Applying a texture?
 

Can someone explain (or point me in the right direction) simply, how to add/apply a texture to an object. I've been following the 'bouncing ball through a flaming hoop' tutorial I received with the Alias PLE, and become stuck when attempting to apply a texture.

Cheers

Mike

j5ive,

Since I haven't used the ple version, I like to ask you how much detail does the bouncing ball tutorial give you when it comes to applying textures? I ask this becuase if its anything like the tutorial that comes with unlimited version of Maya, then I can understand your frustrations. Otherwise if it explains in detail about uv werapping then I would suggest reasking what part of uv wrapping do you not understand.

If you know nothing about uv wrapping, then here is a link that is sort of a good start. If this link doesn't work then the slow way of linking to this address is by going to www.3dtotal.com, then under the menu bar at the top of the page, hover your mouse over "free stuff", and click on tutorials. Then in the tutorial page, you will be redirected to 3d studio max, but you can change that to the Maya tuts page by clicking on the Maya link under the tutorial sub menu. Once in the Maya tutorial section, this tutorial I am refering to is the first tutorial link on the page called "polygon texturing", by Ramy Hanna.

Though some of his descriptions in the tutorial are not explained very good. For instance when it came to rotating the uv's of mapping a cylinder so that they all layout flat, I had troubles understanding what he ment by clicking on the red "t" and then click on the blue circle. Meaning that I thought he ment this was in the uv texture editor window but it's not.

Though figuring it out, in general what he ment was by going in perspective view and zooming in really close to the object, there is a little red looking "t" thingy at the corner of the manipulator tool. Then you can click on the blue circle which will give you full access of the 3 rotating axis's. It is important that you click on the red "t" because if you just click on the blue circle you will only have access to one axis.

To bo honest, I'm very very new to Maya unfortunately, so even some of the terminology used slows me down somewhat.

So basically, I'm struggling to get to grips with anything at the moment :(

The ball tutorial from memory, required going into the 'hypergraph'? window, selecting the 'grid' texture and I was supposed to drag and drop on to the ball in the model window though for some reason nothing appeared to happen.

I have both the PLE Maya and Maya Unlimited 6.0 and from what I have seen, there are not many differences apart from when tou turn shading on in the model window a maya watermark covers the model area.

Thanks for the link, I'll take a closer look after work!

Heres a short little tut on the most basic aspects of texturing an object.


Open up the Hypershade - [Window] - [Rendering Editor] - [Hypershade]

A box should open with two panels, the left one with little globes and various materials next to them e.g Bilnn, Lambert, Phong etc

Single left click on one of them this should then create a object in the right hand window. Making sure it is selected (little gold line around it).
Get its attributes up (if there not already) this is done by pressing Ctrl+A

Change what ever you would like - color, transparency etc until your happy.

Select the Maya object you want to texture - the ball for example.

Go the the already open Hypershade. RIGHT click on the new material you made. You shoud now be able to select an option [Assign Material To Selection].

This should make your maya object take the color and other attributes that you set previously.

Minimise the Hypershade - Press 5 on your keyboard and you should see your object with its new 'look'.


Thats the shortest explination I can give really. Any more detail you need, post your question here and I or somene will reply I'm sure.

Good luck and enjoy.

Thanks for the reply, I'll give that a go tonight

azimuth,
Unless the PLE version is different then the unlimited version, to see textures, your supose to press press the 6 key. Pressing the 5 key only turns on shaded materials where as the 6 key turns on both shaded and texture mode.

j5ive,
the reason why you are not seeing the textures is because you need to be in textured shaded mode. To do this first you need to press the 6 key.

So another words the tutorial is correct. You can either middle mouse drag a material on to the object or you can select the object from any view, meaning top, side, front, or persp view, and then in hypershade window right click the material and choose "assign material to selected".

Thank you very much for all responses, esp. JunkyBob, you were right, all I needed to do was press 6, :s you've saved me alot of messing around.