Vector rendering tutorial

Introduction

In this tutorial we are going to work with Vector rendering. When you are done creating your model, rendering is the next step. This tutorial explains how to create an image using Maya Vector render.

We'll start by adding lighting to the scene. We'll do this using: Create > Lights. Here you'll see several types of lights. In this case we'll use the pointlight. The first light we implement will be our sun. You can move lights around in your scene using the move tool. We are going to make sure our sun-light will also cast shadows. Therefore we'll switch on ray trace shadows in the inputs menu.

To make a render we'll also need a camera. We'll create a new perspective view camera by using Panels-> Perspective->new:

You can navigate this camera the same way you normally would. It is useful to name your camera in your channelbox. Pick a good viewpoint preferably a helicopter-view, so you can now lock your camera position. You'll do this by going to the viewport menu -> view -> select camera. Then select the text in your channelbox by selecting translate x, then press shift and click on visibility, by pressing on your right mouse button and then releasing it on top of lock selected. Now you can't navigate with this camera so your renderview will stay the same every time.

With the camera installed we can move to the render settings. Go to Window -> Rendering editors -> Render settings or click the outer right movie clapper icon in the status line. Then the following menu will appear:

When we now look at the created render, we see it is too dark. So we will add some extra lights to get the right render outcome. We'll give these lights a lower intensity than the sun, about 0.2.

In this menu different Render types are displayed. To choose a Render type, go to the Render Using pull down menu and make a selection. In this case we will choose the Maya Vector. Now go to the Common tab in the Render Settings Menu. One of the most important settings of this tab is Image Size. This sets the resolution of the rendering, which will control what the quality will be of the created image. In the pull down menu you can make a selection. For a basic render we normally use a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels, which we’ll also do in this case.

Now we've set everything we can close this menu. Before we start to render we check if we are looking through the right camera and press on the render button, which will make Maya render an image:

As we look at the created render we can see it's too dark. To change this and get the wanted outcome we will implement some more lights. These lights will have a lower intensity than our sun, because they're only for simulating the diffuse lighting in the render (see also Three-point Lighting).

Now we press the render button again to see how it looks:

The render looks a lot better now, besides from that a black backround isn't that suitable. To change the background color you have to select the camera you're looking through, and go to viewport -> select camera. Then open the attribute editor by pressing control + A on your controlpad. Here you will find the subcatagory environment, where you'll see background color which you can change by moving the pin or selecting the colored square:

Now we'll press render again:

When we are satisfied with the image we save it, by going to File (in the renderview)-> Save image. (This final render can also be made in an even higher resolution.)