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# 2 15-11-2010 , 10:28 PM
Nilla's Avatar
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Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Prague
Posts: 827
Hi pixelpedro,

I know how you feel I'm doing the opposite at the moment and trying to cross over from Maya to Lightwave and I get quite confused a lot of the time.

For metals in Maya you want to render in mental ray and use mental ray shaders for the best results. If you look in Hypershade you have three materials metallic paint, car paint and mia_material_x. The last one is mental ray's architectural material and you can create pretty much anything from it, the x version stands for extended and it can be used in render passes so it's one of the most useful materials in Maya. If you know shading in Lightwave you should be able to work quite well with the architectural material because the attributes are similar, and if you get stuck tool tips will come up when you hover your mouse over them. Also press F1 for the Maya help files, they're good for lighting and shading.

In the upper right hand corner you have presets for mia_material_x to get an indication, there is one for chrome. For a weathered look you can try working with the inbuilt procedural noise textures, you'll find them under 3d procedurals in Hypershade. Depending on the result you're going for and how close up you render using a combination of these might get you a good enough result.

Good luck with the crab,
Nilla