maya tools
 

Hello everyone,
Not a long time ago i started useing MAYA.
And so far, i got in some troubles, like how to create a texture. I know the basic steps. and may be some advanced, but i cannot figure out how to use the features like SAMPLERINFO or something like that. Like, for example, a friend of mine send me a texture of a glass, a very very cool one, in future i'll upload it here, but here is the thing: i opened it, and traced each step what he did to create it. I did exactly the same thingsa, but here is the trick , according to what he did, there is no changes in samplerinfo tool, but i does work, and it cahsges soemthing, something what makes this texture a GlASS, in my case, the texture is the same.
, so, i was wondering if some one knows the link on where and how i can create and learn more about these tools and features, besides the maya help file ?
thank you.

search google for it. Basically the samplerInfo node just returns information about the point being shaded in relation to the camera /world etc. So what you friend probably used it for is to grab the facing ratio (which is how much of an angle the normal of the point is away from the viewing vector) to control spec and reflections.

Look at the docs as well those should help

Alan