Comic Book Effects, Lasers, Lightning, and Explosions

Creating a Sci-Fi Laser in Photoshop

A video tutorial for creating lasers in Photoshop

Creating Lightning in Photoshop

A tutorial for creating lightning in Photoshop

Creating an Explosion in Photoshop

A tutorial for creating an explosion in Photoshop

20 Comic Book Effects in Photoshop

A tutorial showing 20 different comic book effects in photoshop


25 Brilliant Glow Effects in Photoshop

Advanced Glow Effects

Mental Ray Ambient Occlusion tutorial

Mental Ray Ambient Occlusion tutorial

Tutorial on creating Ambient Occlusion in Mental Ray in Maya

Mental Ray 101

Mental Ray 101
Mental Ray Tips at MyMentalRay.com


Occlusion Pass.
Occlusion Pass Tutorial

Maya Ambiet Ocllusion With mental Ray



Francisco Concha comments from Flickr about lighting.

Sure Zugas.I used two lights (key and fill) Final gather at default settings. Global illumination with only the key emitting photons (the settings vary depending your scene), and a park jpeg for image based lighting, Then I did an occlusion pass and composited the two layers in photoshop via multiply.
Materials are all phong E with low specularity, a bit of translucency and blured reflections via the mentalray tab in the material.

There are lots of good tutorials at mymentalray.com an 3dtotal.com

Simply Maya Tutorials

Simply Maya Tutorials More Maya Tutorials