Look Development Light Rig Generator UI

Introduction

After working as a lighter and compositor on the animated short "Monkey Thief", I realized how important it is to share light rigs. I want to make it easier for look dev artists to create consistent light rigs to keep their work consistent between artists.

Results

UI and Breakdown

Description

The UI is split into four categories depending on what is being add to the Maya scene. The first panel is where the user chooses and creates the lighting situation for the rig: Studio, Sunny Day, Cloudy Day, or Sunset. The "Open Light Editor" button allows the user to access the Light Editor in Maya through this interface. The second panel is where the HDRI is chosen and a Sky Dome is generated. Third in the option of which look development spheres the user wants to use. Lastly, the user is given the option to create a render camera.

The rigs that are generated are meant for look development of prop objects.

Additional GUI Breakdown:

  1. The "Delete Light Rig" and "Open Light Editor" buttons activate when a light rig is generated

  2. The "Add Sky Dome" and "Delete Sky Dome" buttons activate when a correct file path is in the search bar

  3. The "Delete Spheres" button activates when spheres have been created

  4. The "Delete Camera" button activates when a camera is created. However, the "Add Camera" button deactivates when the camera is created to prevent the user from generating multiple render cameras.

Issues

  1. There is no way for the user to scale the light rigs through the UI. However, the lights are grouped and the user can scale the rig in the viewport and open the Light Editor through the GUI to adjust the intensity.

  2. I did not have time to get the spheres to generate as a group without having all spheres checked.

Application and Scripts

Scripts:

  1. light_rig_ui.py

  2. light_rigs.py

  3. look_dev_spheres.py

  4. lr_camera.py

All Files:(Extract the qt_dev folder to the Maya scripts folder)

  1. qt_dev.zip