I supose they are called shaders?
 

Browsing through the shader downloads. And I see this, and i am wowed. Is a shader like a texture? How do i apply them? I would love to be able to apply this.

A shader is the chunk of software (or in Maya it's a node type) that defines how to calculate the look of your object.

Shaders can either use texture maps to determine what the camera sees or they can calculate the look based on the shape of the geometry alone.

The latter kind of shader is usually called "procedural," because it uses software to implement a procedure for calculating the look of the object rather than looking at a texture map that you've painted by hand.

In Maya, a Lambert shader is applied to every surface by default, which makes all the default-shaded surfaces look like dull gray plastic unless you start tweaking color attributes for the shader node or applying texture maps. There are other shader node types that ship with Maya as well, most of which are used as a foundation for adding texture maps.

These shaders you've found are implemented as networks of Maya shading nodes. All you have to do to use them is to use File > Import to get them into your scene and then add the objects to the correct shading groups in Hypershade. (A shading group is a set of objects that share the same shader.)

Maya also allows developers to make new shading node types by using the API to build a plug-in. This requires that you code your shaders in C++ rather than by hooking nodes together, but such shaders are much faster to render.

-- Mark

I have seen Hypershade in tutorials i've skimmed. I have no clue what it is or how to get there. Can you tell me the procedures needed to apply this shader. (Only to certain objects of course.)

Thanks!!:D

The Hypershade is under Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade.

I have a Hypershade tutorial at my site, if you're interested. Link's in the sig. :D

YAY
 

I havn't tackled the Hypershader yet. but i found out another, SIMPLE way to apply the shader. Right Click > Materials > Assign Existing Material.

That's true. :) You can also assign New materials there as well.

For a single shading node that works. For a shading network like in those downloadable shaders, I'd use Hypershade to make sure that the right things are getting connected.

-- Mark

very true

Yes. You should deffinently learn all there is to know about hypershape if you're going into texturing soon. For instance, as you said, you can assign textures to objects by right-clicking and choosing materials>assign new material. Well, let's say you have 100 boxes in a scene that you want to have a checker texture. You could go to each and every box and right-click>materials>blah,blah,blah and adjust the attributes window for every box, but hypershade makes it 1000 times easier. If you open hypershade, you can create any shader you want and add anything you want to that shader. In this case, you would open hypershade and click a lambert material over in the box on the left. As you can see, a lambert appears on the bottom section of hypershade. Double click it and assign a checker texture to it by clicking the checkered box to the right of the colour slider. Select all 100 of your boxes, then in the top section of hypershade right click the checkered lambert shader and choose assign material to selection. It's better to have 1 checker lambert assigned to 100 boxes rather than 100 checker lamberts assigned individually to 100 boxes. See? This is the purpose of the grand exalted hypershade.