Spotlight on Sphere Rendering Problem

[Anonymous]

I'm a beginner at using Maya and I used this guys tutorial to start learning: https://youtu.be/tElsku3aKQI?t=6203 

I created a room which involves a window and outside it shows the Earth. I got to the point where I wanted to show light on Earth using a spotlight at a certain angle where Earth would be half light and half dark but when rendering the sphere for earth had some sort of odd shade which looked boxy'. I'll attach a few images to show you what I mean. I have tried different intensity of the light and used different angles but I still get light at the bottom of the sphere and some "noise" light affect. Help would be really appreciated.

[mspeer]

Hi!

Please upload a scene-file.

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I have attached the Zip file, I assume that's the correct way to give a scene file. 

[damaggio]

Hi Jordan, I'm getting the same artifact on the shadows, try turning off raytracing.

Also in a space scene like this a directional light would be more like the sun, not a spotlight.

try that let us know how it goes.

[Anonymous]

Hi damaggio,

Thank you for your replying and helping. 

I tried both of your suggestion and unfortunately that didn't work. When turning off Raytrace it makes the Earth fully lit creating no sort of shadow.

I also used the directional light which makes logical sense but it worked the same as the spotlight creating that shadow issue. I'm unsure as to whether the sphere needs to be adjusted, the light source or the renderer. It seems like it could possibly be the light source and the renderer as I have changed the intensity values and it seems to change the shadow but it's still very obvious. It seems like the spotlight works better. Again the tutorial I was following said to use a spotlight for a real affect of the sun which would made half the earth in dark. 

[damaggio · Accepted solution]

Hi Jordan, you should be able to just rotate the directional light and get a realist effect, that's how any professional would render the scene, your Tutorial is very basic and you'll learn how to render with better renders later, Maya software is not a real renderer but you should proceed until you can jump on more advanced stuff.

The solution I found is to smooth earth twice to get the desire result with either light choices, like I said Maya is not that great and was having difficulty with the sphere.

[damaggio]

Mesh>Smooth

[Anonymous]

Thank you! I looked of the material mapping to make sure I didn't do something wrong and it seems that when duplicating one of the materials for the Earth I didn't select "Shading Network" which then allowed the Earth to have shade. After that it was working to the point where I thought it was fine. Doing the mesh>smooth worked great! I still have a little few box shades like you have on your image. I'm hoping to transfer this scene into Unreal and hopefully the lighting will be a lot better in terms of looking cinematic. 

Again thank you for the help! I'm slowly getting better but this is definitely a starting point. Cheers!