Lights & Rendering in Arnold and Maya Hardware 2.0 in Autodesk Maya 2022. Beginner Tutorial

[Music] hey guys welcome back in this video we're going to see how maya lights work and more importantly how the maya lights work in each of the two renders we're going to go over the hardware 2.0 render because it's the fastest and the arnold render because it's the renderer that renders out more realistically uh here we go guys the lights you can find them in the rendering tab uh the rendering menu shelf and here they are we've got the ambient light directional light point light spotlight area light and volume light i really only use the four from the directional point spot and area lights we're going to go over all of the lights but most effectively the ones that i use for production are the directional light the point light the spotlight and the area light you can also find them here in under the create tab under the lights there they are all the same but i'll just grab them from here uh and so i'm gonna click on the ambient light and i'm gonna move it slightly up on top of that sphere and you see no effects uh because we have to turn on the lights in the scene and so up here in the viewport remember that uh when we hit keyboard shortcut number four that's our way wireframe mode which is this one five is um solid shaded which is this one shaded and then six is textured i don't have any textures on here so that's this one and then seven is using the scene lights use all lights we're gonna turn on the shadows as well so we can see the shadows right there so right now we're seeing textures and lights uh and let me delete this one so you can see when we turn on uh use scene lights everything goes black because there are no lights as soon as we add a light the scene gets lit but you can see how this one with the maya hardware 2.0 lighting it's really not a usable light it just makes everything flat and this is in the hardware 2.0 a render but let's change this to arnold and render it and you can see that there's nothing in there unless i crank up the intensity and still nothing and there is no arnold there is no arnold tab so i'm not going to use this one i'm going to delete it i think mostly this is for the software um maya software but anyways our first light is the directional light this directional light acts like the sun the icons are uh confusing uh a directional light has these three little arrows but it really acts like the sun the light is not affected by the position at all the light is only affected by the rotation only by the rotation and it acts like the sun so a directional light unlike the light rays here that are going um in different angles the directional light acts like this it's one huge light source that covers your entire screen just like this and it hits the scene in one direction one direction that's how the directional light works so not really like the sun but like the sun light so again the directional light is only affected by rotation again it is not affected by the position i can move this all day long even even below my scene and it's not affected by the position only the rotation affects it and if we want to render it in hardware 2.0 you can see that the scene looks exactly like what the viewport is showing and so if we render it in arnold though um you see it's very very dark each light comes with an arnold tab and the arnold is is affected by the exposure so if we hit two here in the exposure re-render it in arnold now we're seeing what what we're seeing on the screen again hardware 2.0 is the real-time renderer boom there it is and arnold is the more realistic renderer boom there it is of course you see that arnold takes a a lot longer than the hardware 2.0 renderer anyways when you want to set it up for both where whether you're not completely sure of which render you will be using it is always a good idea to check out the intensity here and then adjust it here in the exposure now each light comes with its different properties for example you can change the color if it's midday and you want it a little bit warmer give it a little bit of a warm yellow tint you may do so or you can go to blue if it's a moonlight in the evening you can give it a little tint or the intensity i'm gonna click on this one and change it to a blend so we can see that that little highlight and you can not render the highlights or the diffuse that means that nothing is being lit but you can see the highlight and illuminates by default turn it off all right cool also the shadows you can turn them off you can use depth map shadows which is they're very very pixelated and you can increase the resolution here also ray trace which is the most realistic of the two so here are the ray trace shadows or if you click them off and not have it cast any shadows all right cool moving on i'm going to delete this one and put on a point light a point light i'm gonna move it up a point light emits light 360 degrees all the way around the that one point and it acts more like a light bulb this light bulb is emitting light all the way around 360 degrees and even if you rotate this light bulb this way it's going to not be affected because it's emitting light 360 degrees all the way around and so this point light let's go ahead and render it in hardware 2.0 and it's exactly like the scene but we when we try to render it in arnold uh there is no light we just need to crank it up so the intensity here is okay again we can change the color we can change uh click these off specular diffuse and eliminates by default and we can also turn off the shadows here use ray trace and here's the arnold tab the arnold tab uses exposure so let's crank this up to a number two and re-render the arnold's scene and you can see that it's barely lighting this up let's crank it up to five and there we go in order for me to achieve this kind of same light here let's see if we crank it up to an eight more or less more or less it's the same uh type of light that we've got here again that's arnold and hardware 2.0 boom there it is so they're kind of the same except that i had to adjust the exposure the samples is how grainy it is but the more sample you give it the smoother the light and the longer it takes to render the smoother the light the smoother the shadows the longer it takes to render and so this is the point light one point emitting 360 degrees not affected guys not affected by the rotation i can rotate this all day long um but it won't affect the light it is affected by the position though imagine a light bulb or a flying little light bug if i go under the scene of course it's lighting under the seam but not on top so it is affected by the position but not the rotation i'm going to delete that one and the next one is a spotlight so the spotlight works like like a flashlight there is a point of light and then it goes out and has an angle to it let me rotate this down a bit of course it is affected by the rotation and it is also affected by the position you can see the effects when i move it and you can see the effects when i rotate it the spotlight has a little bit more more attributes than the directional light and the point light you can see them here we've got the cone angle that's how big that cone angle is the penumbra angle is how how sharp this cone is how sharp it is to the inside or to the outside blur it to the inside or to the outside and then the drop off is from the center to the edge from the center which is right there to the edge of course you can adjust the color like that i'm gonna just keep it on white uh and the shadows also same deal we've got the uh you can use depth map shadows or you can use ray trace or turn them off let's go ahead and render it in hardware 2.0 it should look exactly like what we have on the scene let's render it in arnold and in arnold nothing so we have to go to the arnold tab and crank up the exposure so here in the exposure i'm going to crank it up to about five and re-render it in arnold i'm getting just a little bit of a light right there you can see that this one is less intense maybe or sensitive so we're going to have to crank it up let's see crank it up to 10 and re-render it in arnold and see if we can get more or less the same amount of light that we've got here and you can see that it's a little darker and it's a little brighter here it's a little bit more intense here in arnold the samples again is how smooth or grainy uh it is the more sample we give it the smoother the light the longer it takes to render i am going to talk about the decay rate the decay rate is how far does this light go how far distance wise does it illuminate and so here we're seeing that you know it illuminates the entire floor but if we put the decay to quadratic or linear you can see that it's barely barely lighting this up and it gives it a more realistic feel because lights don't go forever lights illuminate only to a certain distance and so we have to crank up the intensity even to about 20. let's crank this up to about 20. and it is more realistic more like the arnold see now i'm getting that hot spot where as over here it's not lighting as well so it just adds a little bit of realism here with the decay rate all my other properties are the same let's go ahead and render it in hardware 2.0 boom really really fast and arnold you can see that now it's a little bit different now we have to crank down the in the exposure it's from 10 let's go back to 5. see what happens uh re-render it and now we're seeing what we're seeing in the scene and so it's just a matter of setting it up to use both now i can use both i can render the whole scene uh in hardware 2.0 boom there it is and if i choose to if i have time to render it in arnold i can choose to render it in arnold the last light that i'm going to talk about here is the area light now the area light works like a soft box a soft box uh is a light that has this box to diffuse the light it's a diffuser so that it spreads evenly with soft shadows professional photographers use these soft boxes all the time and they come in a variety of shapes you can get them in round shapes or long uh rectangle shapes but the main purpose is so that the shadows are soft and it's lit more uh diffused and so here we go i'm gonna delete this uh spotlight delete and i'm gonna add an area light and this is the light that i use the most myself i am going to make it a little larger and i'm gonna rotate it this light is affected by the rotation and by the position so i'm going to crank up the intensity to about 10 and you can see that i can move the light and it does affect it and i can rotate the light and it does affect the light you can see a weird cutoff right there and and that does affect the hardware 2.0 render but not the arnold render so here we go here we have a um an area light and let's go ahead and render it in hardware 2.0 and there it is exactly like i see on my scene let's render it in arnold hit render and nothing yet you can barely see the effect of the light right there so we need to crank go to the arnold tab and crank that exposure up i'm gonna crank it to five [Music] and re-render it and that's about what we have here now what i want you to notice is how soft that shadow is very very soft it's diffused it's diffused just like what the photographers do with that soft box a light it's very very soft very very i would say realistic and so i prefer to use the area lights to light up my scene because of the soft shadows this is kind of what we have again we have the color we have the intensity all these options here and the decay rate how far does it go i like to use linear for fast renders and quadratic for a little bit more realistic renders you can see that it just goes away because it needs more light it's affecting the distances being affected so let's go to 50 oh and even more than that let's go 200 more than that 500 i'm gonna rotate it a little bit and let's go to a thousand you could see that you got you guys can see how intense it is here and over here it's not it's not reaching anything because it's falling off it's falling off and so let's go look at the hardware 2.0 renderer we get exactly what we're seeing in the scene arnold it's now it's too intense so in arnold when you use that uh decay rate you don't have to crank up the exposure too much so let's cut it back to about two and there we go uh to get it more like the scene i think it's going to have to be one even less than one zero with a zero exposure since we turned on quadratic it's about what we see in um in the hardware 2.0 render it's just that look at that shadow nice and soft shadows more realistic and to me i use area lights spotlights and point lights to light up my scene uh we still have one that's the volume light i'm not gonna go there guys that's for another lesson these are the four production lights that i use directional light if it's an outdoor scene a point light if it's a light bulb or a scene that is 360 degrees a spotlight when i'm using a flashlight car headlights or directional lighting indoor lighting and then a soft box or an area light for everything else that's it guys i hope that you like this video if you liked the video go ahead and hit the like button and subscribe and i will see you on the next one thank you guys

Channel: Learn 2 Animate

Views: 304

Keywords: Autodesk Maya, Install Maya, Download Maya, Maya for Free, Free Maya, Free Autodesk Maya, Maya 2022, Mya Lights, Arnold, Hardware 2.0

Id: Wea0ty-wnQQ

Length: 19min 1sec (1141 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 12 2021