Need assistance with Arnold render settings (tips for Bloom, lighting, PBR rendering)

Alfax

Hey there!

I’ve been meaning to complement my portfolio for a while and I figured that something I was definitely missing was proper renders for all my models. I decided to work on a railgun design I’ve had in mind for a while and intended to make some screenshots as well as a turntable with animations, but unfortunately I’m at my wit’s end when it comes to Maya’s render settings. I’ve managed to set up my Substance Painter textures in a way that PBR rendering looks good, but the lighting is still messy. Arnold Skydome lights provide a good neutral background and base light, but I’m not sure how to proceed from there. That and Maya’s lack of bloom makes the emissive lights on my model lack any impact that would otherwise be present if I stuck to Substance Painter 2 renders.

This is how the railgun’s barrel looks on Substance Painter 2:

And this is how the gun looks assembled in Maya:

Granted the textures I’m using here are unfinished and lack certain decals, but there’s just something about the way I’m handling things that makes my work look very different in Maya, and I can’t say I’m a huge fan of how the renders are turning out. I’m still fairly new to Arnold so getting used to it has been pretty wild. It seems like a lot of the things I knew how to do with Metal Ray are no longer the same with Arnold so I've been wondering if Blender or 3ds Max have better/more flexible settings for rendering if worse comes to worst.

PS: I don’t have a whole lot of experience in post. I say this knowing that a lot of the replies will be about needing to do bloom/glare in post instead, and I wouldn’t even know where to start there for an animated turntable. Any tips and suggestions on how to do so would be greatly appreciated. I'm always up for learning new things!

Eric Chadwick

Learn about lighting, the way photographers shoot real products. There's a ton of info out there.

Random example, searching "product lighting 3d"
https://cgsociety.org/news/article/3498/studio-lighting-using-maya-and-arnold

Alfax

Ohh, this looks extremely informative, thank you so much! This is already some great help.

singhs_apps

for a simple model like yours, remove the HDR Bg and use traditional lights. Use interesting angles to catch surface contours, changes etc.