• Help Home
  • English (US)
    1. English (US)
    2. 简体中文
    3. Deutsch
    4. Français
    5. 日本語
    6. 한국어
    7. Português (Brasil)
Maya
    • What's New in Maya 2026.1
    • Maya 2026 Release Notes
    • Maya Installation Help
    • Getting Started
    • Basics
    • Managing Scenes, Files, and Projects
    • Interoperability
    • Flow-connected Capabilities
    • USD for Maya
    • Modeling
    • Animation
    • Character Animation
    • Character Effects and Environment Building
    • Motion Graphics
    • Simulation and Effects
    • Bifrost for Maya
    • Lighting and Shading
      • Lighting and Shading
      • Lighting
        • Basics of Lighting
          • Light and shadow in the real world
          • Indirect (global) vs. direct illumination
          • Default lighting
          • Direct light sources
          • Absorption, reflection, and refraction of light
          • Light decay
        • Set up a direct light source
        • Create, group and modify lights in your scene with the Light Editor
        • Adjust lighting
        • Shadow in Maya
        • Lighting Reference
      • Shading
    • LookdevX
    • Rendering
    • Arnold for Maya
    • Customizing Maya
    • Keyboard Shortcuts
    • Environment Variables
    • Scripting
    • Technical Documentation
    Share
    • Email
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn
     
     

    Basics of Lighting

    Topics in this section
    • Light and shadow in the real world
    • Indirect (global) vs. direct illumination
    • Default lighting
    • Direct light sources
    • Absorption, reflection, and refraction of light
      To create a shiny, reflective or transparent object, you must create a material and assign it to your object, then adjust the attributes of the material. For more information on how to tweak these attributes, see Create materials that reflect or refract light.
    • Light decay
    Parent topic: Lighting

    Was this information helpful?

    Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please see the Autodesk Creative Commons FAQ for more information.

    • Privacy Statement
    • Legal Notices & Trademarks
    • Report Noncompliance
    • © 2025 Autodesk Inc. All rights reserved