IBL Workshop

My notes from Sang's class today on Image-Based Lighting:


IBL = Image Based Lighting - representation of real-world light.

You have to think about the size of your scene and environment.
Build your character in real scale instead of scaling up after texturing and rigging to avoid problems!
Check your working unit in Maya.
Linear: centimeters
(can change to meters if it suits better)
Can use measure tool to check measurement of object.
Camera attributes of selected camera:
Near Clip Plane: 0.001
Far Clip Plane: 10 000 000

Turn off Maya Defalt lighting.
Use Mental Ray for IBL.

Render Settings - 'Create' IBL in Indirect Lighting tab.
Change quality to production first then switch on Final Gather.
Point density 0.1 under Final Gather render settings.

Render stats in IBL globe attributes.
Turn off primary visibilty so you don't see it in final render.

All monitors are RGBs.
Linear Workflow:
'In practical terms, Linear workflow refers to a rendering workflow in which image gamma is carefully taken into account in order to assure proper light computations in a render' - Pixar 'Linear Workflow'

The two numbers to remember! 0.454 and 2.2

How to set up linear workflows in Maya?
Render window
Display - Colour Management
input = linear sRGB
output = sRGB

Hypershade:

Use directional light.
Use ray trace shadows.
Leave light rays and shadow rays as low as possible.

How to make available MIP shaders in Hypershade:
optionVat -intValue "MIP_SHD_EXPOSE" 1;

mip_rayswitch
mib_lookup_spherical

Copy rotate value in IBL globe.
Paste into mib_lookups.
Delete original IBL globe in render settings.