1. Layout & Scene Preparation
I started by arranging the characters, camera and surrounding environment to find a composition I liked. The characters were placed against a large tree, with the surrounding foliage helping frame the scene.
The forest contained a lot of geometry, which made the Maya scene quite heavy to work with. To make it easier to manage, I converted the environment assets into Arnold aiStandIns, keeping the full detail for rendering without having to load all the geometry directly into the scene.
I also adjusted the surrounding vegetation and empty spaces to keep the characters visible within the dense environment.
2. Lighting Setup in Maya + Arnold
The lighting was built around two main sources: cool moonlight filling the forest and the warm lantern light illuminating Zelda and Link. I used additional fill and bounce lights to bring out their shapes and separate them from the darker background.
I also worked on the shadows and volumetric lighting to create more depth between the foreground, characters and background.
3. Rendering & Compositing
The scene was rendered in Arnold, using separate AOVs for the different lighting contributions. Later, in NukeX, I adjusted the exposure and colour balance, adding subtle fog and bloom to finish the atmosphere of the scene.
