Texturing mentor

The vector render is available within Maya courtesy Electric Rain and is an excellent option for rendering in vector to Adobe flash. The Maya Hardware render is unlike the rest of the bunch because it uses the computer’s Graphics Processor for rendering and can be used very effectively with cards such as nVidia’s quodro FX range for quick and workable renders, ideal for fast previews in near production quality. Other than the ones above, the following are available as third party options for Maya.

Specularity or specular highlight: metals shine and give a bright and broad highlight, a plastic cue ball gives a small but very bright highlight, and dry skin has a very weak and spread out highlight whereas wet skin has a more prominent highlight. Objects shine and are glossy and this property itself can help you design a lot of things. This property in CG is rendered to as secularity.
Roughness: Also called as Bumpiness, defines the objects roughness. For instance, a piece of brick is rough whereas a piece of silk is not; raw wood is rough whereas a polished wood is smooth.

A Renderer computes geometry, material and light information and hence it is very important to understand each element as they work in a cohesive an optimized environment, the control of which is in the hands of animator. Before we go deep into shaders and textures, it is important to understand shading in a more practical way. We all observe in the real world, but do we really look at things as we should be? Artists and animators have to see the world in very interactive details. After all, it is a reflection of our observation skills. Hence to work on shading and lighting observational skills must be developed.

Turtle is a radically faster photorealistic render that is fully integrated with Maya. Turtle is based on the second generation Liquid light rendering technology, which provides the user with superior rendering performance while still being easy to use.
With release of Pixar’s Renderman for Maya, even novices will be able to get a real taste of Pixar’s excellent rendering technology. Renderman for Maya features complete integration into Maya’s workflow with full support for Maya’s integral feature such as fur, hair, PaintFX etc.

This again, is a hardware based render from nVidia corporation and is optimized for their excellent range of graphics processor and cards. Gelato 2.0, the latest version uses the Sorbetto relighting technology which enables you to make lighting changes to your scene interactively. With Sorbetto, you work with the final image, not an intermediate or proxy one, so when you relight you are seeing the end product. Sorbetto makes lighting far more efficient, drastically reducing the iteration time for lighting changes, and enabling on the spot directional and artistic decision making.