Summary

Lighting, hand in hand with materials, determines the final look of your rendering. Learning how to create and edit lighting helps you improve the quality of the renders you produce. In this chapter, you've learned the following basics:

• The different types of lights You now understand the differences between Spot, Ambient, Point, Directional, and Area lights and know how the lights function.

• Positioning lights in the scene Working with lights is similar to working with normal objects in Maya. With the Light Manipulator tool, you can easily control the light's pivot and center of interest.

• Basic attributes for lights You can change many light attributes in Maya. By practicing with these attributes, you'll be able to predict the result of changing a value, thus saving time when trying to light your scene.

• Raytraced and Depth Map shadows Understanding the two different shadow types helps you decide where they would be best used.

• The value of IPR rendering Speed is an issue when you're working on an animation. With IPR rendering, you can quickly see the results of changes you have made to a scene's lighting.