Exterior Lighting Test (OTF)

I decided to go back to basics with lighting for an exterior scene and found a tutorial for how to set it up.

I found this tutorial from saraththomas.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/exterior-lighting-with-maya-and.html.

I first started in mental ray with a directional light for the sun.

Then I added raytrace shadows to the light.

Here I applied Final Gathering for the bounce light.

I then added a blue sky to the scene. I did this by adding a blue colour to the environment colour of the camera. I knew that this could be done but I didn't realize that the blue actually effected the rest of the scene.

Here I increased the intensity of the directional light.

I then created an ambient occlusion to the scene by selecting the objects in the masterLayer and then creating a new render layer with these objects. I then went to the attributes of the new layer and set the preset to occlusion.

I also changed the white colour of the AO to a light blue to add to the blue sky of the scene.

This is a composite of the two render layers. The masterLayer is set to Normal and the AO layer is on top and set to Multiply.

However, there is a problem with doing this. When I composite the layers together I get a black line around the objects.

I'm not quite sure why this happens but it is to do with the render layers. So my idea is to create a skydome behind the scene. This should take the black outline away.

Here I added the skyDome. The skyDome is a sphere with a lambert shader. The lambert shader has no colour, but the incandescence has a sky blue colour. When a shader in a scene with Final Gather has a bright incandescence, the object will emit light.

This is a render of the masterLayer with a skyDome and the AO layer composite. I think the light blue on the AO has made the scene a bit too cold and blue.