Well, its time for some theory I guess. So far we have talked about how to assign a material to an object in Maya. But why do we use a material? Well.. a material is a set of parameters that determines the nature of how an object looks in Maya. If you assign the material to an object in Maya, the object will also receive those attributes in it's looks. For example when you create a blinn material and assign it to our sheet, the sheet receives a little more glossy look (that we will change later). Imagine it as if you are wrapping the object with that material.
You can create a material and assign it to any number of objects in Maya. When you change the material's properties through the attribute editor, all the objects will reflect the same change. By default Maya assigns a material called Lambert (a very dull looking material) to all the objects you create in Maya. That is the reason why all the objects you created so far had that dull gray look.
This whole process of applying the materials, and applying textures (patterns or external images) and thus tuning the look of an object is referred to as Shading in Maya. |
. (if the attribute editor is not visible)
