Materials
 

Hi every one, I am new to maya!

I have been working with Max for 1 year, just on my free time, and I am ready to get serious. I have a few questions about materials that I would like to ask.

How do you deside what kind of maps to use, like for intance I want to make a mirror - How the heck do I do that, I dont want a tutorial, I just want some one to make sence of the whole thing! I am interested in a carrer as a envoirmental artist, and I want to find out some resources about materials and such. I can really only find short information on it, one material at a time, I really would like to find a book, or some advice on why you do what you do to get what you want.. get it? I hope some one can understand that~ I want to make my own only!


Thanks for any help you can give.

You want to learn how to do those things? A general way would be to learn about shaders (materials for max) and how they work. The easy way would be to get a book (or use maya help) and start reading and experimenting. Learn what each option does.

Quick answer to your mirror thing, in any given shader / material with a reflective option, set it to 1.0 for full reflection.

Inside Maya 5 Book
 

you can found some good books at www.fixdown.net for download. it's really bettet to learn maya.

if you want a mirrored surface there are two options:

Do what orgeeizm said and make it fully reflective and then turn on raytracing.

Or make an environment map and make that the reflected environment (by using the hypershade to connect the nodes up).

The raytracing is easier but the env map is more controllable (And quicker)

Alan