Where am I going wrong?
 

Hi,

I was given this model of a city... I was also given a rendering that someone else did... However, when I render out the model myself, i don't get the same lighting/shadows/soft focus..

I'm not so worried about the sky bg, because I can add that in later in after effects, I am more concerned with the glassy feel of the building in the middle and the soft shadows and so on...

The scene I was given has no lights in it...
When I look at the objects, they seem to have materials made called glass, zinc, etc.

Any ideas?
Thanks!!!
(I am using Maya 2008 on a mac)

The image on the right seems to have physical sun and sky enabled, I don't know what kind of setup the image on the left has going on but you might want to start with creating a physical sky.

obviously shadows are on and they have been colored to match the sky (blue tinge) with little opacity.

id be looking on the net for u tube tuts on out door lighting.

or mental ray using ray trace shadows

thats a quick and general answer

a quick look again and im guessing mental ray global illumination preset using ray tracing maybe.

seek and ye shall find :)

I have the same problem, I work on project that full of glass shader. max is perfect for glass shader. but maya dont know yet. I am working on glass shader, trying to find out , when it is done i'll make a tutorial so everyone can use it for own model, read my post " maya in architect"
so far I did %50, when it is comlete I'll let you know,

but try use HDRI image to the scene, create sphere and apply
HDRI image as color into it, as try uv mapping(cylinderical)

create glass shader
first create poly object (glass object) something that looks like glass. flat and big
go to hypershader- create mental-ray node - dielectric materials.

For almost every light effect in Maya (reflections, shadows, etc.) you have to have Raytracing on in your render settings.

About the glass... well I'm having problems with this one right now as well... I'll check your tip, dubai3d, thanks.
Benny

The thing with glass, chrome ect is that firstly you have to have an evironment to reflect, simply creating a shader and adjusting it's attributes will not work alone.
I would agree that it looks like physical sun/sky has been used in the right hand render.