Lighting/Rendering general guides and best practices?

MattJQuint

Hi folks and happy Friday,

First post on polycount so I wanted to start with something simple. There might already be a thread about this, but I guess my questions would be about lighting and rendering best practices. Its something I've always been a bit confused about. Below are just some speakers I modeled really quickly. Even for simpler assets I think the presentation should still be as good as possible. I have a 3-4 point lighting system and just a blank curved background. I modeled with Maya and rendered with Arnold. I'm sure the steps will vary greatly depending on the subject matter. I guess my questions would be for setups concerning portfolio ready renders and potential model selling;

Is this enough?
Do I need some kind of special background?
Should there even be a background? Just a plain color?
Should I always do turntables?
Always include wireframes?

Any critiques or comments will go a long way, so thanks for your time!

teodar23

For what? What is your end goal? Are you doing the models to sell online or for your portfolio or what?
It depends greatly but what you have here should suffice for showing off your models.

MattJQuint

Yeah it was a bit ambiguous haha, but thanks for the comment! Mostly for portfolio render's and model selling I'd say, I'd probably add more views and turnarounds, some wireframes but I was just curious as to how other people might set up their shots and renders.