As we have seen in previous work, often one light just isn't enough to fully illuminate a scene. Often lighting artists employ a scheme known as 3-point lighting to fully illuminate all aspects of the object needing to be lit. A break down of the placement of these lights can be seen below. Also note that the Key light and Rim light are usually the most intense, and are set to cast shadows, while the fill light often doesn't cast any shadows.

Note the position of all of the lights used to help fill in the character and bring it off the background.

Toonshaders:
Toonshaders can be made in about 4 different general ways, each with a different look, and means of outputting the information. We will discuss these different ways in class:

Maya Software Ramp Shader, Toon Fill, and Toon Outlines

HERE ARE SOME OPTIONS FOR RENDERING TOON EFFECTS
USING THE MAYA SOFTWARE AND VECTOR RENDERERS:


These effects shown below can ONLY be rendered in Maya Software using the toon fill and outlines features:

 

Maya Vector Render

Click on the image below for a .PDF file explaining simple toon shading with the Vector Render

 

Mental Ray Contour Shader:
Click on the image below to learn how to render clean wireframes or toonshaders with the MR Contour Shader:

 

 

Maya 2009 (and later) UV enhancement features:

Homework/Final Project: Texturing a Head. Use a head you have modeled in a previous class, use one of the blank demo heads (see the link below), or if you are a speedy modeler, you can create one from scratch. You will be painting texures for this head and applying appropriate materials. Minimum Requirements for this project are a Color Map and a Difference Map of Some sort (bump, displacement, normal). More points of course for specular maps, textured hair, eyes, composited with vector outlines, rim shaded skin shaders, sub surface scattering in mental ray, or any other experimentation. This will be due in Week 11 AT THE BEGINING OF CLASS. Take a look at my image below for some guidance.

DOWNLOAD THE DEMO FILES HERE:

UVing with the "Field Goal" Method:

This method gets its name from the shape that is cut into the back of the head, and in my opinion is the best way to unwrap a model with as little distortion as possible.

First, turn on the Texture Border Edges Display:

Then, Select your head and perform a planar map from the front using the follow settings:

Once we have that axis mapped you will have a face with a single planar projection:


Select the edges that make up a field goal shape along the back of the head and choose Cut UV Edges (the scissor tool) in the UV texture editor. You will now notice those edges become thicker because of the display setting we have previously enabled.

Select all the UVs on the head and use the Smooth UV tool's Unfold function to flatten out the head:

Here's how it should look at the end:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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