"Sky Dome" and Three-point Lighting

You have geometry including a ground plane in your scene (ground plane, Render Stats, Casts
Shadows turned off).

Find a panoramic photograph that fits your scene (sky and ground). Save it to your SourceImages
folder of your Maya project.

Create a Nurbs sphere and scale it up so that it encompasses the ground plane (you may have to
adjust the camera's far clip plane if your scene is large scale).

Rename the sphere (sky_Dome). In the Render Stats for the sphere shape (Attribute Editor), turn
off Casts Shadows, turn off Receives Shadows, turn off Double-sided. Turn Opposite on (we
want our picture visible on the inside of our sky dome).

Right click on the selected sphere and Assign New Material -- Surface Shader (briefly explain
surface shader).

Hardware Texture attribute of surface shader, set texture resolution to "Highest."

Map a (2D Normal) Ramp to the OutColor of the surface shader. Set it to a U-Ramp (in most
cases). Select "smooth" interpolation. No filtering.

Map file to the Blue color (the panoramic picture in SourceImages folder). Will likely have to go
to the Place2D node and Rotate Frame 90 degrees (enter 90).

Adjust the Green color to a "bluish" color to match sky color (will be a "haze" on the horizon
line). If sky color different--adjust color accordingly.

Adjust the Red color to a "ground like" color (eyedropper tool and select ground color from
quick render if possible).

Shift the ground color up, the sky color down, and the horizon "haze" to achieve a balance.

For the sun create a Directional Light. Group the light to itself. Rename the group "Sun."

Select the directional light (not the group) and scale it up to see it better and then move it to the
sky dome to the general location of the sun in the panoramic image. Rotate and aim it toward the
scene. Now select the "Sun" group and rotate the sun from the origin to place it where you want
it better.

Adjust the Sun (directional light's) color, intensity, and turn on Casts Shadows (DMap with Filter
of approximately 3).

Add at least two more lights for three-point lighting. Create a spot light, Panels -- Look Through
Selected -- Aim and size it (lighting from the side). Turn off Emit Specular and turn intensity
down. Create a third spot light, Look Through Selected and aim it from the rear. Turn off Emit
Specular and decrease intensity.

Render the scene in draft. Adjust sun and other lights. Adjust intensity of lights. Adjust color of
lights. Adjust color of ground (Ramp assigned to Surface Shader).

Get composition where you want it and Render with Production Quality.