Texturing
In visual arts, a texture is any kind of surface detail, both visual and tactile. In Maya, you create surface detail with textures connected to the material of objects as texture maps. Materials define the basic substance of an object, and textures add detail.
 
Hypershade

The Hypershade is the central working area of Maya rendering, where you can build shading networks by creating, editing, and connecting rendering nodes, such as textures, materials, lights, rendering utilities, and special effects.
 

Commonly used texture maps

  • Color maps
    By mapping a texture to the Color attribute of an object’s material, you create a color map which describes the color of the object.

  • Transparency maps
    By mapping a texture to the Transparency attribute of an object’s material, you create a transparency map which lets you make parts of an object opaque, semi-transparent, or entirely transparent.

  • Specular maps
    By mapping a texture to the Specular attribute of an object’s material, you create a specular map which lets you describe how shine appears on objects (by controlling highlight).

  • Reflection maps
    By mapping a texture to the Reflected Color attribute of an object’s material, you create a reflection map which lets you describe how an object reflects its surroundings.

  • Bump maps
    By mapping a texture to the Bump attribute of an object’s material, you create a bump map which lets you add the illusion of surface bump detail to a surface.

  • Displacement maps
    Displacement maps let you add true dimension to a surface at render time, a process which may reduce or eliminate the need for you to create complex models.
 

Commonly used Materials

  • Anisotropic: is a material (shader) that represents surfaces with grooves, such as a CD, feathers, or fabrics like velvet or satin.

  • Blinn: is a material (shader) that is particularly effective at simulating metallic surfaces (for example, brass or aluminum) which typically have soft specular highlights.

  • Lambert: is a material (shader) that represents matte surfaces (such as chalk, matte paint, unpolished surfaces) with no specular highlights.

  • Phong: is a material (shader) that represents glassy or glossy surfaces (such as car moldings, telephones, bathroom fittings) with a hard specular highlight.

  • Phong E: Is a material (shader) that is a simpler version of the Phong material. The specular highlights on Phong E surfaces are softer than those on Phong surfaces, and Phong E surfaces render faster.

  • aiStandardSurface material

  • Ramp
 

Creating procedural materials

  • Color > Checker box > Ramp
 
Layered Shader/Texture
 

Applying textures

  • select an object that you want to apply a texture.
  • go to Rendering shelf > choose one of the materials.
  • go to Attribute Editor > select the tab shown the material you chose.
  • assign existing material to other objects > select an object and right click.
  • when applying textures to specific face(s) not the entire of object > go to Face mode