Detail View: Graduate Thesis Collection: Auxilium: A Python lighting and rendering tool for Maya

Auxilium: A Python lighting and rendering tool for Maya

Macaluso, Ross

Thesis (M.F.A.) -- Visual Effects

Savannah College of Art and Design -- Department of Visual Effects

Copyright is retained by the authors or artists of items in this collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Over the years the field of computer graphics has blossomed in both visual accuracy and rendering potential. With the ability to render complex images artists can now create renders that are close to photos and contain a high level of detail. These complex renders sometimes require hundreds of lights, geometric attributes, textures and Global Illumination. Within Maya the creation of hundreds of lights, attributes, and textures is tedious but possible. However, the editing and fine tuning of settings is rather cumbersome with the current Maya interface. Creating a tool that allows management, creation, and editing of lights, render settings, and geometry attributes would make the task of creating and rendering complex scenes a simpler process. The proposed tool allows the user to visualize and edit lights in multiple ways: • Light Outliner: same functionality as Maya's outliner, but displays just lights, and light render elements. • Spreadsheet format: organizes light attributes by tabbed groups based on basic settings, sampling, shadows and option tabs. • Visual Outliner: separates lights by light type and organizes light attributes by frame layouts corresponding to names similar to Maya's attribute editor. Current implementation includes creation and editing in both Mental Ray and VRay with reusable definitions to add new renderers. With these added features, creating and managing lighting and rendering in complex scenes will be a simpler process for both student and independent artists alike.

Savannah, Georgia : Savannah College of Art and Design

2014-06

PDF: 65 p. : ill; MP4