Arnold's Lights and Incandescence for Maya 2018

Hi Creators,
In the last tutorial, we learned how to model the sci fi room. In this tutorial, we will start to light our environment AND learn about Arnold's Incandescence! It's a full packed tutorial. Don't forget to wait at the end for the PLUS portion.
In this tutorial, we cover how to use Mesh Lights, Emission, Area Lights, PLUS Light Editor window, and more!
This is a tutorial series, so keep an eye out for more! :)
Download the FREE model at: www.academicph...
Software used: Maya 2018, Arnold
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[@kskorski]

Tip: You shouldn't work with "Show Original Mesh" and "Light Visible" options both switched on at the same time. It is hard to find information about this even in "arnold docs" but the way that mesh light works is, it create second surface which emit light exactly overlaping the original mesh. When both options are switched on engine have hard time to choose which one to render. In result it render once the original mesh with applied material, and other time the mesh light. By default both options are switched off. When you create mesh light and want that light to be visible directly for the camera you should use "Light visible" option. That way the engine control the look of "light" shape according to apllied texture or color temperature and total brightness of the light. This is physically correct. If for whatever reason you want to change direct look (indirect look like in the mirror will be still controled by arnold mesh light unless you swich off specular visibility in visibility section of the light) turn on "Show Original Mesh" and apply a material to the original mesh to give it desirable appearance.

[@acrokrim4205]

A good explanation and tip, thank you friend.

[@kevbri11]

very rare to find a tutorial that is properly narrated and edited, good job!

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Glad you liked it!

[@MALVERDE245]

I really like your voice, I enjoy learning a lot watching your tutorials

[@Denethorable]

Thankyou! That part where you couldn't get the mesh to display was relatable.

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Glad I'm not the only one, Randy! :)

[@husbyhogan]

thanks for your tutorials. I am new to Arnold, it helps a lot to have it properly explained. THANK YOU!

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Thank you for the comment, husbyhogan! The more I use Arnold, the more I'm amazed by it. :) And you are very welcome!

[@erwinbijlsma8712]

Just finished watching about 6 tutorials on lighting! I really enjoyed the way you communicate the information, having watched numerous tutorials, I can safely say yours are fun and infromative to watch. Not to much BS, sometimes a laugh and in general to the point. Thanks!

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Thank you! Glad you like it. Hope you you learned a few new things. :)

[@eneskaganduman9031]

Thanks for great tutorials. I think the reason for renders behave unpredictably is you check both show original mesh and light visible. So there is two surface at same location one is mesh and the other is light. So arnold can't decide which one to render. Check only light visible.

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

I believe you are right! Thank you for the comment, Enes. :)

[@Chilledoutredhead]

great tutorial :) . one tip for setting your camera view if you dont want to use keyframes, View > bookmarks > edit bookmarks > new bookmark. this way you can have several views with one camera and easily switch between them all.

[@Dusklily]

Amazing tutorial, this was exactly what i was looking for and very well explained! :D Thank you!

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Excellent! So happy to hear that Sophie! I hope it was helpful. :)

[@caseyhusselmann]

I always like the plus side, Thank you for making these videos🙏🤗

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

You are so welcome! Thank you for watching :)

[@kalelmcgrif1]

Awesome tutorial. i don't know if you know this but you can use the Bookmark feature, (View-Bookmarks-edit bookmark) to add a placeholder for your camera. Then you can give it a name and apply. Then all you have to do is go to , View-Bookmarks- and the name of your bookmark to jump to that camera angle. you can add multiple bookmarks as well. Again, i dont know if you know this already, its an older video but i thought i might mention it anyway. Awesome videos. i have liked and subscribed.

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Good tip! There are several ways to tackle this, and bookmark feature is one! Whatever works. Thank you for your support. :)

[@Darrcness]

Thank you so much, I love your tutorials! You're awesome!

[@shoozki]

this has helped me out so so much, thank you!!

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

I'm so happy to hear that this was helpful, Shoozki! Thank you for watching :)

[@artist_me]

your tutorials are best... thanku for sharing your knowledge with us..👍 and one more thing your voice is so sweet...😊

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Thank you Arjun! That is very kind. I'm glad you liked my tutorials. :)

[@sonurohilla20]

I was Problam in lighting maya Now i'm clear😁 thax mam...

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

That's great 👍!!

[@themauriciobunch2442]

Thank you so much for this tutorial. it was amazingly helpful! It was exactly what I was looking for!

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Excellent! I'm happy to hear this helped you, Vicat. :)

[@varionpereira8889]

This tutorial really helped me out. Thank you !!

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

You're very welcome! Thank you for watching Varion

[@peacefulrage750]

Amazing! This’ll come in handy for my final!

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Awesome! Glad it's helpful. :)

[@lolpeace11]

Thanks a lot, it's very helpful and clear

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Glad it was helpful!

[@Ankhaunt]

Thank you miss for this awesome video. I learned a new thing today in Maya.

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Thanks great to hear, Ankit! Thank you!

[@CarrotQuest80]

The reason those mesh lights weren't working right is because of the inter-penetration of the geometry. Scale up the actual lightchairringX_geo and then they will look right. Cool demo. Thanks for sharing. I have to learn rendering for a job and this is my first rendering tutorial I settled on.

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Nice tip. Thank you for sharing!

[@JonBoa]

When I add an Arnold Mesh-Light to a Mesh, I can't get the Light to spin in tandem with the mesh. I added a rotation keyframe to both the light and mesh in the channel box. The mesh moves but the light won't. Can't figure it out. Any help is appreciated!

[@stargazer2350]

so helpful! thanks very much

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Thank you for your comment, stargazer! I’m glad it was helpful!

[@TheDanGoldstein]

This is great, I've been trying to work on glowing objects recently! Is there a way to get a star wars lightsaber style glow to an object with Arnold? I know its kind of an exaggerated/unrealistic glow and that Arnold is based on real world attributes, so the only way I've come up with is going back to a standard blinn material for it. Thanks!

[@cynicalia]

did you figure it out?

[@TheDanGoldstein]

@@cynicalia I did not but I think it might now be possible with Maya's Imagers and Lens Effects - could be an Arnold thing.

[@aaronmeakin9568]

Hey thanks for the tutorial, when I apply the lighting as a texture it comes out really flat and with no glow or shadows unlike yours in the render and was wondering if you knew why?

[@aaronmeakin9568]

Im leaving this here in case anyone is stupid enough to do what i did. It obviously wont create shadows or reflection if theirs no background objects for shadows and and reflections to emit to.

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Great job troubleshooting Aaron! I'm glad you found a solution. :)

[@CristianGiuseppone]

With a simple shader with high emission is it possible to have also a volumetric effect? Or I have to switch to a mesh light?

[@keithkethoticus8838]

Hello Monica. I enjoy your tutes. Thank you for making the effort and doing so with such enthusiasm. I followed your futuristic conference room tutorial. I followed your steps, but then deviated and, I think, improved upon it. I created a simple camera move through the room, and set it to render. Problem: Render time vs. noise. I thought I had my render settings at just a good enough level, and some parts of the render looked quite nice. But, where the chair line-lights got thin, they flickered. Also, there thousands of barely-discernible-but-still-visible ants running all over the chair and table. And, with this, each 1920x1080 frame took about 30 mins each. Now, my system's fairly old -- a silver/metallic Mac tower, using two Xeons, 2 fairly powerful graphics cards, with about 32GB RAM. Also, including the five mesh lights, I placed about 6 spots with soft shadows. Question: Do you have Arnold render-optimization tutes? Thank you. And, keep up the nice work. Keith

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Hi Keith, Thank you for your comment. I'm thrilled to hear you are following along and making it stronger. Yes, noise is a always a problem when it comes to lighting. There are several ways to get rid of it, via the lights and render settings. Eventually the renders take too long, so compositing comes in. You can either render forever, or composite. I'll definitely have to add a tutorial on removing noise, both in Arnold and composting. Thank you for the suggestion!

[@keithkethoticus8838]

I replied via e-mail and I'm looking forward to your future tutorials, including one on solving the noise problem. (I also have another google account, 'kyakouboff', so I'll probably be watching with one of these two accounts.) Anyway, tanx.

[@josephhenry7495]

thx for tutorial. can i import this to unity with same light effect.

[@Mohd_Rababah]

ThankYou so much :) But how did you make the chairs and the table's light ?, because it's not allowed to use mesh light on the object's faces it needs to be on the full object .

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Sure! It's the next video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gHKxXmOwm6mUj5Y Hope that helps!

[@ainurasulaimanova2041]

hello guys may i ask how i can all chair i cant fixed? jump only one chair

[@anshikaanand3608]

Mam this mesh light scatter alot in render and also looks grainy,how do i adjust it?

[@insynxplays9038]

im trying to select faces instead of objects, is this why it says no transformation selected

[@ashlan3340]

OO GOD THAST A GOOD VIDEO, I will go to Academic Phoenix foR iNFORMATION

[@saunterfilms]

You are the best

[@luisdelaro5a]

where do you get the Light Editor window from?

[@ahmadkassem1160]

Thank you so very much for your fun and awesome tutorials. Despite following step by step, my ring looks like a bright plain, unlike yours where you can still see a solid ring emitting light. In other words, your rings look like neon tubes if u may, mine look like flat color plains with light around them,not really a 3d solid object emitting light. I'm using mesh light and material assigned is ai standard. (Maya 2017)

[@AakashKalaria]

For some reason, my Mesh lights have shitty antialiasing. I end up using an emissive material to have it emit lights and have good AA.

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

I'm glad the emissive material worked out!

[@leecaste]

The reason is that antialiasing averages two contrast pixels, for example if you have one white next to one black the average result is grey but when the white pixel goes beyond 1 (which is usually the case with light sources), let's say 3, the average result is 1.5 but everything beyond 1 is pure white, so what should be seen as grey because of the antialiasing is seen as white, you can use a color picker to check this, even if all pixels are white, the edges have a different value. Check this, it may help cgrenderdna.blogspot.com/2018/06/how-to-use-acescg-in-arnold-for-maya.html

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

I love it when other viewers help each other. Thank you Jc!

[@AakashKalaria]

@JC Thanks for the reply. Your explanation makes sense. But is there a way to use mesh lights *and* have AA? I am not sure if that article and it's settings would help with AA.

[@leecaste]

Aakash Kalaria I haven't tried AcesCG but HDRIs look burnt out in renders and they look correct in that article, try it I'm not sure and check out mesh lights in the arnold's user guide, maybe it says something about that issue. Also you can try checking clamp in the render settings and play with the limit. The user guide recommends using exposure and not intensity for lights, I'm not sure about mesh lights.

[@lilitbeglarian7942]

Thank you so much!

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

You are very welcome, Lilit. I'm glad it was helpful. :)

[@ph4minhat]

so usefull tut, thank you very muck!!!

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

You are very welcome! Thank you for watching!

[@kleberr5234]

how do objects stay with the smooth in mesh light ?

[@myvideosformeandi]

Very good stuff,! o/

[@Fannylai_3D]

Very helpful

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Thank you for your comment! I'm glad it's helpful!

[@munjeanand]

I've added the lighting in the ring but, in my render view, nothing is being displayed, it's completely black. So what settings should I make in the render settings?

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Thank you for your comment! If you made the ring into a mesh light, you need to increase the intensity of the light, or increase the exposure (exposure 's value is will exponentially increase your light's intensity). Also, use area lights to help light your scene more. I hope that helps!

[@munjeanand]

@@AcademicPhoenixPlus Thanks for your kind reply! Yes, I've increased the intensity of the light and it worked!!!!!

[@ronydey2696]

Great tutorial mam that's much helpful hi myself Rony an VFX student from India please also how to export alembic cache geo with texture and animation in foundary Nuke x for comp also CG PASS RENDER tutorials please mam..

[@jamesphilipfernandez9220]

Hi! Im having a problem, im doing exactly what ur doing but im not getting the same results : ((

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

I"m sorry you are not getting the same results, James. What does your render look like? If you like, feel free to post your results in my FB community. We'll help you out. :) facebook.com/groups/academicphoenixpluscommunity

[@thumulasrinivasarao1864]

Please Arnold night architecture lighting tutorial

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

I am working on some tutorials on lighting, so keep an eye out! :) By the way, you can find out about updates at academicphoenixplus.com and sign up for my newsletter. :)

[@anmcopico4228]

After a system crash.. I've tried to open my maya work file and it says unrecognized file type. Any idea about that??. Happily i don't have a backup. Also nice tutorial.

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Yikes, that doesn't sound good. I would try to import it into Maya (a new scene), and hopefully Maya will be able to read it. Otherwise, it might be gone. :( Sorry!

[@anmcopico4228]

@@AcademicPhoenixPlus After clicking the scene from "IMPORT" nothing happens. (I'm already started project again) Thanks for your reply.

[@somy_S]

Hello! Could you tell me, how to create glow light or light in real time viewport 2.0 avoid render in Maya 2017??

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Hi Somy, To get the glow affect, you have to render it. You can only preview it in the Viewport. I hope that helps!

[@somy_S]

What a pity! I need to show some objects with light in real time during presentations to my boss, to avoid also Vred waste time to convert file or make some renders.. Thank you very much!

[@aracturus6220]

Hey Monica! Can you pleeeeeez please please make a tutorial on how to make a mandelbulb in Maya using Arnold shading? I'd really appreciate that!

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Hi Aquib, thank you for your comment. Are you asking about fractals?

[@aracturus6220]

@@AcademicPhoenixPlus Yess! Those 3d fractals

[@aracturus6220]

@@AcademicPhoenixPlusplease refer to this link... support.solidangle.com/display/AFMUG/How+to+Render+a+Mandelbulb?desktop=true&macroName=multiexcerpt-include Just like them! Can you please make a tutorial?

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

I've never done it before, but I'll look into it. :) Thanks for the suggestion!

[@aracturus6220]

thank you so much! I'd really appreciate that!

[@Motdonchet7]

Thank Ad...^^

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

As always, thank you!

[@SweetLitzLM]

my arnold lights are glitchy as well :/

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Just turn of the geometry and it should work better. :)

[@Rajuuken]

yes, actually, I tested it and the fact is that if you uncheck ''show original mesh'' and check ''light visible'', the display problem should be solved. I know you probably have figured it out already but we never know :)

[@Domzdream]

See this is what bugs me with maya. Looking at you, seeing how experienced you are, and even though you’re doing everything right, it sometimes just reacts unpredictably, and so damn fiddly! I work in maya all the time but I must say, above all other programs, this software makes me wanna year my hair out from frustration!

[@dantevalentin4395]

You probably dont care but does any of you know a trick to get back into an Instagram account? I was dumb lost the login password. I appreciate any tips you can offer me!

[@Domzdream]

@@dantevalentin4395 I'm sure there are forums you can engage in on the internet specifically regarding instagram. I'd help you but I'm not very technical, I really wish I was. Sorry Dante. Good luck in getting your login back. It's such a bloody pain, I know!

[@shrinathjaiswal5610]

Thank you

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

You are very welcome! Thank you for watching. :)

[@anshikaanand3608]

Also thank you mam

[@shanejojoy1925]

Thanks

[@DisneyUpBoilerUp]

I really like watching your videos, but i can barely hear them, even at full volume. Their so soft.

[@baraashf7470]

thank you alot can we share our work with you?

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Sure! I have a facebook community if you want to share. Or you can contact me via e-mail (found at my website). :)

[@abishek3813]

super

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Glad you liked it, Abishekvkl! I hope it was helpful. :)

[@abishek3813]

+Academic Phoenix Plus yess... am learning maya ... i need more tutorials from arnold. are u in facebook.. will you share ur id name

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

I just created a facebook community, so feel free to join! facebook.com/groups/academicphoenixpluscommunity/ We show off our work, ask questions, learn and more. Otherwise, please sign up for my newsletter at academicphoenixplus.com! :)

[@milhouseburns]

wish my laptop can run the render cam that fast lol

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Computers are never fast enough! Who isn't ready for an upgrade?? :)

[@balamuralir5134]

Please improve sound

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Thanks for the suggestion Balamurali. :)

[@junwang3613]

woaisaisai

[@AcademicPhoenixPlus]

Thanks Jun! :)