How I rendered this shot using Maya Software and no lights (Part 1): Making an Animated Movie (#10) Video Lecture | A Guide to Making an Animated Movie - Professional Skills

hey guys in this video I'm going to show
you the lighting and render settings
I've used to render this shot using only
my software and basically no lights at
all keep watching and I'll show you how
alright so this is the the shot in Maya
the shot we just watched and I'm going
to show you the render settings I have
here first of all again I'm using Maya
software non-mental right now v-ray this
is the most basic render Maya has and I
still managed to get a pretty cool
result with it and I show you how so
let's go over the settings I enabled
color management I changed these two
into linear srgb RGB I'm the format I'm
rendering is target with a frame padding
of 4 I set up a frame right here you
probably know these thing you set up the
camera you want to render HD 720 I shall
I cancel the default light settings so
that's important otherwise you have some
kind of a default generic light and
that's in the scene under the Maya
software tab I barely changed anything I
just changed the quality to production
quality and everything kind of changed
the court accordingly I enabled ray
tracing and for the shadows I'll show
you later how and under render options I
cancelled I uncheck the multiply so just
know that doesn't really matter why most
of the settings here are pretty basic I
didn't do anything advanced now the main
thing I'm going to go over in this video
are the render layers I've created now
in case you don't know what render
layers are basically when you render
stuff out of my eye
you don't just render one image or an
image sequence and that's it
usually you would render a bunch of
different image sequences and then you
put them on top of each other in a
compositing software such as nuke or
After Effects i use nuke so in order to
get the most out of the maya software
renderer which is really the most basic
render you can use i had to create a lot
of different
laris and i'm going to go over them I
credit ten layers over here you can see
them on the right
creating a render layer is really easy
you just select what you want to have in
the layer and you create a layer from
selected or you can create an empty one
and add stuff later so let's see what
layers do I have the master doesn't
count you see there's a red X on it you
didn't render it it's just this one
includes all the stuff you have in this
in the in the shop so the first one is
just the cube
I call it cube and it's basically just
our cube doing what it was doing in the
shot now the material I used for the
cube is really so simple it's just a
function and I increase the ambient
color all the way up and I lower the
diffuse color color all the way down so
that it is always showing the same
amount of color all around which mean it
is not affected by lights I don't have
any lights in this in this shot and I'll
show you how it looks when you render
this that's it you see all the color is
the same all over and it is as if it's
lit equally all over from from all
angles and you saw that it took me like
less than a second to render that that's
your super fast let's look at it again
yeah
takes about two seconds my second render
layer is the rim of the cube now to do
that all I did was I went to the toon
tab and I applied a rim light when you
applied that it creates some kind of
material around the object or the layer
I applied it to the render layer itself
you can apply materials to the actual
layer and then everything in it is going
to be the same material so what happens
when you rent when you apply this shader
it just creates some kind of rim like
white rim around it it wasn't the
settings were a little different
fault setting I change them a little but
you can see what I did here if we go to
the material so I change the
interpolation to smooth then I change
the colors a little bit you can play
around with a change where you how much
wide you want to you want it to be in
how dark you want the dark parts to be
but basically it just looks like this
and you'll see later why I have this
layer okay for now let's just keep going
this is a world point layer what does
that mean this is a special material
that I created it's really easy to
create I'll show you in a second but
what it does I'll show you from here
what it does if I render this you can
see that it the colors that it is
showing is based on the YX and z axis so
basically all the everything that is on
the x axis is going to be a little red
everything on the z is going to be blue
and everything from the top is going to
be green so it's based on where the
object is in the world
so let's render from this angle so XI
this is a little green because cuz he's
on the C's on this on a slope so this is
considered more of a top but it's more
green here than it is here because this
place is higher and this is a little bit
on the X and a little bit on the Z
that's white so purple on the edges so
basically it just it gives you masks for
later for compositing that you can
control colors and lights it's really
handy to have this kind of layer I'll
show you in the composite and video
there which is the next one how I use
this layer from now for now let's go on
the eye wide layer is I just just
applied a black surface shader I'll show
you over here sorry
I created a surface shader which is this
one over there it just means that it's
going to be one solid Kahlid color and I
applied it to the cube - to the entire
cube except for the eyes where there's
this white dot over here and this is so
I can have the the white part of the eye
on a separate layer and I use that so
that I can make glow a little bit later
I'll show you and then we have the ball
the ball is the exact same material as
the cube only with a different texture
the texture is not even a texture it's
just a ramp that I created let's look at
it for a second yeah it's the same
function with the ambient color on the
max and diffuse on the minimum and on
the under color I just added a ramp with
these colors this that's the entire
texture for the front my main character
and then we have the same stuff the ball
of the rim and the world point you can
see this a little better on the ball
maybe to see what I mean that like that
all everything from the top is is being
colored green and everything from this
side is being color red and from this
edge we color blue all right this is for
the characters now this is a depth pass
I created so that we can use depth of
field later to add some kind of you know
to have the background not in focus or
the characters not in focus to have like
a nice realistic depth of field so how
do I do that I credit a render layer
with all the objects in it the ball the
cube the background and I just oh i
under a tribute I created the preset
that's called luminance depth and that's
a preset that is already made for for
creating depth passes but I changed
something because I didn't really like
the way it's set up it's it's the way
it's set up is it has some kind of weird
connection on the minimum and maximum
values which is the range of grays you
want to have so I just broke that
connection
and to know the minimum maximum you can
just measure you the distance from the
camera to your character to know how
much distance you want the depth to
calculate but it's my I just guessed
that more or less something like that I
don't remember exactly what settings I
had and then I just rendered here and
there to see what it looks like this
seems pretty good
for a depth pass you have a nice range
between the the end to the beginning and
then you can change that that gradient
in the compositing software later my
next layer is the shadows layer this is
this was a little more complicated it's
actually the only layered wear I have I
have an actual light I know I said I
didn't use any lights and that's true
but to create shadows just a little bit
of shadow as I had to put one light in
it's not to light the characters it's
only to create shadows so I created this
direction of light that it that is using
ray traced shadows with these settings
and I created the floor material which
was just red just the color red and and
it's I think it's the basic settings of
a Lambert and I made sure that these
don't render when I render the frame but
they do need to be in the scene because
they're the one who's going to create
the shadow so to do that you go to
render stats of the object and you just
cancel primary visibility you need to
still make sure it cast shadows okay and
the floor needs to also receive shadows
because the shutters are going to be on
the floor same for the ball no primary
visibility but it does need to cast
shadows so now when I render this frame
it's gonna take a little while because
this this is actually the heaviest
render I'm doing for this entire this
takes longer to render than all the
other layers combined for some reason I
guess calculating shadows a little
harder
so then all I get is a huge layer with
the red color on it and the shadows and
then I use that to create a composite
the shadows onto the scene so let's
let's see what it looks like there you
go that's that's both the side the
shadows of the ball and the cube alright
my next layer I didn't have that layer
for it every shot but this shot because
of the I need because of the perspective
I needed to actually render the floor
for all the other shots I just
composited some kind of 2d background as
the floor I further said I just created
the same material like as I crave for
the cube in the ball but I just put a
different texture
I had a texture was was my 2d floor
texture and it looks like this when I
render it that's it so these are the
regulars I used to create this and now
you're probably wondering how how I
managed to create something that looks
like this when we haven't seen anything
close to that in all of those render
shot render layers well that's just part
one creating the regulars and rendering
them from Maya is only the beginning the
fun part and the creative part allowed
me to accomplish this is going to happen
in nuke and that's going to be on our
next video so stay tuned for that and
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