problem with light creation
 

i'm using a point light (it's the first time i'm using a light). i did exactly what the 'digital tutors' dvd says about creating lights, but something seems to go wrong. the first time i did it a pair of axises came out and not a single light that is shown in the dvd (i'm using unlimited 2008, so does the dvd). when i rendered everything became black. i checked the intensity was high and the colour white and no decay was set on. the next time i launched maya when i hit create>lights>point light the light only appeared in the attribute editor and not in the scene so i could locate it. any help please? the object i'm trying to light is shown below. i want to give it nice sharp black shadows and also give it a shiny metallic look (that is the second question;how?)

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/n...1Nov070142.gif

The two axes that it shows are the focus point-The point at which the light is aimed. The second is the light itself.

You can access these by pressing T or hitting Show Manipulator Tool. If you use the normal move tool then you move the whole apparatus.

Make sure that you can see the center of the grid when you create the light (unless you have interactive creation on) otherwise you won't be able to see it.

And before you render, hit 6 and then 7 in order to see a lighting preview and get the shadows how you want.

If you're in wireframe view and you hit 7 it won't show the light, so make sure you've got it in a shaded view beforehand.

As to your second question, apply a phong or blinn material to make it look shiny-In my experience Phongs are closer to plastic, while Blinns are closer to metal.

i follwed your instructions. it's all white this time when i render it. the first picture is when i hit 6 and then 7 and the second the rendered one..

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/n...1Nov070358.gif

http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/n...2Nov070358.gif

At first I thought you were displaying the alpha channel but I see some shading on the right side of the model, it could be that the scene is over lit or you could have turned up the ambient or diffuse on the shader waaay too high.

Yeah, like Gect said, that looks way too bright. Also, you may want to (Actually, you most definitely want to) scale back the reflections on your material (Just do it through the attribute editor, reflection is right by color/transparency) to like .2 or .1 rather than .5 (the default) which is really, really high.

much better now
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/n...1Nov071032.gif
but i still don't have the metallic look (i want to give it the look of the metallic spheres of yours, Genny.. i saw your cg portfolio)
linkhttp://gect.cgsociety.org/gallery/657266/

The key to it is high reflectivity and an environment for it to reflect, then you can tweak from there.

i increased the reflectivity but i don't know how to create an enviroment.. i tried to create a plane but nothing changed. can you please tell me the simplest enviroment i can create in order for the object to reflect?

it is metal after creating another light and changing the blinn settings, but you're right if there's nothing to reflect... thanks, anyway.

cheers.

L.
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/n...1Nov080015.gif

In the image you mentioned, I used Mental Ray and Mental Ray material so it's a little different since you're using the software renderer and one of its drawbacks is that it can't render out blurred reflections and that may or may not be a problem when rendering out your metals. And as far as making an environment, you can use simple objects with high incandescence on the shaders to simulate bright areas like a window, an open door etc, you could even create a sphere around your scene and place an image on it, there is also the use of HDRI, it will influence the lighting and reflections but you'd have to ditch the software renderer so that's a different story.

i finally made it! thank you, guys.
http://i300.photobucket.com/albums/n...inder_city.jpg