Rendering the curtain scene

In this section, you will render a single frame of the curtain simulation using the mental ray for Maya renderer. When rendered, the details of the beads you assigned to the curves using the Paint Effects brush will appear.

Before rendering, you need to create a directional light in the scene.

To create a directional light and render the scene

Select Create > Lights > Directional Light.
In the Attribute Editor, click the directionalLight tab and set the following X, Y, and Z Transform Attributes to position the light in the scene:
- Translate: 3.8, 9.8, and 3.9
- Rotate: 174, -83.0, and 30.0
The light now points to the upper left corner of the curtain.
Click the directionalLightShape tab.
In the Directional Light Attributes section, set Intensity to 2.0.

You can now turn on the mental ray for Maya renderer and render a single frame of your simulation.

To turn on the mental ray for Maya renderer and render a single frame

Select Window > Rendering Editors > Render Settings.
The Render Settings window appears.
In the Render Settings window, set Render Using setting to mental ray.

TipIf mental ray does not appear under the list of renderers, you must load the mental ray plug-in via the Plug-in Manager. Select Window > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager and select Loaded for the Mayatomr.mll plug-in.
Click Close.
Dolly in close to the curtain ( + ) and click the button to render the current frame.

In the rendered frame, you see the details and color pattern you created for the beads.

In the next section of the lesson, you use an nConstraint to constrain the hair curves so that the curtain beads appear to be tied together.