All images from Learning Maya 7 | Foundation by Marc-André Guindon and Cathy McGinnis. Reprinted with permission.

This is an excerpt in a series from Learning Maya 7 | Foundation by Marc-André Guindon and Cathy McGinnis from Alias|Learning Tool. In the next few excerpts, you will learn to texture a polygonal meshing. Even though polygons have a default setting for UV parameters onto which textures can be applied, you will need to adjust these settings for each specific application. You can use special polygon tools to assign and modify these kinds of values on the orb.

You will first apply texture projections in order to create UV coordinates on the polymesh. Then you will texture map the orb using a series of texture maps imported as file textures.

In this and the next few excerpts, you will learn the following: How to project textures on polygons, how to manipulate projections; how to use the Texture Editor; how to use the Paint Selection Tool; how to manipulate UVs and how to animate a texture.

Planar Mapping
The orb will be textured using multiple shading groups and texture maps. You will start by texturing the top and bottom caps at the same time. The method of positioning the texture on the surface will be accomplished using useful polygon texturing tools. Feel free to continue using your own file or start with 09-polyOrb.ma.

1. Create and assign a new shader
• Open the Hypershade window.

• Create a Blinn material node.

Bitmap file to be used as color texture map.

Blinn is the material that looks the most like metal.
• Assign the Blinn material to both the topCap and the bottomCap objects.

• Rename the material node to metalBlinn.

• Turn on hardware texturing in your view panel(s) for the upcoming steps.

2. Map an image file to the color
• Open the Attribute Editor for the metalBlinn node.

• Map the Color attribute with a File texture node. Make sure that the Normal option is selected at the top of the Create Render Node window.

• Rename the file1 node metalFile.

• Click on the Folder Icon button next to Image Name.

• In the sourceimages directory of the project2 project, locate the metal.tif image file.

  Click Open.

The texture has been placed on the polymesh surface using the default UV mapping inherited from the original revolved surface.