rendering question in maya

Decoyz

first of all, i almost know next to nothing when it comes to rendering.
i know there are tutorials out there( mostly for vRay, mental ray, etc.), but those seem more geared towards animation and not games, unless im mistaken.

say i wanna prepare my models to be rendered in Unity, what do i use, and can anyone point me to the correct tutorials for this purpose.?

ysalex

> say i wanna prepare my models to be rendered in Unity, what do i use, and can anyone point me to the correct tutorials for this purpose.?

Unity is it's own application/engine. To render a realtime model in Unity, you will have to export your game-ready mesh out of Maya, and import it into Unity. You will also have to import all of the necessary textures into Unity.

In Unity, there are easy controls for setting up a shader for your model, and since 'rendering' is done in real time, what you see is what you get.

Easiest way to find a tutorial is googling it. Unity beginner tutorial. Import model into Unity. How to use texture in Unity. Whatever you need to know, just google until you find your answer.

Good luck.

Barbarian

You may want to check into Marmoset Toolbag. It is a real time rendering engine that is reasonably priced. It is great for testing and tweaking textures because the results update and if you are using two screens you can get fast feedback.

Unity lights are similar to Maya lights. I often set up a scene in Maya to test different lighting (you can use Viewport 2.0 in Maya to get a "feel" for real time rendering with lighting mode on, but normal maps won't display correctly and only a limited number of lights are supported). I then set up similar lighting in Unity and tweak it. Use deferred lighting with higher quality for the best Unity results (unless you are working on a mobile game). Also you should learn about lightmapping in Unity to help enhance your lighting. Once you get your scene set up in Unity just take some screenshots in real time.

Decoyz

seems like a pain if i have to keep exporting and importing just to see what my model will look like. there no way to see what it would look like exactly ( including normal maps) without doing all that? i can imagine that it would feel annoying if i keep having to import/export after each little minor tweak.

and thanks
ill check out marmoset more, but i dunno if it's worth paying for just to avoid importing into unity constantly.

ZacD

Are you talking about previewing the model, textures, or mostly the normal map? If you are just editing textures, saving and reloading textures just takes 2 seconds to save and switch apps. Quixel's dDo allows previewing textures in photoshop.

ysalex

And the maya viewport is very capable of showing your normal mapped, textured and lit character.