# studio lighting setup Lighting in studios is carefully controlled to highlight products or people. This type of lighting usually focuses on bright lights with limited, controlled shadows. Fortunately, this is easy to set up in Maya. ![[studio-lighting.jpg]] This is a breakdown for creating a studio lighting setup with Arnold lights. You can also learn how to create a [[lighting - three point setup|three-point lighting setup]] using Maya’s standard lights. Either setup can be used with either set of lights, you just have to remember that Maya lights need to be rendered with Maya Software engine and Arnold lights need to be rendered with Arnold. ## arnold area lights Notice the big lights in the image above? They are called Area Lights. The trick is to set up a bunch of those in your scene to light the scene. Go to the Arnold tab on your shelf and choose the first light icon on the left. It is the yellow square with light rays coming out of it. ![[Pasted image 20221114143315.png]] You will get a light that looks like a big rectangle with a line pointing in the direction the light is shining. The entire surface of the rectangle will be a big glowing light. Adjust the width and height as needed. Below you can see some of the things you will want to adjust… ![[Pasted image 20221114145450.png]] Arnold lights need to have **Exposure** turned up past zero to be turned on. You can also increase **Intensity** to brighten the light. If your light is not rendering, be sure to turn Off the Normalize checkbox. By default, your light is bright white. You can adjust the **Color Temperature** to get warm and cool lighting. **Soft Edges** does what it sounds like and feathers the crisp edge of the light. ## set up the scene For a good studio setup, you will want three area lights in your scene… - one big one floating above the scene pointing down - one perpendicular to the left of the model - one perpendicular to the right of the model ![[Pasted image 20221114150210.png]] Usually you will set one of the side lights as the primary key light. Make this one the brightest. The other side light will be set to a lower exposure to fill in the shadows cast by the key light. Set the top one to create light from above and adjust as needed. Cool lighting setups can be created by adjusting the color temperature of the different lights. ![[lighting2.jpg]] --- Learn more… - [Autodesk Maya Quick and Easy Studio Lighting Tutorial YouTube video with Lorena Gabriela](https://youtu.be/EQYU3-V4lOk) - https://cgsociety.org/news/article/3498/studio-lighting-using-maya-and-arnold - https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5AFMUG/Studio+Lighting --- tags: #3d #maya #lighting #resources home: [[! 3d modeling- maya]]