photorealistic rendering
 

Is it possible to achieve a good degree of photorealism with only the Maya rendering, without using Mental Ray?
What kind of impact does the resolution have?
I am using Maya PLE, so I can't use Mental Ray AND I am limited
in resolution. No matter how hard I try, my renderings look a little
"cartoonish". Is it me or is it PLE?

Show us some of your work in the WIP area and we'll comment and criticize on them. Maya's renderer is not propably the best but when handled correctly I don't see any reasons why it couldn't achieve photorealism.

Silviapalara: If you can post a small pic, I'd love to post a suggestion or two.

I have a suggestion, try using gi_joe, make the skylight a .1 intensity and make the ground intensity .05. If you're trying to use a scene where it's really bright, try using a point lightwith gi_joe. Give the point light ray traced shadows. if it's not really bright, you want to use a depth map shadow with a dbias around 6 with a resolution of around 2000-ish. That migh get you started. Try messing around a little bit. I use 64 lights for my skylight and 16 for the ground. hope this helps,
Brian
btw this is really only good for outdoor lighting, for ondoor lighting, i try to stick with 3 pt. lighting.

photo render
 

Well, the good thing is that from what I hear Maya PLE should do quality rendering (if yo don't mind the watermark).
I have posted a painting studio in the Finished Work section, it is
beginner's work I know, but now I also know I can work on things to improve them.
Thanks everybody for the feedback!:banana: