Lighting / Material Help for a Newbie

# 1 16-09-2003 , 02:15 AM

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I recently got a copy of learning evaluation edition of Maya along with a book I purchased at Barnes & Noble. I have been trying to follow the tutorials for modeling, etc. but there aren't many on rendering. I am trying to make objects with these types of characteristics:

user added image

So far, what I have come up with is something like this:

user added image

The shadows are much too sharp, and the surfacing / material application is not what I am used to from 3DSM and Lightwave.

I am looking to make materials such as:
user added image

How do I make the shadow fall off like that? I have played around with shadow mapping and can't find something that looks like 'falling off'

Also, how would I make a material that has translucent qualities like this?

Thanks for any insight:

Here is the scene I did for the red sphere

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# 2 16-09-2003 , 05:00 AM

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I believe you could achieve a fall-off effect with your shadow if you created more lights. In real life, shadows like that are created when multiple shadows are cast down onto the surface thus giving off a fall-off effect.

Another thing you might want to look into is the material you choose for your objects. Lamberts are dull, blinns have a wide glare to them, phongs have a more fine glare, etc. They can really make a difference.

With the globe image, (not entirely sure if you were wondering how the bump was achieved) the elevation of the land area can be done like that in Maya via a bump map. You have to set it up in hypershade and have a greyscaled image of your texture then stick it through a bump node. Very easy - you just have to know how to do it right.

With the pool balls, it also looks like each one is reflecting the background just a bit. You can achieve this by simply uping the reflection value in your material's attribute editor. (NOTE - some materials do not have a reflection value. ei lamberts obviously b/c they are supposed to be dullish) If you don't know how to get to the attribute editor, there are three ways to get there.
1) Choose Window>RenderingEditors>Hypershade and double-click on the appropriate material swatch.
2) right-click HOLD over your object and choose Materials>Material Attributes.
-or-
3) Select your object and choose Window>Attribute Editor and click the left-most tab. This will take you to the object's attribute editor for the material which is assigned to it.

One last thing I notice in the last image you have is the bluish glow directly beneath the globe. This may either be the result of a mild glow value or the light shining through the object and having it be blue because the rest f the globe is blue. In the material attribute editor, you should be able to find a glow attribute. I'm not entirely sure about how to do my other theory however.

Hope this helps.

www.Darkware3D.com

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# 3 16-09-2003 , 05:09 AM

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Right now the shadows are set to Raytrace, but I believe they should be a shadow map, no?

Does the light intensity have anything to do with it? Also, does the decay in the light also have anything to do with it?

How would I make a chrome like substance? Or liquid metal? How do I make a environment reflected in the sphere, like these billiard balls?

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# 4 16-09-2003 , 05:29 AM

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In the attribute editor for the lights there is an option under one of the tabs to turn on shadows maps. This will give you shadows.

The light intensity only determines how bright the light will be, which determines how bright everything in the light's path will be.

Raytracing has to be on for relfections and refractions. That is its purpose besides increasing render times.

The decay of the light will effect how the light decays from its edge. A light with no decay will have a fine line between the lite portion and the portion not lite by the light. A light with some decay will have a nice transition effect from where the lite portion is and where the dark portion is. You should be able to find some good examples of these in the F1 help files.

Simple chrome can be achieved with a Phong, a light gray color to it, a high cosine value, and a white reflection color.

An environment can be reflected one of two ways:
1) you can build the actual environment and up the relfection value and turn on raytracing.
2) You can get an image and map it to the relfection attribute and it will reflect that way. You can map images to many attributes in the attribute editor simply by clicking the B&W checkered box to the right of an attribute and choosing the File node. You then browse for the file and press ok. You may have to display tetures in some instances. (press 6)

www.Darkware3D.com

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# 5 16-09-2003 , 05:32 AM

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Also, Denfo.net has a bunch of shader networks for complex textures. I highly recommend that you download a few of these then open them up in hypershade and see how some of them are made if you're big into shaders and textures. You can right-click a swatch in hypershade and choose "graph material." It will then display all of the materials, utilities, and other nodes used to create the shader.

www.Darkware3D.com

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# 6 16-09-2003 , 06:04 AM

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yo eyenovation stop puttin my work up here or atleast ask me for permission next time.

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# 7 16-09-2003 , 06:30 AM

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I have tried everything in the light settings and cannot make the shadow fade out. I played with material, lighting etc. In Lightwave, the only way to achieve this type of shadowing is with Shadow mapping.

In Maya, I can't seem to get shadow mapping to cast a single thing. What am I doing wrong?

This is how it's done in Lightwave, how can I achieve this in Maya?

user added image

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# 8 16-09-2003 , 08:31 AM

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Also, please forgive the newbie question, but how do I use these shaders?
They're amazing, but once I download them... do I just put them in my Maya folder in any particular spot?

Thanks!! user added image

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# 9 16-09-2003 , 08:13 PM

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Try this:
Flip off the deffault light in global render options and create a light object. I used a directional. In the light object's attributes turn on depth map shadows and increase the Dmap Filter Size and also play with the bias setting.

As far as the location for shaders, I'm not sure. I'm not on a pc. Try looking for a path similar to AliasWavefront>maya>Maya Shader Library>shaders. Also, the downloaded shaders might not work with the PLE version of Maya. That's what I ran into.

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