Going into shading this project, I knew I wanted the environment for this Rube Goldberg machine to be very fun and colorful. After finalizing my machine's mechanics, I felt like a retro, neon style would fit the machine well. I added arcade-style music to the final animation to help emphasize this concept.

This style environment also allowed me to have more creativity with lighting the scene. For example, I used a blue-colored rim light behind the start of the track to mimic the blue neon light on the image I used for the walls. The phong material used for mirrored track and the shiny bell do a great job at reflecting the environment, which I think adds a lot to the appeal of the animation visuals. I also added a bump map to the texture for the dominos and the balls which makes them look a bit more plastic and toy-like.

I wanted to experiment more with different Maya default shaders, so I textured the funnel and the slide to somewhat look like neon signage. To do this, I used the blinn material and adjusted the "glow intensity" special effect which gives a soft halo effect around the object (for some reason, it is hard to see in the renders uploaded to this website, but it is more apparent in the YouTube video).