house
 

This is my house made in maya. I have not lighted it. It is thru printscreen. It is for my reel. Please comment.

it looks pretty good,
you should add some lighting and render it out, it will look so much better.

dome lighting and sky
 

I dont want to use mental ray. Also should I use dome (directional light) lighting and a dome(i.e. hdri) for sky.

Re: dome lighting and sky
 

..why..? and you could use the software renderer if you really don't want to, there's still nothing to stop you from rendering it..

i wasn't aware you could use hdri unless you use mental ray or another thing that does ray tracing

looks good though

To use HDRI you need to use something other than Maya software/hardware renderers. Mental ray is usually the choice.

So.... yeah.

Dome lighting is pretty-well reserved to Mental Ray and more advanced renderers. So you may need to compromise.


Oh, and Chirone, Maya Software renderer is a raytracer as well, otherwise raytraced shadows and reflections wouldn't be possible.

Is there a reason you don't want to use Mental Ray? Personally, since discovering linear light workflow and its awesome results, I can't go back.