For my final year innovations assignment,  I have created a Python lighting toolset to improve my workflow and alleviate annoying problems I’ve previously experienced with Maya. I was partly inspired by my time at MPC, where they use a similar system between Katana and Nuke.

The main idea is that users can create and place lights in 3D, then export their passes to 2D where they can adjust the colour and exposures in realtime, before sending the changes back to Maya. It also has extra features such as a new light linking system, an ID matte maker, added light controls, the ability to import/export lighting setups and a UI that gives an overview of all the lights in the scene. Another bonus is that when lights are created, they are gamma corrected for linear workflow by default, and have their light passes setup automatically.

Here is an overview of some of the features, with explanatory videos. You can also find a more in-depth user guide here.

Nuke to Maya

This is an overview of the Maya – Nuke workflow that can be achieved via LT.

LightUI

LT’s light UI gives the user an overview of all the lights in a scene, allowing quick and easy control of them.

Light Layouts

Users can export and import light layouts quick and easily.  Layouts can even be saved as “favourites” for later use.

Light Linker

As I was frustrated with Maya’s current light linker, I created my own which I believe is a lot simpler and easy to use.

Matte Maker

LT allows the quick and easy creation of ID mattes via it’s UI

Light Creation Controls

LT gives the user the ability to create lights from the camera position, and to create lights opposite selected polygon faces averaged normal.

Render Calculator

LT has an inbuilt render time calculator that updates after every render. It takes in the previous render time and calculates how long it would take to render your set frame range.