Lidorobot

[faerielandx3]

hey guys im fairly new to maya and

im trying to get this simple little robot that i made to belong in the background

umm i put a plane underneathe it, put "use background" shader
but it kinda doesn't really blend
how can imake it so that you cant really tell that its there

and for shadows i put raytrace/ and rendered it with mental ray

i can't really see the shadows tho

its kinda jaggedy too

and doesn't look very smooth

how can i make it so it looks like it belongs in the background and more realiistic?

Thanks guys =D

oh and i used a point light for the lamp on the desk
and i used a spot light
infront of the robot

[fortner_mike]

You could have a higher rez image because it's hard to see the problems, but from what i can see...

QUOTE
i can't really see the shadows tho

Do you have the ray tracing turned on in your render options? Do your lights have ray tracing enabled?

QUOTE
its kinda jaggedy too, and doesn't look very smooth

I believe you mean that the object is jagged, not the shadows (because you said you can't see them), i can't see this here but i guess you have to increase the polycount to get rid of the jaggedness, or set your rendering filters (or the render quality) to something better.
QUOTE
how can i make it so it looks like it belongs in the background and more realiistic?

You have to match your lights with the lights that were there when you took the photo, for example if you had a green light, you should have a green light in your 3d scene as well. In most cases however, it's much more subtle, in your photo i can see a slight yellowish/red color, so i guess that's what you have to go for. Also the more realistic it is the better, wither use more lights or at least turn on Global Illumination.

[kmaylahn]

hi,

1) I would hide the plane if I was you got into the render stats (in attribute editor) for the object and turn off primary visibility and I cant remember what control it is, but you can also set it to only show its reflections, making the reflections look like they are coming off the surface.

2) For lighting as mentioned above, match the lighting with the scene, this will make it look like its part of the its environment. Think about light sources, light direction, shadows etc, you can get this information just from looking at your background plate. You would also get light bounced from the desk, so pick a colour from the desk to use as bounce light and use some low intensity spot lights pointing up at the robot through the ground plane (i think you will need to use light linking to unlink these lights from the ground plane).
With mental ray you can also use Image Based lighting (it will basically light your scene based on an image you feed it). Go into the render settings for mental ray and at the bottom of the second tab there is an environment section, I dont have maya in front of me right now, but click on image based lighting > create > then you get an option to add a file, point this to your background. Render this out and see how it looks!
When your lighting a scene always start with your keylight (the primary source of light) get that looking nice then add other lights in and test render each one, dont just put them all in together and render in one go because you wont know what light is doing what.

3) for your shadows, you'll need to turn raytracing on in the light as well as in the render settings. And try upping the render quality to rid the jaggedness, you might also want to change the filtering.

4) Usually you would render out the layers seperately then do some post work (colour correction etc) on the image in photoshop to totally integrate it.

Hope this helps...

Justin

[faerielandx3]

hey wow
thanks for the suggestions

i re created my lights, i think its starting to look better
i m still working on the shadows tho

does anyone know how to have the use background plane still be able to reflect with primary visibility off?
THANK YUS =D