31 Jan 2013 
Posted by Animation Tutorial
Introduction to lights in Maya | Maya tutorial
Hello everyone.In this tutorial we will explore each and every default lights in Maya and will explain how it works.After reading this tutorial you will have enough understanding about the lights in Maya.
If you don’t add any lights in your scene ,Maya will render your image with default two sided lighting.
List of Default lights in Maya
1) Ambient Light
2) Directional Light
3) Point Light
4) Spot Light
5) Area Light
6) Volume light
Where will you get these lights?
In Menu bar , go to create option and select Lights and click on a light you need in the scene.
Click on rendering shelf as shown in image below.
Rendering Shelf in Maya
Purpose of each light in Maya
1) Ambient Light
Ambient light shine in two ways :-
a) It shines evenly in all direction from the location of light.
b) It shines evenly in all directions from all directions.
Ambient light in Maya is used to simulate the combination of direct and indirect lighting.
More - Attributes of Ambient light in Maya
2) Directional light
Directional light is used to simulate sunlight because it uses parallel rays of light as if illuminating the object from far distance. The position of light is not important as the direction of the arrow.
Since this light is normally used to simulate sunlight it does not have a decay.
More – Attributes of Directional light in Maya
3) Point Light
Point lights in Maya shines evenly in all direction from small point source. Point lights can be used to simulate light bulb or a star.
Point light , when enclosed in a geometry (from three sides) acts like a Spot light.
More – Attributes of Point light in Maya
4) Spot light
Spot light in Maya shines a beam of light in a direction defined by a cone. The size of cone determines the size of beam. Cone can be rotated to change the direction of the beam.
Spot light is used to simulate Flash light and car headlights.In some cases it can be used to simulate sunlight.
More - Attributes of Spot light in Maya
5) Area light
Area light is physical based 2 dimensional rectangular light source. It does not have a decay option. Using it in a scene will increase render time.
It can be used to simulate indirect lighting. Use it and place it wisely in your scene to create contact shadows when you are not allowed to use Occlusion pass.
More - Attributes of Area light in Maya
6) Volume light
You can achieve different effect using volume light.Inward behaves like a point light and down Axis like a directional light.