Lighting Viewport 2.0 2017

Maya: Lighting – Viewport 2.0

In This Class You’ll Access…
Learn how to light in Maya’s viewport so you can present great looking models and animation in realtime!

The workflow’s straight forward but there’s loads of little tricks and techniques we can use to get the most out of our viewport.

We cover a great easy three-point lighting setup that looks good from any angle with a transparent floor shadow. We’ll look at shadows and all the tech and explain how realtime shadows are different from the raytacing in our render view. We’ll see how to achieve crisp antialiased shadows in realtime.

We’ll explore all maya light types and see how true realistic lighting falloffs are now possible in 2017 with linear lighting setup by out of the box. But the settings aren’t obvious.

See how rim lights work and their downsides in the viewport, the work arounds to get our models looking great.

This is the first class of the viewport series. Start here with lighting in grey before moving onto texturing and shaders. Many students make the mistake of diving into textures first without understanding that lighting is the real key to great appealing renders. So the viewport presentation series starts here.

Running Time: 55 mins
Software: Maya 2017
Old Maya 2016
Instructor: Andrew Silke

Class Time: 55 mins

1. Introduction (33 sec)

1.1 – Introduction (33 sec)

2. Quick Three Point Light Setup (8:59 mins)

2.1 – Light Setup, Key Light (2:01 mins)
2.2 – Three Point Shadows (1:08 mins)
2.3 – Fill And Rim Lights (3:30 mins)
2.4 – Colouring Lights (2:20 mins)

3. Scene Preparation And Cleanup (2:09 mins)

3.1 – Scene Cleanup (51 sec)
3.2 – Shader Cleanup (1:18 mins)

4. Viewport 2.0 Shelf (3:48 mins)

4.1 – Viewport Shelf (1:36 mins)
4.2 – Ambient Occlusion (1:21 mins)
4.3 – Color Management (51 sec)

5. Viewport 2.0 Lights (11 mins)

5.1 – Light Types (2:29 mins)
5.2 – Depth Maps Shadows (3:56 mins)
5.3 – Filter Size (51 sec)
5.4 – Spotlight Settings (1:40 mins)
5.5 – Emit Specular/Diffuse (53 sec)
5.6 – Light Decay (1:30 mins)

6. Miscellaneous Settings (4:29 mins)

6.1 – Clipping Planes (1:47 mins)
6.2 – Background Color (1:03 mins)
6.3 – Cast/recieve Shadows (1:39 mins)

7. Viewport 2.0 Options Window (2:48 mins)

7.1 – Shadow Texture Options (1:50 mins)
7.2 – Ambient Occlusion Settings (58 sec)

8. Lights That Move With The Camera (6:44 mins)

8.1 – Move Camera Prep (59 sec)
8.2 – Parenting Lights To Camera (1:10 mins)
8.3 – Constraining Lights Camera (42 sec)
8.4 – Spotlight Issues (1:45 mins)
8.5 – Spotlight Orient Solutions (2:08 mins)

9. Transparent Shadow Catching Floor (8:21 mins)

9.1 – Occlusion Catcher (1:39 mins)
9.2 – Floor Render Stats (1:21 mins)
9.3 – Use Background Shader (42 sec)
9.4 – Simple Setup (1:06 mins)
9.5 – Transparent Rim Light Solutions (3:33 mins)

10. Lighting With HDR Sky Dome Images (6:09 mins)

10.1 – HDR Sky Dome Setup (3:19 mins)
10.2 – Various Sky Domes (2:50 mins)
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5 Comments

  1. geeexe
    February 15, 2018 at 5:34 am ·

    Awesome! <3

    • Andrew Silke
      February 16, 2018 at 7:54 pm ·

      cheers Geeexe!

  2. alextar
    June 1, 2018 at 3:10 pm ·

    Hey man, I tried de HDR lightning, but all my geos look black, any idea what might be happening?

    • Andrew Silke
      June 5, 2018 at 6:05 pm ·

      Hi Alex, make sure you’ve got the lights on in the viewport, that switches the IBL on for the reflection. I’d have to have more information. I’m testing it in Maya 2018 update 3 and it’s still fine. I did think they had some issues in a specific Maya version maybe 2018 update 2. So be sure to be on the latest update.

    • Andrew Silke
      June 7, 2018 at 8:50 pm ·

      For others, Alex ended up finding his video card is a little old and can’t support the IBL textures, should work fine on modern machines.

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