• all the Maps should be arranged in their correct channel in the window.

Once you are happy that each map is in the correct channel:

• click the apply button.
• open the Hypershade window.

There should be a new aiStandardSurface material in the materials area.

• right click hold on the material to bring up its marking menu.
• select graph network to bring the shader into the work area and show all its connections.

We can see from the shading network for the material that the plugin has automatically created all the required nodes and connections for the exported maps and then plugged them into an aiStandardSurface material.

Give the new shader meaningful name and apply it to the model in Maya.

You can apply the material by:

• middle mouse dragging
  • dropping it into each of the parts of the chest model or
•  selecting all the chest geometry first
  • right mouse click and hold on the shader to access the marking menu
  • selecting the “Assign Material to Selection” option.

• Press the shaded display mode hotkey (6) on your keypad.

You should now be able to see the textures being displayed on the model.

To render the model, you will need to create some lights. The Arnold Skydome light is perfect for quickly viewing texture renders when working with Substance generated textures. Create a Skydome light and either attach an HDRI Environment to the colour for Image based lighting or just use the default colour settings.

Render your model using Arnold. The textures you created using Substance should be very close in appearance to the viewport in Substance.

Watch the video below to help you with re-importing and applying texture maps .

Check what you know about Model and Texture

Use the quiz below to test your knowledge of model and texture to help ensure you're on the right track and identify areas where you may need to revisit the subtopic.

Congratulations, you have now finished lighting and redering.  As you wrap up this topic, take a few moments to reflect on all that you have achieved, including the various learning tasks to hone your skills.

You have learnt:

• Lighting and rendering
  • Create and set up an image based light process
• Light types
  • Recreating a studio lighting setup process
• Direct lighting workflow
  • Light linking Process
• Digital sculpting
• Mudbox- basic sculpting process
• Texture 2.0
  • Texturing and importing models into substance 3D process.

Learning task #	Learning Task Name	Duration (Hours)
9	Light and render a presentation video of your best piece of work	3
10	Recreate portrait lighting setups	5
11a	Light a simple scene	3
11b	Light a day scene	6
11c	Light a night scene	6
12	Design a treasure chest for modelling in Maya	2
13	Model and UV treasure chest in Maya	6
14	Create sculpted detail for your treasure chest in Mudbox.	4
15	Create materials and textures for chest	8
16	Summary knowledge check	0.5

The skillset and tools you have obtained will be integral to your final topic. You’re almost there!