Oriental Lamp
 

I am making an oriental lamp and I need help already with some lighting. I wanted to place a light to see how it would look but I am a failure when it comes to lighting. I am really good at lighting in 3DsMax but in Maya I have a lot of trouble. Here is what I have so far:

Lighting
 

I want to do light coming out of the top like a spot light or something but when I tried it came out horrible and sometimes the light didn't even show up. I resized it and changed some settings and everything. I also want to make the inner sides to be translucent with light showing behind them. How would I go about this? :angery: :headbang: :headbang: :hug: :confused:

try grouping some directional lights together, say 6 or so, with different rotations so they almost make up an ambient light. (that way you get a nice, odd, ambient/point light.

After that id say to make the sides slightly transparent so the light shows throgh and see what it looks from there.

Thats what i'd have a go at

but see...when I did that, they lit up my entire lamp really brightly even at 1 intensity. It didn't work so well.

Just turn down the intensity of the lights, 1 is sometimes quite a high setting

ok, so I made the light dimmer however it still lights up the outside and the inside of my lamp as opposed to just the inside...:confused: :confused: :confused:

Howabout adding shadows :p

Could you post a shot please? Its a bit hard to visulise whats going on.

Cheers

Shadows are on. Here is a picture of intensity 0.02 when the lights are in the middle of the lamp:

Is the default light off??

Could you put it into a 3 sided cube made from a blinn so that the light bounces off and we can have a look at where the lights cast from. Without the floor/walls its a bit hard to see whats going on with the shadows/ lights/relfections etc.


Cheers

Well, one of your problems might be your trying to light the entire scene with just the light from inside the lamp. If i were to go about solving the problem, I'd probably set up a 3 point lighting system and then introduce the light in the center of the lamp and crank up the intensity. Also, play with the materials to get them the way you want them.

This is a 3-sided cube. A bottom and two sides. The lighting blacked out the bottom cube and the lighting is right in the center of the cube. The lighting is the six directional lights in one group facing different directions.

Here is a picture of the light itself in the cube. I didn't know you could turn default light off BTW. How do I?

srry about this but earlier on I posted a picture of a 0.02 intensity light on my lamp. I accidentally deleted the pic so here it is again...

As soon as you introduce a light into the scene, the default lighting goes away. I dont really understand what it is your trying to do. Are you just rtying to have light come out of the top? If to, just make a directional or point light and add a fog effect to it. I'm having a difficult time trying to picture what it is your trying to do.