Pixey, Lighting

Above is a screenshot of a Animated Film "Pixey".

In maya, there are many ways to light your scene. In the past, I use spotlights with high penumbra angle and dropoff, it has a soft light feel to your scene or character.

Then i discover Area light. It gives a soft feel too but somehow it is more useful than spotlights. Just set the decay to linear and placed it on 4 sides of the wall. It will achieve a soft gradient on the walls.

The lighting setup in 'Pixey' is created using multiple area lights. The rendering time is fairly all right, 1920x1080 at 10 minutes per frame.

Recently i have my fun with Vray. The dome lighting with Hdri images produce realistic lighting. It has its' own area light and other lights such as a sphere light which is just a ball emitting light, useful for lamps, sun etc.