Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

It’s high time I started using Maya’s mental ray renderer. I’ve been stuck in the Dark Ages with Maya until recently working on a project demanding high end renderings. This animated calendar image on the right makes use of mental ray’s image based lighting option. Thanks go to team member Ruby Rieke for helping me to get up to speed on mental ray texturing.

Keeping up with Maya’s many complex features is a daunting task. Recently Autodesk announced Maya Nucleus, new dynamics features providing improved interaction between colliding objects. They’ve got a dozen QuickTime movie animation examples of the amazing physical dynamics Nucleus is capable of. How dynamic I am in learning to use the powerful tools is another problem.