Bucks Animation Blog: Lighting in Arnold

In this simple tutorial, for Autodesk Maya beginners, we explain how to achieve a super basic lighting setup in Arnold using the settings in Physical Sky. This is as simple a setup as it is possible to achieve in Arnold, and gives good results for an outdoor scene with just a few clicks.

1. Start by Opening Maya. Make sure you are in the Render menu (top left)
2. Render/Render Settings/Render Using/Arnold
3. In the Common Tab, go to File Output: Select JPEG
4. Image size HD 720
5. Now go to the Arnold Renderer Tab 
6. Arnold/Lights/Physical Sky
7. Do a render test – the scene probably looks a bit dark
8. Take intensity up to 4 or 5 to make it brighter. 
9. Go to Sky Tint to change the colour of the sky.
10. Sun Tint will do something similar.