Chapter 3- Shading, Texturing, Lighting and Rendering using MAYA | FREE tutorial , lesson & video training | Beginner | Advanced page 4
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 apply some shading to the table in Maya and see the rendered results in this page.
Shading the table in Maya:
Select the table object, Right click on it and choose 'Assign New Material > Blinn' as we have done for the table sheet in Maya. Now make sure that the newly created blinn object's parameters are available in the Attribute Editor. Change the 'Specular Roll Off' value to '0.450'.
Now click on the button next to the 'Color channel' to assign a texture to it (As we have done for the table sheet) in Maya. From the 'Create Render Node' dialog that pops up, scroll down and within the '3D Textures' group, click on 'Wood'.
Change the Filler Color, Vein Color, Vein Spread and Grain Contrast as shown in the image. The Filler color refers to the base color of the wood texture whereas the Vein color is the dark circular rings present in the wood. It's purely by experimentation that we narrow down to these values.
Doing a Render in Maya
So far we had been changing the shading and texture parameters without seeing how it would really look like in Maya. We can perform a render to see how our scene really looks. A render is nothing but the full set of computation done on a view so that we get a full quality image of the view.
This is all you need to do a render in Maya. Switch the menu set to 'Render' so that you will have access to the 'Render' menu item. Now with your persp view selected (click somewhere inside it), choose 'Render > Render Current Frame'. This will perform a render of the persp panel and show it in a render window in Maya.
Well, if you look closely, you will see that the rendered image in Maya doesn't seem to have a very good quality. It appears a little jagged and pixels are contrasting. Right? The reason is that, by default Maya renders the scenes in 'Draft' quality to speed up the computation process. The draft version, renders eliminating some effects from the pipeline and thus reduces computation effort. We can change the render quality anytime we want. Here is how to do it.
Choose 'Window > Rendering Editors > Render Settings' in Maya. This brings up the Maya's render settings. In the dialog that appears, click on the tab labeled 'Maya Software' and select 'Production Quality' from the Quality drop down. Close the dialog and do a render again (Render > Render Current Frame). That should give you a full production quality render in Maya as shown in the image.
When you opened the Render Settings, we had the 'Maya Software' tab. Remember? Maya Software is one among the rendering engines available in Maya. It relies totally on your processor to perform the computation using Maya's rendering algorithm to create the effects and image quality. You have other rendering options like 'Maya Hardware' which uses your graphics card's capabilities also to facilitate the rendering. You have option to choose third-party rendering options like mental ray too in Maya.
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next to the 'Color channel' to assign a texture to it (As we have done for the table sheet) in Maya. From the 'Create Render Node' dialog that pops up, scroll down and within the '3D Textures' group, click on 'Wood'. 
