Integrating 3D models with photography
Interested in integrating your 3D work with the real world? This might help
# 1 09-01-2011 , 01:40 PM
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Materials

Hi guys, totally new to Maya. One thing, do you have to create every material from scratch? What I mean is, isn't there a library of materials like gold, chrome, leather, that come with Maya?

Thanks
Terry

# 2 09-01-2011 , 02:10 PM
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in the mental ray shader libraryyou can choose out of presets, but in general you need to tweak settings in order to get what you want,you can download ( often free) shaders from the internet, which you basically import into your scene , if you really want to have presets out of the box use 3ds Max...

# 3 09-01-2011 , 02:43 PM
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in the mental ray shader libraryyou can choose out of presets, but in general you need to tweak settings in order to get what you want,you can download ( often free) shaders from the internet, which you basically import into your scene , if you really want to have presets out of the box use 3ds Max...

Thanks Mastone. What I'm seeing is, Window>Rendering Editors>Hypershade. Is this correct?

Cheers
Terry

# 4 09-01-2011 , 03:02 PM
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Thanks Mastone. What I'm seeing is, Window>Rendering Editors>Hypershade. Is this correct?

Cheers
Terry

I think I see the problem, I don't have mental ray. Thanks again.

# 5 09-01-2011 , 04:09 PM
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Sure you do. You might need to enable it. Window > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager... check that Mayatomr.mll is loaded. Hope that helps.

# 6 09-01-2011 , 05:44 PM
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Sure you do. You might need to enable it. Window > Settings/Preferences > Plug-in Manager... check that Mayatomr.mll is loaded. Hope that helps.

Hey thanks Stwert, yes I do have it. Still can't see Shader Library, just Shader Manager. Also are all those plug ins supposed to be switched on?

Cheers
Terry

# 7 09-01-2011 , 06:36 PM
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It does not show up as a "library". You select a mental ray material for instance a mia material and then look at the "presets". There are presets for plastic, metal, chrome, glass, etc..


"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675
# 8 09-01-2011 , 08:05 PM
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It does not show up as a "library". You select a mental ray material for instance a mia material and then look at the "presets". There are presets for plastic, metal, chrome, glass, etc..

Thanks ctbram. To be honest I really need to learn more before asking any more questions on this forum. Modeling I have no problem with, I'm used to 3D and meshes, but the rest I do, in Maya. I have no idea how to select a mental ray material. Oh boy, tomorrow I'm off to the book store to see if there's a Maya for dummies book, I need something really simple to get me started with the basics. I've seen a ton of tutorials and they have helped but not enough. So if any of you guys reading this have any suggestions on good books to get me going I'd love to hear. I'm using Autodesk Maya 2010.

Thanks again for all the help.
Terry

# 9 09-01-2011 , 09:03 PM
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Get the book "Introducing Maya" by Sybex, it's a great beginner book and covers all different fields of Maya so it will give you a brilliant overview. Works well as a reference to use on the side of video tutorials and it also contains some very good text tutorials that you can follow to get the basics down.

You can get it on amazon https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Ma.../dp/0470502169
They release a new edition every year so you should be able to get one that matches your version. I couldn't find 2010 so it's possible that they skipped straight to 2011, but getting that one or 2009 would work just fine, there's not much difference between these versions so you should be able to follow it with no problem.

Nilla

# 10 10-01-2011 , 10:41 AM
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Get the book "Introducing Maya" by Sybex, it's a great beginner book and covers all different fields of Maya so it will give you a brilliant overview. Works well as a reference to use on the side of video tutorials and it also contains some very good text tutorials that you can follow to get the basics down.

You can get it on amazon https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Ma.../dp/0470502169
They release a new edition every year so you should be able to get one that matches your version. I couldn't find 2010 so it's possible that they skipped straight to 2011, but getting that one or 2009 would work just fine, there's not much difference between these versions so you should be able to follow it with no problem.

Nilla

Thank you so much, Nilla, that book looks great, just what I was looking for. Can't wait to read it. It looks like the whole 2011 book in online.

Thanks again
Terry

# 11 11-01-2011 , 08:40 AM
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You're welcome Terry, i read that book as well when I started with Maya. Sybex has a lot of interesting books, another good beginner book is Mastering Maya it covers a bit more but I remember that personally I found Introducing Maya a bit easier to follow.

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