Advanced Maya Texturing and Lighting- P4: I should stress that I am self-taught. In 1994, I sat down at a spare seat of Alias PowerAnimator and started hacking away. After several years and various trials by fire, 3D became a livelihood, a love, and an obsession. Along the way, I was fortunate enough to work with many talented artists at Buena Vista Visual Effects and Pacific Data Images. In 2000, I switched from PowerAnimator to Maya and have since logged tens of thousands of hours with the subject of this book | Creating High-Quality Shadows 3 Shadows are an inescapable part of the physical world. Unless an animation is intended for a stylized look high-quality shadows are a necessity for a professional render. Depth map and raytrace shadows can be fine-tuned to match many lighting scenarios. In addition you can shadow advanced effects in Maya including Light Fog Maya Fur Paint Effects Maya Hair nCloth and the Toon system. To make the shadow-rendering process more efficient you can link shadows. 69 CREATING HIGH-QUALITY SHADOWS Chapter Contents Depth map methodology Fine-tuning and troubleshooting depth maps Adjusting raytrace shadows Linking and unlinking shadows Applying shadows to Light Fog Creating shadows with Paint Effects Creating shadows with Maya Fur and Hair System Using shadows with nCloth and the Toon system Rendering Depth Maps Depth maps are easy to apply and efficient to render. Unfortunately their default quality is generally poor. You can improve the quality by adjusting various attributes and applying specific lighting strategies. Understanding Depth Maps When the Use Depth Map Shadows attribute is checked for a spot directional point area or volume light Maya creates a temporary depth map see Figure . Shadows Shadow Color 1 r Depth Map Shadow Attributes P Use Depth Map Shadows Resolution 512 J P UseMidDist P Use Auto Focus Focus 90 000 -----J----- 70 CHAPTER 3 CREATING HIGH-QUALITY SHADOWS Filter Size 1 j Bias 0 001 J------ Fog Shadow Intensity fi J Fog Shadow Samples 20 Figure The Depth Map Shadow Attributes section of a spot light s Attribute Editor tab The depth map represents the distance between surfaces in the scene and the shadow-casting light from the light s point-of-view. This information is stored as a monochromatic Z-depth buffer see Figure . Objects far from the light receive dark pixels and objects closer to the light receive light pixels. Figure A depth map When a surface point is rendered its distance to the shadowing .
