This course, from professor and VFX artist Charles Chorein dives into methods for look development using Maya and Arnold. It has been updated for Maya 2019 and recent releases of Arnold.
Charles Chorein is a Lead LookDev/Lighting at MPC with 10 yearsof experience. He has been working in London since 2009 and has achieved various movies such as The Hobbit, Prometheus ,The Hunger Games 2, Superman: man of steel, Harry Potter 7, Pirate ofthe Caribbean 4, Despicable Me and recently Terminator Gensys. He is currently involved in the next The Jungle Book from Disney.
course syllabus
Class 1: Layout
The scene is started with the asset in the default position, the layout is set up in Maya, and the default lighting setup is prepared with a grey and chrome sphere.
Class 2: Initial lighting
Before starting, we will check our model and make sure everything is ready to go (UV’s, UDIMS, Scale of the texture). Preparing our HDRI in Nuke adding our moonlight and get some direction lighting and create a grey pass.
Class 3: Creating shaders and attribute overrides
The render passes are set up with the attribute override and material override rules in Maya 2019. Understanding the difference between displacement in Arnold the Z-Displacement from ZBrush and how to get the resulting displacement correct in Arnold 5. Understanding why we need to convert and use the tx file generated by Arnold and understanding the purpose of mipmapping texture.
Class 4: More shaders and passes
Creating the shader for the cape, boots and armour with the shader preset in Arnold. Creating the beauty, shadow, and occlusion passes.
Class 5: Finishing touches
Completing the setup of global setting in Maya and rendering the different passes. A CG “slap comp” is also created in Nuke.