Having got the light levels pretty much sorted in the apartment interior I set about creating a realistic looking lamp shade that would appear partially translucent, while at the same time would emit light to the walls surrounding the room. The lamp shades in previous tests looked solid and lifeless. Using Digital Tutors I acquired some tutorials which could help me with this problem.
By using an area light I could create realistic lighting in maya. However, there were a few settings which needed to be adjusted in order for this effect to come to fruition. By adjusting the settings in mental ray I could increase the light intensity as well as the intensity of the shadows. What I really needed to focus on was the lamp shade itself. I started off by applying a simple lambert to the object then adjusted its translucency in the attribute editor as well as making the shade ever so slightly transparent in order for the light to pass through its surface.
By adjusting the lamberts translucence, translucence depth and translucent focus I could concentrate the light rays in particular areas to recreate the light emitted from a bulb. The overall result was very exciting and would give the existing scene a new sense of realism.
Initially I had problems when obtaining the light levels to sufficiently illuminate the space around the light. When rendering the shadows I noticed that they were diffused and in some cases noisy. This was not the effect I was looking for. I overcame these issues by adjusting the light sample values as well as the intensity of the area light. Eventually I acquired the look I was aiming for. The most recent image depicts the lampshade itself. I am happy with the way in which the light only partially comes through while still indicating the light source itself. I will apply what I've learnt from the tutorials and recreate this within the apartment interior.
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