Maya Tutorials: Transparency, Rim Lights and Render Layers

    These tutorials have sat unfinished for a while. While owrking though them I noticed a few techniques that I wonder could have been useful during the deveopment of my animation such as the Environment Sphere shader (looks useful for environmental reflections).

    When it come to the Render Layers tutorial I believe that I had some experience with render layers but because of time contraints I never got to perform the full beauty parlour treatment on my Infiltrate Exploit Spread composition. While the video did not og in depth about an After Effects technique set, I believe my understanding of After Effects means I can perofrm a technique transfer without too much worry.

Here is the deveopment of the two sets as I made them, taking test render shots as I went along.

 

This is the composition developed to show the mock rim lights

This is the composition enhanced with tweaked render layers