
Yong Kim shares his script for Maya that will automate, or semi-automate the process of creating physical light source objects in Maya, based on an HDR image, placing the HDR’s Lights as textures for the Maya lights.

David Hackett posts an article on Elemental Ray Blog, taking a look at creating an using Object Lights in Mental Ray 3.11, using the new builtin_object_light shader included

Stephen Blair shares the process for creating custom color matte in Maya when rendering with the Arnold Renderer using AOV’s

The ZYNC Render crew post an overview video showing everything that you would possibly need to know to get started using the ZYNC Cloud Rendering Platform. This is a great start showing how to upload your files for rendering, to launching renders, and how to track rendering usage to stay on budget. This will look at using the ZYNC Platform using Autodesk Maya, using ZYNC’s integration with the Maya interface.

Luiz Philippe Moreira created a handy little tool for changing Maya render settings really easily. Render Settings such as reflection rays, raytracing depth, ray depth limit for lights, caustics and final gathering, although logically found easily, always seem to be scattered all over the place in Maya when you are trying to change render quality.