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mental ray Workflows in Maya 2015: Final Gather

by Eddie Russell

The difference in a good render and a great one often can be tied directly to the indirect lighting you've applied to your scene. Software required: Maya 2015.

What you'll learn

The difference in a good render and a great one often can be tied directly to the indirect lighting you've applied to your scene. Final Gather is one method for creating indirect lighting when rendering with mental ray in Maya that can produce some highly realistic results. This Maya tutorial will start out by breaking down Final Gather so you know exactly how it is working behind the scenes. From here we'll dive in deeper and begin to learn how we can start tailoring Final Gather to provide the best possible indirect illumination for our scene in an efficient manner. We'll cover things like how to adjust the density and distribution of Final Gather points as well as the rays they emit. Next we'll learn how to save and reuse Final Gather point data from one render to the next. This course will even cover how to make sure that your Final Gather results are able to penetrate transparent surfaces. After completing this Maya training, you'll have an excellent grasp on Final Gather so you can start using it more efficiently to create truly beautiful indirect lighting results in your own renders. Software required: Maya 2015.

About the author

Eddie began teaching creative professionals over ten years ago for Digital Tutors. In 2014 Digital Tutors was acquired by Pluralsight and he continued his focus on creating high quality training for artists in both the film and games industries. With a background in graphic design and illustration Eddie has always been focused on visual appeal. This can be seen through his courses in which he shares secrets for achieving production level quality for concept art, illustrations, textures, mater... more

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