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need help with using shader n material in maya

Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 11:51 pm
by roville_csb
guys need help! how do i insert material/shader in maya. i cant seem to make it work. do i make it inside maya or it should be a indigo material? pls help dont know where to start i cant seem to find any tutorial to help me get started with my projects. i was able to download a video tutorial but i think its using the lower version. im using the latest version of mayatoindigo. it would be a lot of help if you can give me instructions or any basic tutorial how to use shaders in maya. thanks.

Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 12:31 am
by dougal2
First of all, can you find the indigoShader plugin in Maya ? Are you able to assign an indigoShader to an object ?

Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 12:38 am
by CTZn
You will find basic information in the wiki to start with, if you haven't yet. There you'll find that beside IndigoShader wich supports all Indigo shader types, usual Maya shader can be used too for: diffuse, phong, specular, meshlights, translucent, ... , with some differences though. For instance, blinn in maya will be translated as Specular material, generating a medium along.

Also afaik latest Indigo versions have changed their behaviour regarding how external meshes (obj) normals are managed, that may be an issue. Rendering wise, you won't lose performance nor quality if you stick with older Indigo (1.0.9_3), and then hard and soft edges will be respected.

If you need displacement (has some limitations) or newest features, you just have to edit the mti_indigoDir to point to the version installed on your disk you want to use. Note that within Maya, \ is written / for paths.

Side note: Definitly, please stick with this (Maya) forum, as most issues you'll encounter will be MtI related.