How do I use Shaders I download?
 

I've seen some sites that have some pretty phat shaders up for download (http://www.highend3d.com/maya/shaders/ for example). After I download them, how do I get them to show up in the Hypershade window? Like, what folder do I put them in or what do I have to do?

u install them in the Maya Shader Libray directory were your software resides. Then access from your hypershader.

I have a similar question:

Once the downloaded shaders are in the Maya Shader Library folder and can see them in the hypershade, how can I see a little picture showing what the shader looks like instead of just the black maya icon? (the shaders that come with Maya all have a little preview, but the ones I download don't)

Here's what I did:

1) Make a NURBS sphere
2) Apply the shader to it
3) Set your Render Globals to render an image that's 200x200 in size
4) Render the current frame
5) In the Render View, drag a marquee around the image
6) In Render View, select View>Grab Swatch to Hypershade/Visor
7) Middle mouse button drag the selection over to the swatch in Hypershade

That worked for me.

ok, I tried that, but all I get is a black square :(
At least before I had a Maya logo.
Maybe it's something I did different, in step 5 you say to draw a marquee, and then go to step 6, but when I do step 6 the marquee I drew disapears and I get a message at the bottom on the render view saying: "select a region and drag it to a swatch in Hypershade" and so then I draw a new marquee and then middle-mouse-button drag to the top of the shader that I used (under "Shader Library") and the the icon for that shader changes from "Maya" to just black :/
Did I do something wrong?

What I do is render out a 200x200 image, then save it as a iff then rename it "sample.iff.swatch" and place it in the ".mayaswatch" folder and it works. The shader would be called "sample.ma". Look at the shader folder and see how it is put together.

cool, that worked :tup: thanks :)

Just import from the hypershade window :)