MAYA: Normal Map Direction

If Normal Maps look inverted, INVERT the Red Channel in Photoshop by going under the Channels panel, selecting the Red Channel, and going under Image>Adjust>Invert.

MAYA: Instanced Geometry

Did a few tests to test files sizes, and indeed duplicating files via "COPY" uses up more disk space, as compared to using "INSTANCE" under 'Duplicate Special'.

The tests using a cube were minimal when it came to file sizes, but you can imagine a heavier scene with objects that are half a million poly's plus. Only caveat is that if you modify one of the shapes, all of them get modified.

MAYA: Normal Map Power

To control a normal map's power in Maya, use the "contrast" node. Pipe normal map alpha output to input.X of contrast node, and output.X to bump value of bump node.

Gets a lot of bang for your normal map buck at the default multiplication of 2, but dial down as needed.

(UPDATE: After the contrast node, go back into the BUMP node and adjust the value. The control seemed to have done nothing before, but seems to become obedient again once you slap it with the contrast node.)

MAYA: PNG Alpha Issue (Solved!)

The 3D card where the texture is projected on to causes a semi transparent shadow of the card itself. To fix that, go under "Raytrace Options" and turn "Shadow Attenuation" down to ZERO. BAM. FIXED.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=76416

MAYA: Efficient Cine-Lighting

As per Jeremy Vickery's Efficient Cine-Lighting Gnomon Masterclass:

MAIN POINTS:

- MIB_AMB_OCCLUSION shader piped into the "ambient.Color" of all shaders
- AO: samples:100, Max_Distance: 5 or 10
- Spotlight Key
- Area lights to simulate bounce in 'hot' areas created by Spotlight Key
- Wide Arealight to simulate window
- Wide area light to bounce back onto the window surface plane
- Good models help tremendously with lighting
- Subdivide edges and convert to subdivision models to help create a tiny light wrap
- Rim on sphere: Use area light, disable "Illuminates by Default", and have it only affect the sphere
- Use color temperature to your advantage, including the AO black and white points
- each light has 'counter' light

- "bleed" lights to soften hard edges from spotlights


TRICKS:
- add 'Glow' to skydome to create post bloom in Maya
- (JWX) better yet would be to render out a specific matte pass and do in post
- overcrank luminosity values on glow channels past "1.0" to simulate blowout from set color, to color temp fade off (bright yellow fades into red, think lightsabers)

NUKE: Batch Render Using PYTHON script

Got rendering outside of Nuke's UI to work, but because there's no license server running, it outputs renders that have the little colorful dots.

Using a modified technique from HERE, you can call a script from within Nuke's UI and it'll execute and rendering without the little dots. YAY!

Put in your Render.py (or whatever you want your file to be called):
nuke.execute("writenode", startFrame, endFrame, steps)

Then >FILE>TCL File...> and load your .py file.

RGBA 32bit Float Output

Was testing out the RGBA 32bit Float output in Maya as opposed to the standard 8bit, and the files unsurprisingly came out about 4x bigger. Not sure if I can afford the data rate for this small short film project, but maybe future commercial projects?