It is all about lights. Maya

Creating a scene in Maya is a big task but being able to present it in the right way is just another story. To show our work, we need two important elements, a camera and a light.  

Without any light, our scene is simply black as there is no source of light to lit it. By default, Maya scenes do not have any lights. We need to add them to our projects. There are default Maya lights as well as Arnold lights. Area Light, Ambient, Directional, Spot, Point and Volume are Maya lights we can choose from. Arnold offers Area Light, Skydome Light, Mesh Light, Photometric Light, Light Portal and Physical Sky. 

Through the use of various types of lights, we can achieve multiple effects. We can set a mood of a scene, bring attention to objects or take it completely away by putting them in a dark corner.  

Working with lights is a complex task and there is a whole industry part focused on lights in animations. Therefore, lighting, even in a small project can’t be underestimated.  

During our lectures, we were introduced to various ways of using the lights, depending on the scene we are working on and the result we want to achieve. We know that we can create indoor or outdoor lights, artificial or natural-looking lights (streetlamp vs. the sun).

One of our latest class was dedicated to lighting models and discovering how the light can affect them. We have practiced adding various types of lighting, adjusting their intensity and exposure to be presented with different results. We also used filters and change colours of the light.  

Modifying intensity and exposure or changing the type of the light are methods to achieve various effects. The same object will look completely different, when lit with specific lights. We aimed to create a museum like display, where single units are highlighted through the lights. It was an interesting and fun exercise, where I was able to explore the lights’ theme in Maya a bit more. A photograph featuring this post is one of the images I have created while working on the lighting assignment.  

I will definitely implement the knowledge about the lights I have in my current and future Maya projects.