Build a Reusable Light Rig in Maya

In the visual world of CG, presentation is nearly as important to the final result as the artistic piece being presented. For this reason lighting tools and techniques will always be indispensable assets to your artistic toolset.

In this tutorial you will learn how to setup a basic lighting rig in Maya. Specifically, this tutorial covers Lighting, Cameras, Render Settings, and some basic touch-up techniques in Photoshop. Once you’ve completed this tutorial, you will have a light rig that you can use to quickly render out professional quality images of your model.

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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

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Discussion 44 Comments

  1. Joe says:

    Nice tutorials, and Maya now. Good to have a variety of tools on this site and its tuts.

  2. thank you, i was waiting for the maya.

  3. I don’t get what it is. All well I’m not a maya person.

  4. Tobias says:

    Thats´s a really great Tutorial .. I adapt it to CINEMA 4D
    And it works great !!!

  5. w1sh says:

    Trouble getting people to write tuts? Every 4 days? C’mon… I’m starvin’ here. ;)

    Keep trying your hardest guys.

  6. Dj says:

    Wow! Looks like screencasting for the CG type of tut makes it much, much more understandable.

  7. Mike Moran says:

    Great job! Fairly easy to follow even for beginners. This is the kind of stuff no one tells you about that can improve quality quickly. And love the post production tips too! Some post production tuts would be fantastic one CGTuts really gets up and going. Nice job again and thanks!

  8. Imran says:

    Really Amazing I like the whole things including lightings

  9. Ross says:

    Thanks for a Maya tutorial :D
    I will follow this later when i have time.

  10. chris says:

    wow great tutorial on light source and camera setup

    thanks alot

  11. arpafran says:

    It’s very fun i love maya!

  12. Bakaburra says:

    Great tutorial! It would be fantastic having the same explanation for C4D users!
    Otherwise, I love this new site. well done.

    Greetings.

  13. Menno says:

    nice tut! Would love to see more maya tutorials

  14. Mimo says:

    Thats what im talking about a video tut…Keep it up

  15. BHO says:

    Really nice tut… Keep them coming.. !

  16. Mike says:

    It’s a good result..

    A suggestion: I realize it’s not realistic to know the settings when creating on the fly, but the author should have cut it together so that it looked like he knew what setting to use for everything. Then, instead of tweaking every setting in a already long tutorial, he could explain the differences between what happens when you put the setting higher and lower and move on to the next step more smoothly.

    • Daniel says:

      dude, stop complaning. It´s free stuff. I keep seeing people complain on the comments in pretty much all Cg tuts.. Why dont you sign up and do a tutorial instead of complain.

  17. jdmaxwell says:

    Very nice tut! Render and lighting is a tricky art. This is gonna help tremendously Thanks!

  18. Leviathan says:

    Very Nice Tut!!!
    Hope more like this are comin’
    Specially for maya
    Chau

  19. Leo Shastri says:

    Nice Tutorial

  20. mike says:

    why are my comments always rejected?

  21. Ross says:

    I have followed the tutorial and for the next video tutorial i suggest you dont use shortcuts. It took me ages to find the button to get to the same tool or menu that you were using.

    Also next can you started to make modeling tutorials?

    • Ross says:

      Also next can you start** to make modeling tutorials? + Please :D

    • John says:

      I’m with this guy… You used a lot of shortcuts and it took me a lot of time to go find out how you did what you did, often having to dig into other tutorials online for that information. What could have been said in 2 seconds during the tutorial took me a good 5 minutes each time instead.

  22. rajkamal sharma says:

    hi.. when i rednrer my file , i found some error in my final reviewe..pls solov it

  23. Spiralboy says:

    much more easy to use is zdepth from maya as photoshop layer mask, disable mask and use lens blur filter, select “layer mask” as source, it’s easy to use and more accurate and independent from your blurring skills ;)

  24. sagameou says:

    this is good job

  25. erick says:

    i`ve been waiting for high quality maya tutorials like this one. is so nice to learn new techniques for this amazing software. thanks and keep up the good job

  26. A says:

    not to offend anyone..but if the result, is the rendering showed on the post…
    i wouldn’t bother watching this tutorial..
    maybe the next one ;-)
    sorry

  27. John doe says:

    It waould be nice if you could view this on a mobile device

  28. Oliver says:

    Great tut, I really enjoyed it and could follow it as a complete novice.

    There were just a couple of things that weren’t quite right about your lights. The colour of light is normally based on temperature. Tungsten has a lower colour temp and is a red/orange, then as lights get more powerful they become more blue, this includes daylight [except when you are talking about sunset/rise but that is to do with the atmosphere]. Florescent lights are green in nature, but nowadays are either balanced to either tungsten [32k] or daylight [56k]. White light is just somewhere in the middle of tungsten and daylight.

    Also, the ‘rim light’ you kept on talking about is just called a ‘back light’; rim lighting is just a style of photography.

    Sorry to be so pedantic, but I thought this info might help you out.

  29. Robin says:

    Useful tutorial…I will adapt it for 3ds Max though…

    Thanks a lot!

  30. jukjakjenes says:

    LOL! i had fun reading the comments. nice tut though. haha

  31. AzteKpr1de says:

    Great tutorial, thanks!

  32. mhd says:

    wow,what a genius tech ,thanks alot man ..

  33. mubassiransari says:

    imagine wow thats a very helpful my work so its very helpful tutorial

  34. Tom says:

    Nice tutorial for begginers! Easy to follow and great step by step procedures! I like it!

  35. Muhammad Rafiq says:

    it’s nice i am new in maya

  36. manish says:

    pl add more maya tutorials..

  37. Rajesh says:

    Please add more interior and exterior maya tutorial….

  38. shapple says:

    increadible! so cool

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