Writing: Demo Reel FAQ I

For the past week or so, people at my school have been preparing their demo reels, and rather than answer everyone individually, it'd a better idea to just collect my knowledge here. I'll openly admit I'm not the foremost expert on reels - I mean, I didn't have an internship, but I did land a job in the animation field. So, ask away! Note, this is mostly geared toward people in my program looking for technical director positions.

Please comment on this entry (or e-mail me, or IM me, or whatever) if you have a question you'd like me to answer. It may take me a little while. Please bookmark this blog. I'll add more entries if people ask me more questions.

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What is Ambient Occlusion? Where is it in Maya?

Assuming you know what raytracing is, Ambient Occlusion is where the camera sends out a ray for a pixel. When the ray hits a surface, it sends out a hemisphere of more rays. These rays find out how far away surfaces are from each other. Therefore, if a surface isn't close to another in an Ambient Occlusion render, it shows up white. Ambient Occlusions shows how close objects are to one another. Often, in games, artists bake Ambient Occlusion into textures to show how things layer on top of one another - adding shadows without using lights, thus saving computation.

You don't need Ambient Occlusion for your demo reel. The reason people show Ambient Occlusion renders of their models on their demo reel is to showcase the strength of their modeling. A plain render shows that the model is strong without textures. You can just as easily achieve the same point with a white Lambert and a light above your object. You may even get more control.

There are two things you need to set in order to turn on Ambient Occlusion: the shader and the renderer.

• Apply a basic Mental Ray shader to your desired object. It doesn't matter which. Ambient Occlusion will over-write its render callback.
• Go into its material properties (the tab with its name when viewing it in the Attribute Editor).
• Scroll down to Ambient Occlusion dropdown.
• Adjust parameters and enable.

• Maya Software doesn't have Ambient Occlusion. You must go to the Render Settings and switch to Mental Ray.
• Turning on Ambient Occlusion in the renderer depends on what version of Maya you are using:
• In 2008, under multi-pixel filtering, switch from the default "Box" filter to "Lanczos."
• In 2009 and 2010, under Features, there should be an Ambient Occlusion menu or checkbox, check "Enable Ambient Occlusion."

What is Contour Rendering? Where is it in Maya?

Contour rendering renders the mesh of the model, allowing the viewer to see where faces are.

If you are any modeler worth your salt, you should have contour renders of all your models on your reel. Contour renders are essential in proving that you can make a mesh which doesn't just look good but can be textured and animated. A good mesh will have even spacing and quadrilaterals which are close to squares. You should be able to tell where the model's features are just from looking at the contour render.

There are two things you need to set in order to turn on Contour Rendering: the shader and the renderer.

• Apply a basic Mental Ray shader to your desired object. It doesn't matter which. Contour shading will over-write its render callback.
• Go into its shading group properties (the tab with its name and "SG" when viewing it in the Attribute Editor).
• Scroll down to Contour Render dropdown.
• Adjust parameters and enable.

• Maya Software doesn't have Contour Rendering. You must go to the Render Settings and switch to Mental Ray.
• Scroll down in the Mental Ray options to Contours (in Maya 2009 and on, this is under the "Features" tab). Check "Enable Contour Rendering."
• Very important! Don't forget to check what you want rendered, or contour shading will not activate. Under the contour menu, check "Around all poly faces" or whatever you would like to draw contours around.

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Hope this helps!