Introduction

In Maya, rendering refers to the process of creating bitmap images of your scene based on the various shading, lighting, and camera attributes that you set.

When rendering, Maya takes into account all of the various objects and scene attributes, and performs mathematical calculations to produce the final image or image sequence. Once you render a sequence of images, you can then play them back in sequence, producing an animation.

Over the course of the three rendering lessons, you will learn how to:

Render a scene using the Render Current Frame button
Add directional and area lighting to a scene
Create a Skydome light and give it a background
Give objects materials with different attributes and colors
Use noise to create random patterns in both material coats and bump maps
Use the Work Area to toggle bump map visibility
Match a bump map to a texture with the Work Area
Adjust render settings for high-quality renders

You can think of rendering as getting your work ready for display. It's the shading, the lighting, and the camera settings that you apply to a scene so that it looks good when rendering single images or an entire animation.