Lights, Camera, Action

In last weeks tutorial we were taught how to use the different lighting settings in Maya. Depending on the type of lighting option used these can greatly change the look and feel of your scene. Neuberger (2005) explains that although lighting the scene is the last step in the 3D process, it is also one of the most important as it can create a very specific mood that the artist is looking for that would not be obtained in any other way (P131).

There are several types of light including:

Ambient – Which is light form all around.

Point light – Which is a light which emanates from a point specified by the user.

Spot light: Which, as it sounds, creates a light behaving like a spotlight in the scene which the user can define and control.

Directional Light: Which is a even light which comes unidirectionally, usually acting as ‘the sun’ in the scene.

All of these can be used on their own or together to create specific effects, of course these can be tweaked in a lot of different ways such as the rate of the ‘decay’, the colour and the strength of the light.

For my scene I wanted to have a point light emanating from inside the Pod and two directional lights: One to illuminate the pod from the front and one from the back. The point light, I tinted a green to match the look I wanted and it added a lot of extra depth to the ‘glow’ from inside the pod.

The reason I added the light at the back is that that soon after I created the ‘feel’ I wanted I decided that I wanted the pod to cast some long shadows at the front, adding to the mood. The picture below, shows the pod with the shadows added.