Lighting,
At work we have had a visit from former lighting TD at PIXAR, Jeremy Vickery (www.jermilex.com) who helped us understand color and light a lot better. It was really amazing to learn from one of the people with a huge experience from the top movies like Cars, Ratatouille and The Incredibles.
Jeremy was so kind to share his knowledge and that he was sitting right net to you while working was such a great help, just being able to ask "if I want to, then ... ??" and the answer was immediately answered.
During that week I really learned a lot of process, practical lighting and color theories - thanks a ton Jeremy! - looking forward to the next visit..
We were also trying out v-ray for Maya, and found that it produces some fantastic images with very little effort, but also that it still can be improved a lot!. Simple Maya things that you take for granted is missing, like the manipulator tool on lights and IPR is simply too badly implemented still.
Documentation is an area for improvement and also tutorial material that is targeted at Maya would be really nice. And why have a shader available that will crash Maya when you click it??
However it is the first version of v-ray for Maya and with that in mind, its a great renderer! The look of the result is fantastic.
Christmas,
yes, christmas is very close, and I wish you all a happy xmas and a happy new year.
