Arvid Schneider builds a spiderweb in Houdini, lighting in Maya and renders with Arnold.

Lighting TD Arvid Schneider recreates a photo of his of a spiderweb that has a lot of lens artifacts attached and some other helpful details to build and render in 3D. Although this latest tutorial is an MtoA, it involves some jumps between SideFX Houdini, Maya, and then uses Arnold Renderer to output the final scene. “I wanted to show how easy it is to combine two software packages to get desired renders,” Arvid mentions.

The tutorial uses Houdini as a scene setup tool to create the spiderweb, complete with dewdrops. Maya comes in for the lighting and camera placement, materials and shaders, and finally rendering. It is important to note that you could build the web right inside of Maya, too; in fact, there are tools for that. A free one from Joe Withers lets you connect spider webs to locators in the scene which is a simple way to place the webs where you like on your geometry. Check out the spider webs script here for more info.