Painting the Forest Spirit - ZBrush Creature Design: Creating Dynamic Concept Imagery for Film and Games - page 561

With the backdrop in place, we are now ready to create the lights for our scene. Follow these steps to create
a key and backlight using Maya's directional lights.
1. Create a directional light by clicking create ⇒ lightsDirectional. Press E to enter Rotate mode. Press
the number 7 at the top of the keyboard to display lighting in the viewport and rotate the light at an angle
similar to what's seen in Figure 9-23 .
Figure 9-23: The light angle menu
2. Press Ctrl to open the Attribute Editor. Open the shadows options. Set the angle to 10 and the rays to 50.
A lower angle setting creates a sharper shadow and more rays reduce the graininess but will also increase
the overall render time ( Figure 9-24 ).
3. Duplicate this light by pressing Ctrl + D and rotate the second light to point at the figure's back—this
will be the rim light ( Figure 9-25 ). The Attribute Editor should still be open. If not, press Ctrl + A while
the light is selected.
Figure 9-24: Altering the shadow settings