Discover how to create a detailed exterior scene in Maya
The Gnomon Workshop has released Exterior Scene Development, a guide to creating environments in Maya, recorded by Digital Domain look dev and lighting lead Adrien Vallecilla.
The six-hour video workshop – a follow-up to Vallecilla’s tutorial on photorealistic interiors – sets out a complete workflow for laying out, texturing, lighting, rendering and compositing an exterior scene.
Master powerful workflows for creating exterior environments
Vallecilla covers a range of industry-standard software during the training, using Mari to create custom textures for the assets, using decals, stencils and RGB masks.
Maya is used to lay out the scene, with Vallecilla exploring how to scatter vegetation using Maya’s MASH motion graphics toolset, and how to use instancing and GPU caches to optimise heavy scenes.
He also reveals how to use Maya’s lighting tools to recreate different lighting conditions and times of day.
Having rendered the scene in Arnold, Vallecilla wraps up the tutorial by discussing how to composite the raw renders in Nuke to make the environment appear more believable.
About the artist
Adrien Vallecilla is a look dev and lighting lead at Digital Domain, where he has worked on movies including Avengers: Infinity War, Terminator: Dark Fate and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
He has worked in the VFX industry for over five years, at studios including Scanline VFX and MPC.
Pricing and availability
Exterior Scene Development is available via an online subscription to The Gnomon Workshop, providing access to over 300 detailed tutorials. Subscriptions cost $49/month or $490/year.
Read more about Exterior Scene Development on The Gnomon Workshop’s website
Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon.