After saving out your Rhino model as an IGES file: Open up Maya Go to File - Import

After saving out your Rhino model as an IGES file: Open up Maya Go to File - Import

Select your file at the saved location Click Import

*NOTE: If your model imports rotated 90 degrees, you can change the Z axis to match the Z axis from Rhino. To do this go to: Window-Settings/Preferences-Preferences Under Settings - select Z as the Up axis

To toggle from the wireframe view of your model to the default shaded view, Select Smooth Shade All from the Shading Tab pulldown menu.

When you import your model into Maya, the layers from Rhino are renamed to iges layer names: Double click on the layers to rename them back to the layer names as you had them in Rhino. You can find the layers in the Channel Box/Layer Editor tab on the right hand side of the screen. Make sure the toggles are set in the top right corner of the screen to display the editors.

To begin assigning colors and material properties to objects for rendering: Go to the Windows pull down menu - Expand Rendering Editors Open up the Hypershade tool.

You can create new materials with different levels of glossiness Lamber - matte material Blinn - semi gloss material Phong - high gloss material Click on the descriptions and the new materials will appear in the top portion of the materials as well as the work area of the hypershade editor.

Double click on the material in the work area to see it s various properties in the attribute editor

Double click on the Color Sample Area in order to change the material color.

Rename your material.

Repeat this process for all of your materials. You can assign Transparency to materials by sliding the transparency bar. This will preview in the Work Area with a checkerboard background to see the amount of transparency.

To assign materials to the model: Right click on the layer and choose Select Objects

Hold the cursor over the material that you want to apply to the model: Right click (and hold) while dragging the cursor up to Assign Material to Selection and then release the right button.

The material will be assigned to those objects. Repeat this process for all layers and materials in your model.

Assign lights to your model: Under the Rendering Tab Click on Directional Light - This will create a light that simulates parallel light rays (sun rays) from one direction.

Due to the scale of the model, the Directional Light might not be visible. If you click on Directional Light, it will be created in the model, but might be too small to see. Right after clicking Directional Light - go to the Scale Tool on the left side of the screen. Left click on the Yellow box of the scale tool and drag to the right.

The Directional Light should appear as you scale the light. The scale does NOT effect the lighting quality, it is simply scaled so that you can see it in the model.

Use the Move Tool to position the light so that it is not on top of your model. Since this light simulates parallel light rays in one direction. The placement and location of the light in the model does NOT effect the lighting quality. The direction that the arrows are facing is what effects the lighting quality.

You can move the light by left clicking and dragging on the red, blue, or green arrows of the move tool.

Use the Rotate Tool to rotate the light. You can constrain the rotation along the x,y, and z directions by left clicking and dragging on the red, green, and blue circles.

To preview the light in the model Click on the Lighting Tab pull down menu and switch the lighting to Use all Lights. This will toggle from the default lights to the lights you have created in the model.

Now, as you rotate the light, you will see how the changes affect the lighting in the model.

Click on Display Render Settings

Under the Common Tab Under File Output Switch the Image Format to JPEG

Under Render Using Switch to Mental Ray

Under the Common Tab Under the Image Size Check maintain width/height ratio Set width to 1920 pixels, height to 1440 pixels, and the resolution to 300dpi

Under the Quality Tab Change the Quality Preset to Production

Close the Render Settings

To view the frame of what will appear in the rendering, you can use the Resolution Gate. This will provide a green colored frame of the boundaries for your rendering. Select View - Camera Settings Check Resolution Gate and Fill.

Position the model as you want it to appear in the rendering. Click Render the Current Frame on the top of the screen.

The rendering will appear. You can select File - Save Image to save your image.

Name your rendering in the File Name line. Choose JPEG as the File Type

To change the background color of your rendering go to: View - Select Camera

While the camera is selected the resolution gate will change from green to white. Go to the Attribute Editor tab to see the various settings for the default camera. Scroll down to the Environment tab. Slide the dial to the right to change from black to white backgrounds, or, double click on the color sample to change the color.

Now, when you render the same image, the background will appear white.