week 5

On maya there is many different ways to create textures on a model to give it colour, shine, surface roughness and more. We spend this week learning the basic’s of using textures to make models more life like and better. The texturing process we learnt is what we could use in our final model project.

We first learnt how to access the texturing area by going into the Window menu - Rending options - then selecting Hypershade. This opened a new small window that held all the information needed to create and apply textures onto the model. All objects and models created always have the texture of labert1 attached to them and this is the grey colour that you see when creating an object and pressing 5 on the keyboard. This new window has 2 main areas, the top half box that shows the textures in use. And the workspace area that allows you to create new textures to use. Once creating a texture it will appear in the workspace area, it will only be in this area unless its dragged up into the textures in use or its applied to a object then it will stay in the textures in use area. In the workspace area the textures can be deleted if not wanted. By having textures in the textures in use area you can always revisit the texture and edit it or reuse it for another object.

There are many different types of textures we started by learning about the Lambert texture. Lambert relates to a basic texture that is similar to Matt paint that doesn't reflect light and stays as a single colour. To create a new Lambert texture you must choose Create in the Hypershade window. By clicking create you can access a list of different types of materials from materials to 2d and 3d textures. To create a Lambert texture you must choose the materials area then select lambert. You can change the colour of a lambert texture by clicking colour in the side bar and changing it to the colour you choose. to colour the object with your texture click and drag with the middle button and place the lamber material on the object and it apples it to the surface of the object. example of Lambert:

Blinn is similar to lambert it wait its used, colour can be changed as well but there is a different of what it is, Blinn is a reflective texture that will reflect light in maya creating a shinny appearance. its mainly used to create textures like glass and metal. you can change how much light is reflected by changing the specular shading properties. example of Blinn:

2D textures are another form of texturing, there are many different types of 2d textures but our main focus was on File it allows you to import a picture that you have found or created and use it as a 2D texture on you object. This allows you to expand on the choice of textures you have instead of having to use all the pre-made textures.

3D textures can be placed on a object that can be then rendered to view as a 3d object there are some problems with 3d textures. you can only use pre-made textures that are already on maya. You cant create your own 3d textures like 2D texturing. There are other issues with 3D Textures, when attaching a 3D texture it creates a square that projects the 3D texture onto the object, when you move the object the texture moves from the object. This can be over come by placing this in a parent and child relation ship in a hierarchy with the object being the parent and the child being the 3D texture. When they move now they stay together.

I created a basic model of a mushroom to help me remember modeling and as well putting in textures to help me learn to place them in a model myself. This is the mushroom i made with basic lambert texturing. I created this mushroom by using one object that began as a sphere. This is my basic mushroom model:

Too add two textures onto one object can be done by selecting the faces on the object like when we edit an objects face polygons. When selected the faces you can right click a texture in the hypershade window and then click attach to selected. This will attach a texture to only the chosen selection.

I also went back to the first model i made of the robot to have a look at texturing. I created a sliver metal texture by playing with blinn and changing the spectral shading properties. I found that in the settings of the textures i could open a setting called special effects, This gives you one option that allows you to create a texture that glows. I applied this to my robots eyes and a couple of faces on my robots front: