Week 5 Class Practical: Part 1 - Material Basics & Common Attributes

The class practical for week 5 begins with describing materials and then how to apply them to models in Maya. Materials determine how a surface looks in terms of it's reflectivity, shininess, transparency, colour and texture. To begin, if you create an object in Maya and then right click hold on it you will bring up the "Marking Menu". In this menu you can then select to "Assign New Material". This will open up a new window that will give you set of materials to choose from, each with differing characteristics.

By default Maya has a small selection of commonly used favorites. These can be selected in both the "Assign New Material" menu and the "Rendering" shelf. Any of these materials can also be further configured using the material's attributes in the attribute editor. These attributes are split into 2 groups, "Common Material Attributes" and "Specular Shading".

In the common material attributes you can change things such as the base colour of the material, the transparency, the ambient colour which effects the illumination of the material without the need of a light source, the incandescence (or the self-illumination), the bump map texture and the diffuse (how much light will be absorbed by the object).