Realistic Lighting in Autodesk Maya with Mental Ray Area Light

Abstract: The knowledge on how to create realistic lighting in computer graphics is one part that sets a realistic scene apart from one that can easily be spotted to being made in a computer. There are however many methods to reach realistic results with lighting. In this research, the area of focus is how to achieve it with Mental Rays Area Lights using Autodesk Maya. The process will first be explained with a simple scene where the results of some of the most relevant settings will be explained. Then, those techniques will be applied in two scenes to obtain a realistic result. The quality of light is however not only dependent on the lighting itself, but also on the material properties which would be the next logical step to future research which will not be taken into consideration in the span of this paper.