Anyone good with "global illumination"using maya?

talk design
1

Hello everyone,
I was wondering if anyone was aware of any tips/tutorials on achieving a render with the quality of light in the image attached.

Mental Ray is a weakness of mine and a lot of the tutorials that I find on the web make me feel somewhat (more than usual) retarded.

Thank you in advance.

2

That looks to me like it was pulled into Photoshop and the color manipulated via the Hue/Saturation feature.

Other than that tip/piece of advice, I have no clue.

3

cool… I don’t use maya so some of the terms you are using are lost on me, but that image looks like a radiosity render… what are you eggactly trying to achieve? …
The render itself looks good, radiosity tends to lean on the blue-ish side,
maybe try to change the color of the light you are using…
I use lightwave… usually when I do a radiosity render I stay away from global illumination and use the “dome” technique or just a single distant light pumped up to about 300%…
I am sorry I can’t be much help, but it looks like you are on the right road,
keep adjusting your settings until you get something you like…
gp…
P.S… awesome model dude…:}

4

Oh I cannot take credit for that image.

I got that image from a friend which he got off the web somewhere.

Global Illumination is when you create a dome like you described, but use the dome to give your scene a more-realistic light.

5

that’s it… in LW it’s called Radiosity…(software companies keeping us confused)… anyway…the render looks good, if you want to improve the look, try to get away from the blue hue…, change the light color to something warmer, closer to 3200 degrees… and increase the ray recursion…(the amount of times the light rays bounce off each polygon) this should help some what.
maybe even get rid of the dome and use a spot light…

gp

6

coolidge here is a global illumination shot I did with a spot light…
also surfaces and textures help with your image
gp

7

i use cinema 4d and the default render settings in c4d include auto-lighting and radiosity turned off.

one thing that makes these images look soft like that first one, is the radiosity. i used to be getting these crappy looking renders, and now i get sweet ones but they do take awhile to render

8

that is an awesome image there hawk… are you using a dome or single light to light that scene…?
I did this render a while back, I used mostly spots here as well, but textures and light color play a big part in the reality of the scenes… if your surfaces have no diffuse or specularity… then radiosity isn’t bouncing off anything
so your images usually turn out dark…
gp

9

so you want Global illumination for maya… Hmm let me look in my big bag of tricks…

10

Soulty!!
I was wondering when you were gonna show up!

thanks man. :azn:

11

check your PM Coolidge

12

---->Right back at ya.

13

send you another PM,

for the rest viewing this thread, i 'm emailing Coolidge a video based on maya using Global illumination. its 19 meg. so if more people want to view this video then can someone provide a good FTP or webspace that they are willing to use for a video of this size.

::soulty::: :smirk:

14

Check PM Coolridge, email didnt work. :frowning:

15

did you get it Coolidge? check your PM :-\

16

Yes, just looking for a video codec.
Only getting audio now.

17

They used TSCC compression on that one, the new vids have DIV-X but that one of the older vids.

here is it

www.members.optusnet.com.au/paulsoultis/TSCC.zip

enjoy

18

Radiosity and GI are two different things, and I’m sure Maya has both options.

If you can’t do a global illumination, nor the dome trick of LW, then make arrays of lights way up above you object, and set them to something like a 4/5% strength, and make like a grid of 7*7 lights way up above you image - it should give something similar to GI…

Now another way to do it is to put your image on a white plane, or surrounded with white walls and then set a light and check the radiosity option, your object should have the bounced off light from the walls (watch out though cause GI and radiosity are both cpu/ram intensive and make the render time double or triple)

19

…chime…
yes you are absoloutly right MLK, Radiosity and GI are separate, but I think he was looking for that soft light, even distrobuttion and soft shadowing that radiosity does… I could be wrong, coolidge never specified that idea, I just assumed that was his desire… Global illumination, is nothing even close to Radiosity, that is if that term means the same thing in both programs, anyway the idea of GI means that there is no spacific light source, light is just generated from all directions and hits every surface and if realism is what you are looking for then GI is not what you want to use. In fact most all the 3d experts ( which I am not) would tell you to turn global illumination off or down to 5 percent… and just use individual lighting.
Coolidge if you do the “dome” effect don’t add a light in your scene, the idea of radiosity with that effect is that the walls and dome you use emits their own light there by lighting the scene evenly
but my question is why would you use an array of lights at 4 or 5 % when the sun is a single light source, shouldn’t you just have a single light…?
I could be wrong Maya and LW are probably miles apart (i’m sure) in terminology and effects but I think the lighting concept is somewhat the same. Cool the only thing I can say is mess around with it yourself and see what you like the best.
gp

20

gp-

the way i lit that scene, is with illuminated objects, no lights at all. 70% accuracy on the radiosity. as you can see there are the light blue objects, those are the luminous ones.

i like this type of flat soft render, it really comes out clean.

-_-

=D