Lighting Task

To get used to lighting, we were given a 3 point lighting task to do in Maya. You need a key, fill and edge light. The key light is the main one that lights most of the subject, the fill as the name suggests, fills out the shadow and the edge light highlights the edge of the subject, giving more definition.

It is pretty straight forward to set up, it's just mainly trial and error to get it in the desirable position and to achieve the light set you want. As it is computer generated and not real world you can tell Maya to turn on and off certain shadows or any reflections. In the real world you don't have this luxury, you just have to work with what you've got.

With my animation, I will have to have shadows and the lighting will have to replicate a sunny day, yet when it gets to the canyon, it has to be quite dark and gloomy to show the depth of it. I will start off with the 3 point lighting and just work from there really, trail and error and see where I get to.

Key Light

Fill Light

Edge Light

3 Point Light Rig

The final render turned out alright, mainly because it was just following what we had been told. I think it might take me awhile longer to get to grips with it and to understand what it is I want to achieve / how I want things to be lit. There are a few technical aspects I need to remember, turning off specular if not in a real world situation, too many highlight dots. Also picking out which lights will affect what. With light linking you are able to specify, for this one I turned off the fill and edge light on the ground plane - this ensured that no extra light would spill off onto it as otherwise it looks too false.