Need some Maya help, please.

[Juice5942]

I'm trying to animate a dogfight in Maya, pretty new to it. Everything is going well enough, I suppose. However, during rendering I've getting an undesired effect and not sure what is causing it or how to get rid of it. Here is a snapshot.


http://www.threethehardway.com/dogfightsnap.jpg

It's not close to being done, but as you can see, it's hard to make anything out from my test renders. Any ideas?

Thanks.

[Erik]

What exactly is your problem? The circle?

[Juice5942]

No, sorry. The problem is that I can't see the jets. They are just flat and gray.. the circle is a problem too, trying to get some exhaust going but I can fix that.

[Erik]

There can be two reasons for not seeing the jets:

1. Bad lighting (either coming towards us, silhouetting the jets, or not lighting the jets)

2. Environment fog


I would recommend rendering the jets and the sky separate and compositing them later on in a compositing program, so the lighting of the jets and the sky can be adjusted separately.

The exhaust is probably done with some glow or a point light with no penumbra settings?

[Juice5942]

You were right, I think it was the lighting. I redid the exhaust just using a parented emitter, which seems to be working alright. I'm sure I'll get stuck again soon enough, but until then, Thanks.