Choosing Material
 

Is there a general rule for deciding what material to use?

Like if my surface is supposed to be metal = blinn
dull like wood = plastic
etc

I don't think there's a general rule but personally I tend to use blinn, as it can be tweaked to look like metal or cardboard, and even if you find that you want to change the material type later, you can do that via the drop down menu at the top of the material's attribute editor. The thing is, I use Mental Ray. The Maya materials I use are mostly for visual ref in the scene view, they have Mental Ray shaders plugged into them.

Thanks.