Chapter 3- Shading, Texturing, Lighting and Rendering using MAYA | FREE tutorial , lesson & video training | Beginner | Advanced page 2
Chapter 3 - Shading / Texturing, Lighting and Rendering in MAYA (Beginner tutorials & video lessons)
Author - Saju Asokan
Last Updated: June 27 2009
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Let's learn more about material editor and shading in Maya in this page.
Tuning the Material's attributes in Maya:
The most essential thing that we need to do is change the material's color from the dull gray to something more striking. It's very simple. In the material editor in Maya, (with the blinn1 selected in it), click on the colored box next to the attribute 'Color' . It will pop up the color selector as shown in the image.
The Color Selector: If you are not familiar with this palette, here goes the details. You can choose a base color by dragging the small spherical dot inside the hexagonal color mixer. Then you can lighten or darken that color by dragging the slider inside the vertical strip (see the mouse pointer inside the image). You can see the selected color in the square patch on the top in Maya. Once you select a color similar to that shown, click Accept. You can see in the persp view in Maya that the color got applied to the table sheet.
Now you can see that the selected color appears in the colored box next to the attribute labeled 'Color' in Maya. If you drag the horizontal slider to either directions, you can see the color getting lighter and darker.
You have a couple of more color parameters below that in Maya. In the Transparency field if you choose anything lighter than a dark black, you will turn the material to transparent. Try dragging the slider corresponding to that Transparency field and you can see in the persp view in Maya that your table sheet appears more and more transparent.
We will look into more of that later.
The region where we need to concentrate now is the 'Specular Shading' in Maya. If it is not expanded, click on the arrow-button on it's left side and you can see the various Specular shading attributes as shown in the image. Change your material's attributes in Maya as shown in the image.
Reducing the 'Specular Roll Off' value will reduce the intensity of the specular highlight of the material (so that it looks more matte-like) in Maya.
Adding texture to Materials in Maya
Well, the flat color that we have applied to the 'Color' channel in Maya doesn't look that great, especially since we assume that the table sheet is a cloth. So we will apply a cloth texture to that Color channel and see how it looks.
Click on the checker like button next to the Color channel to assign a texture to that channel. It will pop-up the 'Create Render Node' dialog in Maya. Click on the Cloth button. It will assign the cloth texture to the Color channel of your table-sheet's material.
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. It will pop up the color selector as shown in the image. 
to assign a texture to that channel. It will pop-up the 'Create Render Node' dialog in Maya. Click on the Cloth button. It will assign the cloth texture to the Color channel of your table-sheet's material.
