Online training for Maya with Vray focused on product shots?

[sean_brown]

Can anyone recommend good online training for Maya rendering with Vray focused on product shots? Seem everything i find is either Blender, Max or C4D. Any Maya i do find its with Arnold.

[SonyBoy]

I think you've identified a market opening What specifically is it you want to learn though -- lighting techniques? There's nothing particularly special about "product" work, per se. It's just a combination of the same methodology that goes into anything else -- good composition and staging, good shading, lighting based on art direction, and often a LOT of post work.

[sean_brown]

there is a shift going on in the product photography arena. And you can find very specific training for product photographers utilizing 3D for their work. It starts with taking photos of the products and then converting them to textures to apply onto 3D models. And the lighting is product photography specific with soft boxes and snoots. I use grided soft boxes so im not sure how that can be accomplished in Maya/Vray. In real world it prevents spill. I am photographer by trade so I know real world studio light. But I'm student of 3D and want to learn how to apply my knowledge of product photography into a 3D environment. Training similar to what you see on this page would be helpful for Maya/Vray https://karltayloreducation.com/3d-cgi/

[SonyBoy]

There are techniques used in 3D product renders that are specifically designed to mimick studio photography, for example "studio" HDRIs for lighting, bounce cards, light boxes etc. I've seen people build fully "realistic" CG equivalents of studio techniques to achieve the same results -- or similar -- to what they would get with practical photography. So in that sense, yes I understand what you're looking for more now. That said, if you're new to 3D in general you are going to need a general grounding in it too so any lighting tutorials are going to be worth looking at to understand how lighting in the computer differs to lighting in the real world (there are pros and there are cons). As a general rule though if you're a photographer already skilled in lighting, know that for the most part there aren't really any special tricks to lighting products in CG -- in addition to using HDRIs for overall lighting it's often a lot of very careful placement of lights for specular hits and reflections etc. It can be very time consuming if you're trying to match very specific art direction.

Obviously it depends on who your client is, but I can tell you that a well-known fruit-based tech company whose CG renders are often held up as the marquee for this kind of work spends a MASSIVE amount of time on art directing and lighting their products. A large amount of the final work is actually done in post in Nuke. Every last component of every product is lit independently, with light linking and render layers, and the whole thing is pushed and pulled in post. Not every product render scenario gets that (IMO) crazy of course. But, bottom line is just that good product render skills take time and practice to develop. With a photography background you've already got a good start, but there aren't any magic short cuts to creating good CG images really -- just a lot of hard work and trial and error.

[sean_brown]

thats why i was looking for training to get a jump start and I really dont feel like learning blender or c4d or abandoning vray over cycles/octane/arnold.