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 Texturing the Orb 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 these Texturing the Orb 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.

Finish Mapping the Orb
Now that the main frame of the orb is textured, the remaining objects can be textured using cylindrical mapping and automatic mapping. Cylindrical projection works just like the planar and spherical projections, but the texture is wrapped around a cylinder. Automatic projection will let Maya decide how to texture an object from multiple planar projections. For example, Maya will use six planar projections (top, bottom, left, right, front and back) to generate a UV map on an object.

The darker shader (left). Cylindrical projection (right).

1. Make a darker metal shader
• Select the metalBlinn shader.

• In the Hypershade, select Edit > Duplicate > Shading Network.

• Select the duplicated metalBlinn1.

• In the Attribute Editor, click on the mapping arrow at the right of the Color attribute to follow the connection to the metalFile1 texture.

• In the Color Balance section, set the Color Gain slider to gray.

Doing so will darken the metal file texture.

• Assign the new darker shader to the tube and the display objects.

• Create a new red Phong material and assign it to the lens object.

2. Cylindrical mapping

• With the tube selected, select Polygon UVs > Cylindrical Mapping.

• Set the projection as follows:

3. Automatic mapping
• Select the display object.

• Select Polygon UVs > Automatic Mapping >

The automatic mapping options are displayed.

• Set the options as follows:

  Planes to 6;

  Optimize to Fewer Pieces;

  Layout to Into Square;

  Scale to Uniform.

This specifies that you want to project with six planes (like a cube), and have Maya make as few pieces as possible.

• Open the UV Texture Editor to see the results of the automatic mapping.