Maya Lighting - Introducing Maya 2011 - page 472

Each light-emitting object in your CG scene doesn't necessarily need its own Maya
light. Rendering tricks such as glow (for glow effects, see “Lighting Effects” later in this
chapter) can simulate the effect that a light is turned on without actually having to use
a Maya light. Of course, if you need the practical light to illuminate something in the
scene, you need to create a light for it.

Maya Lights
Six types of light are available in Maya: Ambient, Directional, Point, Spot, Area, and
Volume. These lights are also used when rendering in mental ray. How you use each
dictates whether they become key, fill, or rim lights. Each light can fill any of those roles,
although some are better for certain jobs than others. The most commonly used light
types for most scenes are Spot, Directional, and Ambient. All of these Maya lights render
in Maya software as well as mental ray.
To create each light, choose Create ➔ Lights, and click the light type.

Common Light Attributes
Lights in Maya are treated like any other object node. They can be transformed, rotated,
scaled, duplicated, deleted, and so forth and are visible as nodes in the Hypergraph and
Outliner alongside other objects in the scene. Like any other node,
lights have attributes that govern how they function. Figure 10.8
shows the Attribute Editor for a typical light.
When you select any light type and then open the Attribute
Editor, you'll see the following attributes and options:

Figure 10.8
A typical light's
Attribute Editor

Type This drop-down menu sets the type of light. You can change
from one light type to another (for instance, from Spot to Point) at
any time.

Color This attribute controls the color cast by the light. The darker
the color, the dimmer the light will be. You can use Color in conjunc-
tion with Intensity to govern brightness, although it's best to leave
that to Intensity only.

Intensity This attribute specifies how much light is cast. The higher
the intensity, the brighter the illumination will be.

Illuminates by Default This check box deals with light linking, or the
ability to illuminate specific objects with specific lights. Clearing this
check box causes the light not to illuminate all objects by default,
requiring you to link the light to objects you do want it to light. Keep
this check box checked unless you're linking lights to specific objects.
This chapter will briefly touch on light linking later.