You're welcome bullet, if you just get your head around something like reflectivity by thinking about how it works in the real world all these things start to become quite simple. I think a lot of the time in terms of 3D people forget to take into consideration how lights and materials work together because many tutorials explain these things in isolation which is kind of misleading. Doing it this way is really bad as if I look in the bathroom mirror with the lights turned off I will see nothing of what's actually there, so if course this will apply to Maya as well.

Anyway we'll be putting out lots of content on the site covering these topics in the next few months, we'll add some parts to the free section as well so check them out if you want to learn more about these things. I've spent a long time planning and structuring these tutorials to include lots of good real world examples and focus them around how to get results, rather than how to twek individual material attributes which in the end of the day will do nothing as they're adjusted without taking lighting into consideration. I'm hoping it might get some people more interested in shading and lighting, because there is so much to it and although getting something photorealistic will take a lot of time and knowledge you can get really good rendering results knowing only the basics and this is a great feeling.

Nilla