Introduction
This week, I focused on the lighting of my scenes and setting up the Maya Files for the Render Farm. In this sense, I focused on the more technical aspect of the project.
Lighting
Given the fact that I have never properly worked with lighting, I asked my classmates to help me set up the scenes. Special thanks goes to Shizra Manzar, Jixuan Chen and Roos Stolk, who kindly explained me how to create the environment lights for my animation.
Environment Lights
What follows next, is the list of the lights I used in my scene and their purpose:
- Skydome Lights (for the purple tone and brightness)
- Directional Light (for the moonlight)
- Area Lights (for the fog effect in the forest)
It is also worth mentioning, that I learned how to use relationship editors. In this way, I could enable or disable which objects are affected by the different lights.
Render Farm
In order to setup the scenes for the render farm, I had to define the format of my animation and make sure that the Arnold Renderer was enabled. I also used in the environment setting the aivolumetric environment to create the fog effect in the scenes. I also had to increase the samples of the lights to decrease the grainy texture of my renders.
Setting up The Files
In order to set up the files for the render farm, I needed to make sure to set the project of the Maya file in order to have all the assets and textures linked. For this purpose, I also created a list in which I detailed the frame range I needed to render for each shot.
Some Challenges I faced
Some of the issues I faced were that I set up the wrong frame number or wrong camera. In this sense, it is always advisable to double check if the results turned out fine.
Another major issue I faced during the rendering process was that the university server was not working properly, and therefore, my renders failed. Even though I executed the rendering process over the past weeks, I could not rerender some of my shots properly.
Unfortunately, even though I spent several times trying to sort the technical issues out with the IT team, I had to use my personal laptop to render many of the frames. This implied major setbacks in terms of my time management planning and it was truly frustrating not being able to fix these issues.
Critical Reflection
When it comes to the lighting, it was truly rewarding to learn the different uses of lights (skydome, area light and directional light). It was also highly beneficial to use the relationship editor to manually adjust how the lights are affecting the objects and creating shadows.
In addition, I truly enjoy learning from other classmates with more experience than I do, and I will surely implement their advice in my future animations.
When it comes to the rendering process, I learned that I always have to double check if the renders turned out as expected to avoid mistakes in my animation.
On the other hand, I learned that the rendering process is extremely technical, and therefore, I have to be meticulous when I set up the scenes.