Maya Lighting - Mimicking Uncharted Design Lab Look

Will Harris · Mar 2013

Hey Guys,

Doing a level design test and want to do up some nice renders on it to be more legible, like the Uncharted 3 Design Labs: http://www.naughtydog.com/images_blog/2012_10_23_LabMapJunki2_960.png

Any suggestions on how to get a nice soft simple lighting solution like that for an out door space? Mental Ray is totally fine to use since it's just for presentation. Also, any material tweaks I'd need to do? Not used to doing stuff up lighting straight in Maya, always exported it out to an engine for final results, but this test is 100% Maya.

Thanks,
Will
http://wharris.wordpress.com

BARDLER · Mar 2013

The easiest thing to do is make a few materials of each color you want, and then create a mental ray ambient occlusion shader. Connect the same ambient occlusion shader to all off the other color materials in the ambient color input. With a directional light in the scene it should yield a similar result.

Make sure you set the samples of your ambient occlusion up, and the shadow rays up on your light to make sure the shadows render nicely.

bugo · Mar 2013

It looks to me that all of the radiosity and AO are on the verts, not on maps. Turtle is also a really good and fast solution for that.

Will Harris · Mar 2013

Thanks guys, appreciate the suggestions. I don't have Turtle so I'll just have to slum it with Mental Ray I guess

Will Harris · Mar 2013

Figured out a really fast solution, attaching it in case anyone else has an interest in doing something similar.

-will

Maya Lighting - Mimicking Uncharted Design Lab Look

Replies