Lighting in Maya: Raytraced Shadows

Raytraced Shadows

The first thing you should know about Raytracing in Maya is that it activates reflections, so be sure all reflections are reacting in the way you desire before proceeding.

Lighting Pro-Tip: Most of the time, all you will need to light are Spotlights.  A Point Light is equal to SIX Spotlights and an Area Light is made of a bunch of Point Lights...wasteful.  Only use these if you don't mind unnecessary render times.

1) Set up your scene.

2) On your Spotlight's Attributes, turn on Raytrace Shadow.

3) In your Render Settings, turn on Raytracing (start off using Maya Software as your renderer).

4) Pump the Anti-aliasing up
        Shading: 2
        Max: 4

5) On the Spotlight Attributes, Raytracing section
        Light Radius: blurs the shadow
        Shadow Rays: cleans up the blur
        Ray Depth:  how many times the ray will bounce, ups the amount of indirect lighting

6) Back on your Render Settings
        Raytrace Quality
                Reflections: this should match Max Ray Depth on all light Attribute settings
                Bias: fixes possible zig-zag artifacts by raising or lowering the shadow away from the subject
                        0.3 is a good setting to start with as putting this very high will produce even worse results

This image took 35 min and 55 seconds to render.