After I had imported my environment into Maya via the same method I used for my mech I began conducting lighting and rendering tests to prepare for my final trailer. I started off my rendering the scene just with maya default lights just to see how my textures would look in a basic render.
The result of rendering with Maya's default global light system was close to what I expected. As you can from this render this looks and feels unrealistic with the grass being a very fake neon green colour. Obviously not creating my own lighting for this scene would ruin any sense of realism that I've tried to re-create in my environment.
The result of rendering with Maya's default global light system was close to what I expected. As you can from this render this looks and feels unrealistic with the grass being a very fake neon green colour. Obviously not creating my own lighting for this scene would ruin any sense of realism that I've tried to re-create in my environment.
| Although I plan create a night scene I came across a useful tutorial (link on the left) on the use of the "physical sun and sky tool". I feel that this tool would've saved me a lot headache if I had planned to create a day time scene as from the render you can see that creates a realistic lighting rig for the scene from the press of a button. I honestly don't think there is a drawback for this tool as the settings it provides allows a user to create a wide range of day scenes from dusk to midday with relative easy. |
Although for my environment an unknown error always occurs in that the grass texture on my landscape reverts back to a default gray colour. I could not figure out what causes this as checking the settings for other materials reveal they are exactly the same albeit the texture. If I was to use this for my final render I would first need to figure out how to solve this problem but as I intend to create a lighting setup for night time I left this puzzle unsolved.
After trying out the physical sun and sky tool a saw how effective a good lighting setup can be to environment I began testing to create my own night time lighting.
I started off by testing out how the "volume lights" would affect my scene. I felt that the volume light had a weird effect creating a centralised light that emits around it. This almosts feels like a sun emit photons from its centre onto my scene. Although this could work in my favor as I could use to to try and replicate moonlight.
After trying out the physical sun and sky tool a saw how effective a good lighting setup can be to environment I began testing to create my own night time lighting.
I started off by testing out how the "volume lights" would affect my scene. I felt that the volume light had a weird effect creating a centralised light that emits around it. This almosts feels like a sun emit photons from its centre onto my scene. Although this could work in my favor as I could use to to try and replicate moonlight.
I then tried to use an "area light". I feel that this light has created the closet to how I want my scene to look. With a bit of tweaking before the final render I feel that this could be the correct light tool to use maybe in conjunction with a point light. Although in my test it looks too bright this could be changed and edited down to create a moonlit environment.
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With a rough idea on how I plan to set up the lights I moved to testing some effects in maya such as fog. As I have had no prior experience in creating fog I started off by doing some research before I found a tutorial on creating fog. As it was night time I planned to create a further eerie sensation through the use a low fog to give a sense of mystery to the trailer. After some quick tests it proved to be fairly easy to be able to fairly easy to create and edit some fog to how I need it. |
Combining all of these littles tests I've done I've created my first rendered image of how I hope my final trailer will look and feel. Although I feel there's it still plenty for me to teak I feel this image sets the atmosphere quite well for what I am aiming for.
After some tests with my mech in the scene I realized that I wasn't actually getting any shadows anywhere as you can see on the left. After some fruitless research, I proceeded to consult with my peers. One of peers had actually encounter this problem, a setting under the name "ambient colour" needed to be set to zero before any shadows would appear. |
As you could see the scene without any shadows made it feel massively underwhelming. After reapplying the shadows, I further tested the use of some "area lights" to help pronounce the mech in the scene. After some quick tweaks I ended up with this render. While I feel that this render is nearly exactly what I was after, I asked for some peer feedback for other opinions. The general consensus was that I should keep these settings as this gave the haunted dark feeling that I was after. At this stage I kept this version saved as a different file as a proceeded with some further tests.
As this was a mech I played with the idea that its shadow may not be black, hence I tried some different shadow colours, below is one of the results. This sort of destroyed all of the dark feeling I was trying to generate, which meant that I stuck with a simple black shadow for my mech.
After some other tests that I forgot to document and asking for further feedback the general consensus was that I hit what I was looking for prior and I shouldn't stray too far from it albeit maybe darker or lighter depending on preference. After this I decided that I would stick with the lighting for my previous render as it did suit my idea the best.
Some other effects that I could've tried was maybe smoke, although during research I decided that my trailer would have no place suitable for smoke hence I moved on from that idea. As with anything I feel that this lighting choice is personal preference and that personally this lighting works for me. If I was to improve this I feel that my some market research into how the audience feels from this lighting setup would allow me to access whether
Some other effects that I could've tried was maybe smoke, although during research I decided that my trailer would have no place suitable for smoke hence I moved on from that idea. As with anything I feel that this lighting choice is personal preference and that personally this lighting works for me. If I was to improve this I feel that my some market research into how the audience feels from this lighting setup would allow me to access whether