Texturing, Lighting, and Rendering in Maya

Open the wheel you created or click here for the “Building the wheel” tutorial Part 1.

You need to use Hypershade to create materials and apply them to the objects.

Select Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade.

You need to create two types of materials, a Lambert for the tire and a Blinn for the wheel. Select each material once and notice they show up in the Work Area tab in the Hypershade window.



To apply these materials to the wheel and tire:

• Select the wheel group so the entire wheel is selected.
• Right-click the Blinn material in Hypershade and select Assign Material to Selection.
• Do the same for the Lambert and apply it to the tire.

Now concentrate on the tire. To give the tire the tread look you must apply a texture to the Bump Mapping attribute of the Lambert material.

1. In the Perspective view select the tire and press Ctrl-a. This opens the Attribute Editor on the right side of the Maya application window.
   
   
2. Select the Lambert tab in the Attribute Editor.
   
   
3. Change the color to a darker gray.
   
   
   
   
4. Scroll down in the Attribute Editor until you see the Bump Mapping attribute and then click the Map button beside it. The Create Render Node window appears.
   
   
5. Select the File node.
   
   
6. In the Attribute Editor under the File tab, click the folder button and select your tire tread image file. After you select it, the Attribute Editor should look like this:
   
   

Click here to download texture


Now you need to adjust the texture placement for the tire. You currently can't see what it looks like but you can do a quick render by clicking on the Render current frame icon.

Notice the texture is not well placed.

In the Attribute Editor click the Place2d texture tab for the image file and adjust the settings as seen in the following image:

Finally you need to change the bump value for the Lambert material.

1. Select the tire and in the Attribute Editor under the Lambert tab click the button beside the Bump Mapping attribute. This will take you to the File tab.

• Then you must click on the output button to get to your bump value.
  
  
  
  
• Change the Bump Depth settings to a –1.00.
  
  
  
  

2. Now you will work on the Blinn Material for the wheel.

• Select an object on the wheel.
• In the Attribute Editor change the following settings under the Blinn tab.

This will give you the setup you need to get a chrome look.

3. You need to set up a light.

• Select Create> Lights > Directional Light.
• Modify the light settings in the light's Attribute Editor.
• Rotate X = –45
• Intensity = 0.8
• Ray Trace Shadows = ON

4. Create a floor.

• Select Create > Polygon Primitives > Plane.
• Modify the plane settings in the plane's Attribute Editor.
  Scale XYZ = 400

5. Prepare for your render.

• Select Window > Rendering Editors > Render Globals. The Render Global Settings window appears
• Change the following settings in the Common tab.
  
  
  
  
• Change the following settings in the Maya Software tab.
  
  

You are now ready to render. You may have to increase each surface's tessellation for better quality.

 
by Nelson Cruz

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Feel free to discuss this tutorial in the Maya forum at Creativecow.net.