Model Turntables

This page is for rendering out model turntables for show reels. It’s already a little dated and in 2016 some of the process is a lot easier but it should be helpful. We go through the Mental Ray Setup including some MILA shaders right through to After Effects compositing. The compositing can be just as important as the rendering so make sure you look at that section.

We’ll explore two simple lighting setups for turntable creation…
1. An IBL setup that uses one directional light and the IBL spherical image for fill.
2. A three point area light setup with MR type Area lights

These two methods are designed for compositing a background in post either in AE or Nuke. They include a shadow onto an invisible ground plane which can be removed easily if desired.
We can make a ramp shader or any texture in Maya but while rendering the image sequence we’ll want to switch to a black background and comp it in later.

Lastly we’ll look at the creation of RGB mattes for compositing in After Effects. There’ll be a class covering the grading process in AE too. And we can see the creation of wireframe renders as well. I’d also like to add occlusion layering, rgb mattes and frishluft depth of field. (coming soon)

There’s many styles of turntables, at some stage I’ll create a pinterest page showing some common styles for still images. Many times we can use actual geometry for the background, this might include a studio like rounded room for final gather bounce, tables, stands, black bgs, white cards geometry for reflection and other tricks and techniques. If I have time I’ll add these later.

For reels remember it’s often best to cut turntables together, show close up detail with panning moves, mix up the camera’s a little. The best reference for this is found in car commercials in studio lighting, showing of the details of cars. It’s often done very well. If you plan to do an edit style always render the images in playblast first and cut to music before taking the time to get the lighting right.

*Please note the above Yoki video turntable is 40sec but the passes rendered were only a 200frame repeated loop. It’s not recomended to have the full 40 sec for a show reel and if your model has details be sure to cut the camera in closer as well as per car ads mentioned above. 20 sec per model is plenty for a reel in most cases.

Below are some examples of student work, all rendered in Mental Ray.

Chopper – Tim Krakowiak – 360

XWing Gerrard Southam – 360

Train – Luca D’Annunzio – 360

Munster Mobile – Murray Gardner – Montage

Moon Buggy – Robert Snars – Montage

Professor – Andrew Silke – 360