Lights, Camera, Render

One Example of Lighting:

Create Spotlight by clicking on the left of the top banner bar of the dashboard
Create>Lights>Spotlight

Move, scale and direct it in the display window using W,E,R keys. Press “T” key and the target
of the light will appear – you can move the target also.

You can also aim the light by clicking on Panels>Look Through Selected in the display window.
Working on lights in the Attribute Editor:

You can also manipulate the light (after selecting it) in the Attributes Editor.

Enlarge cone and penumbra to your liking there.

To change more light attributes go to the Arnold section of the light in the Attribute editor.

Click off Normalize (not always necessary)

Keep Intensity at 1. Change the brightness through Exposure values (under the Arnold Menu).
(The further away the light is from what it is illuminating – the Exposure value will increase.)

Increase the Radius factor to get softer shadows. (Will increase rendering time).

To get rid of graininess - increase the number of Samples (Will increase rendering time).

To create camera

Create camera by clicking on the left of the top banner bar of the dashboard
Go to Create menu>Cameras>Camera.

Aim the camera (you can also aim it by clicking on Panels “Look Through Selected” in the
display window).

Note that you will now have a new display view option in the Display Window:
Panels>Perspective>Camera 1 – this shows you what the camera view is.

You can move the camera and key frame it throughout your animation.

Rendering
Go to Windows>Rendering Editors>Render settings in upper left banner bar of the dashboard.

Go to the Arnold Renderer menu.

Under Sampling increase the Camera (AA) values to 3 -4 and the Diffuse values to 5 or 6 to get
rid of graininess in the image. (Will increase rendering time).

Go to the Common menu to:

Create File name for the image
Select Image Format (jpg or png is good)
Make sure Color Space uses View Transform
Create Image size

To Render a single frame

Easy way is to click this button near the top of the dashboard:

To stop a render – press the escape key – sometimes it works!

Render View

Render View usually pops up when you render a frame.

To save an image: Go to File Menu in the Render View and click Save. It will be automatically
saved to: Documents/MAYA/Projects/Default/images

Note: Sometimes the saved single image is opened and it looks too dark. In that case go to
windows>rendering editors>render settings>common and in the frame range set start frame
and end frame to the same frame. Then in the dashboard choose rendering in the upper left
menu. Then go to the top banner of the dashboard and click render>render sequence. The
resulting image can be found at Documents/MAYA/Projects/Default/images.

To Render Multiple Frames

Go to Windows>Rendering Editors>Render settings in upper left banner bar of the dashboard.

Go to the Common menu.

Go to File Output.

In File name prefix enter a folder and file name in the by entering something like
“CandyFile/Candy.” This creates a folder “CandyFile” in Images
(Documents/Maya/projects/default/images) which will hold your rendered image sequence
(each image will have the prefix Candy).

Still under File Output – choose PNG or JPG in Format.

Go to Frame/Animation ext: Choose name.ext.#.

Set Frame Padding to 4 (for renderings of over a thousand frames)

Each image will have the following kind of title: “Candy.jpg.0001”

Go to Frame Range – Set Start Frame, End Frame, by Frame. (The frames that will be
rendered.)

Go to Renderable Camera/Renderable Camera/Camera 1

Go to Image size – choose Preset 640x480

Go back to the dashboard and choose Rendering instead of Modeling in the upper left menu set
in the Dashboard.

Go to Render/Render Sequence (open options box and check on Add to Render View) then click
Render Sequence and Close).

You will now not be able to use MAYA so starting the rendering sequence is best to do before
you go to bed or when you do not need to use MAYA.

Tips on rendering multiple frames:

Turn off your sleep setter in your computer because the rendering will stop when the computer
goes to sleep.

Make sure you have enough room on your computer to store all the frames.

Test a 10 frame sequence render to see if it is set up correctly.

To View your Sequence

Go to Applications and your MAYA 2018/19 folder. Open Fcheck.app

In Fcheck go to File>open sequence which will open up your computer documents – then go to
Maya>projects>default>images. Open your image sequence folder and choose your first image
(e.g., Candy.jpg.001). Fcheck will load all your images and then play them back very fast. If you
want to see a step–by-step view click on Help>animation controls then click Step ->.

To save your frames to a Quicktime Movie. In Fcheck go to File/Save as Movie. It will ask you
whether or not to save transformations and I always click yes.

Then you can open “Candy.mov” in Quicktime and play it back to see what it really looks like.