ABSTRACT
A beginner animator is most likely doing work on a personal computer that has limited capabilities. Maya can be used on almost any computer for modeling, applying materials, working with lights and cameras, and doing single-frame renders. The renderer isn't measuring some real-world phenomena; it is highly dependent on the kinds of materials and lights supported by the renderer and on the internal representation of those materials and lights. Another complication is that some Three-dimension (3D) applications like Maya often ship with a handful of native lights, materials, and procedural textures. Since Maya is arguably the most popular general-purpose 3D modeling and animation application, a large number of renderers are available as plug-ins for Maya. When a given renderer is ported to a new 3D application, software developers must often retrofit their renderer to work with the lights, materials, and procedural textures that come with the 3D application.
