Lighting the Vickery Attic: My Lighting Setup & Takeaways

In this follow-up to the first video, I walk through how I lit the Vickery Attic scene using Maya and Arnold. We'll go over the full lighting setup, including technical settings, artistic choices, and lessons learned along the way.

I’ll break down each light in the scene, explain what it’s doing, and show visual comparisons to help illustrate the impact of every decision. From the moonlight and dome fill to the practical lamp, accent lights, and volumetrics, this video shows how I layered the lighting to create depth, focus, and atmosphere.

This video is aimed more at intermediate artists, but even if you're newer to lighting, you’ll still pick up useful insights for building stronger, more intentional lighting setups.

Chapters:
0:00 – Intro
0:45 – Moonlight | Directional (Natural Light)
2:33 – Moonlight | Ambient (Natural Light)
5:44 – Moonlight | Bounce (Natural + Artistic Light)
6:35 – Lamplight | Primary (Practical Light)
8:25 – Lamplight | Rim/Accent (Artistic Light)
10:08 – Lamplight | Skip (Artistic Light)
11:18 – Volumetrics (Atmosphere)
14:49 – Focus (Depth of Field)

Scene created by Alex Mateo
Concept art created by Jeremy Vickery

Download the scene here:
https://alexmateo.gumroad.com/l/QstPZ

Also check out Alex’s own lighting breakdown of this scene for a great example of a daytime approach.
https://alexmateo.gumroad.com/l/tvmpO...

Thanks again to Alex for making such an incredible scene available to the community.

#maya #arnoldrenderer #lightingtutorial #3dlighting #vickeryattic #cgart #lookdev #tutorial #lightingworkflow