Recreating Cameras and Lights in Maya

 

This is the original photograph. (IMG_5851.jpg)

 

 

This is the CG recreation as best as I could get it. The lights used in this recreation were mostly area lights, with the exception of a directional light used to create the main highlight on the left of the widget.

 

There were some things on the recreation that I was not able to accomplish. On the photograph the light was bouncing off the ground, making upward shadows on the steps. To do this I had to create a small area light just on the bottom corner of the steps. I was able to create the upward shadows on the two steps but I could not make the shadow on the bottom because there was nothing to cast a shadow from. The reason why those shadows are so grainy is because Mental Ray is active on that light. That was the best way that I could get some kind of gradient look on those shadows, like how it was on the photograph.

 

Also, I could not apply the penumbra effect on the shadow from the main light source. I originally tried to use a spotlight which has the penumbra angle attribute but the spotlight did not give me the direction of light that I wanted. Mental Ray was not a good choice either because it produced a very contrast gradient on the shadow.

 

 

This is the recreation on a different angle. There was originally an area light on the right of the widget to produce a small highlight on the other view, but on this view it was removed because the area light was producing too much light where the shadow should be.