In Volume 9 of this 'Transforming Robot Production Pipeline' series, we will discuss the techniques that were used and some of the issues that were encountered during the lighting and rendering of this transforming robot project. We will look at how we went about matching the lighting between our CG and live-action elements, setting up our materials and textures, and rendering all of the passes and other information that our compositing artists will be using during Volume 10 of this series.

We will begin the tutorial by learning the importance of a proper linear workflow whenever dealing with lighting scenarios where realism is of the utmost importance. We will learn how to set up and place light sources within our scene, we will discuss concepts regarding real-world light behavior, and how those principles become very important during the lighting of our scene, as well as many additional topics, tips and techniques that you can put to immediate use in your own studio lighting scenarios.

These videos will walk through the essential tools for creating photorealistic materials. We'll start with establishing our shading toolkit through the various models of simulating real-world light interactions. Then we'll jump into a series of challenging material types, and develop the basic shading networks required to make them happen.

Throughout the tutorial, we'll cover all of the hidden details that are needed to use HDR imagery for lighting in Maya. We'll start with physically based lighting, world scene scale, color management, proper render preview and verification of valid floating point linear color images. Once the rules for using HDR images are clearly laid out, we will take a look at how you can create your own HDR images at home using a DSLR camera, tripod, nodal head and software. Lastly, we'll go over examples of using and editing these images for a variety of indoor and outdoor lighting situations as well as covering light extraction and making HDR kooks from an HDR photo of a light.

We will begin with an explanation of the linear workflow process, and help to clarify exactly why a linear workflow is needed is order to get lighting results that are much more realistic. From there, we will learn the various steps for setting up a linear workflow in Maya, including the use of Maya's Color Management features, gamma-correcting images and textures to be rendered and displayed correctly, maintaining a proper linear workflow during the compositing phase, and many additional tips and techniques that will help you get much more realistic lighting results with significantly less effort.

Having a solid understanding of the features of mental ray is a crucial step toward becoming an efficient and productive rendering artist in Softimage. We will begin our tutorial by learning several methods for simulating realistic indirect lighting in Softimage, such as global illumination, final gather, as well as Importons and Irradiance Particles. We will also explore the use of caustics to simulate the light patterns created as light passes through refractive surfaces. In addition, we will also explore Image-based lighting techniques, camera and environment shaders, utilizing render passes and render channels, as well as many other tools and techniques that will allow you start rendering high quality work for a multitude of projects.

Intended for small-scale productions, this tutorial walks through one lighting and rendering workflow that introduces new tools, techniques, and workarounds. We will exploit the environment-sampling power of portal lights, build a fake GI solution with projected light fields, and use MEL scripts to automate tedious tasks. These methods won't work for every scenario, but they can be very useful tools for the guerrilla CG filmmaker.

The ability to realistically light an interior environment is a skill that is highly sought after in the CG industry. It is a skill that is used very heavily in areas such as feature films, games, and architectural visualizations. This course will explore the entire, step-by-step process of lighting your scenes. We will start by learning how to make sure that our lights are behaving in a way that is physically accurate by utilizing real-world light data in our scenes. From there, we will learn how to incorporate realistic secondary illumination into our scenes, learn how to create physically-accurate materials in Maya, and explore many techniques and workflows designed to help you overcome many of the common issues that you are likely to encounter in your own scenes.

Popular highlights include: Hard Surface Modeling; Polygon Modeling Techniques; Understanding Fabrication Process; Motorcycle Parts and Components Overview; NURBS to Build Motorcycle Frame; Adding Realism with Modeled Detail; mental ray Shaders to Blend Complex Geometry; Booleans to Create Complex Shapes; Creating Seam Detail; Adding Welds to Metal Pieces; Adding Bevels to Edges; Modeling Different Types of Materials; Adding Imperfections and Details; Applying Different Surface Materials; HDRI Lighting; Car Paint Shader; Using Naming Conventions; Setting up Hierarchies for Posing; Re-purposing Geometry; Tire Treads with Bump Map.

Popular highlights include: Modeling with Blueprint References; Establishing Automotive Line Flow; Building Volume with Curves; Shaping Geometry to Avoid Dents; Generating Curves from Geometry; Modeling Contoured Panels; Re-directing Edge Flow; Adding Scoops to Curved Surfaces; Re-paramaterizing Curves; Converting Geometry Types; Mirroring Detail; Merging and Extracting Geometry; Welding Points and Edges; Creating Fitted Panels; Creating Complex Body Details; UV Mapping Techniques; mental ray Materials; Building Car Paint Shaders; Creating Brushed Metal Effects; Overcoming Modeling Challenges; mental ray Lighting Setup; Adding Tire Tread with Bump Maps; Final Gather for Indirect Lighting.

Popular highlights include: Emitting Photons from Light Sources; Fine-tuning Global Illumination Results; Smoothing Global Illumination Results with Final Gather; Using Architectural Materials in XSI; Overriding Photon Properties; Adding Realism with Ambient Occlusion; Utilizing Multi-bounce Final Gather as GI Alternative; Outputting Images to 32-bit .EXR Format; Modifying Geometry for Optimal Global Illumination; Setting up Render Passes in XSI; BSP Memory Optimization Techniques; Using Custom XSI Shaders; Compositing Rendered Passes in External App; Adjusting Exposure Settings.

Popular highlights include: Fast Skin Shader in mental ray; Sub-surface Scattering Techniques; Generating Sub-dermal Maps; Generating Epidermal Maps; Creating Shading Networks; Adding Bump Maps; Adding Specularity; Scene Maintenance; Creating Hair Strands with Paint Effects; Adding Digital Makeup; Creating Lighting Setup ; Effects of Light on Skin. Disclaimer: Some photographic reference contains nudity and is intended for mature audiences.

Popular highlights include: Establishing Automotive Line Flow; Creating NURBS Curve Framework; Modeling Contoured Panels; Adding Sub-D Resolution; Avoiding Creases and Dents with Edge Spacing; Adding Scoops to Curves Surfaces; Extracting Useful Geometry; Mirroring Detail; Troubleshooting Common Edge Loop Issues; Creative Uses of Extrusions; Converting Between Geometry; Moving Points Along Normals; Adding Tire Tread with Bump Maps; Modeling using Deformers; HDR Lighting Setup; mental ray Shading Techniques; Automotive Terminology and Concepts.

Popular highlights include: Setting up Environmental Geometry; Light Placement Techniques; Emitting Photons from Light Source; Visualizing Photon Maps in Viewport; Tuning Photon Intensity; Smoothing GI Photons with Final Gather; Incorporating Maya and mental ray Materials; Adjusting Photonic Attributes of Materials; Altering Geometry for Optimum GI; Rendering Images to HDR Format; Adding realism with Ambient Occlusion; Fine-tuning Renders with External Apps; Adjusting Exposure with Camera Lens Shaders; Using Multi-bounce Final Gather as GI Alternative; Creating and Storing Rendering Presets.

Popular highlights include: Global Illumination; Final Gathering; Photon Emission; Render Speed Optimization; HDR Lighting; Caustics; Subsurface Scattering; Realistic Skin Effects; Cartoon-style Rendering; Depth of Field; Render Map; Lighting and Shading Nodes; Render Tree.