Ambient occlusion with Mental Ray - Maya 3D tutorial

Category: Maya 3D tutorials > Tips & Tricks - Difficulty:

To produce realistic 'soft shadows' in Maya, you have two solutions.

This tutorial shows how to use GeoUV to generate a texture map for a tree.

This two parts tutorial shows you how to use Maya's strong normal mapping functionality to generate normal maps for a fantasy character. This is Part 2 of the tutorial.

Maya's spline IK handle solution to the spine is one solution to work with. However, I have found it better served when working with an independent joint chain such as a tail or long neck.

This tutorial will show how to using smooth bind.Using smooth bind creates a skin in which each point is influenced by a number of joints. This allows the skin to deform smoothly with the skeleton