Shading the Objects
Section B - The logo
In the last lesson, we created Image Based Lighting (IMB for now on) for our scene. We'll want all of our objects to use this. So it's time to define something as our 'master scene', which will be this hat scene. I would suggest saving this scene as "Master Scene" or something like that.
Now to get the logo in. There are different ways to get scenes into Maya, importing and referencing. In this example, I will import the logo.
But first, let's get the hat out of the way by putting it in a display layer. In the bottom right of your window, there should be a "Layer Editor". If you do not see it, click the "Show the Channel Box and Layer Editor" button on the top right.
There is a "Create a New Layer" button in this window. If we click it, a will create a new display layer for us.
If we double click the layer it creates, we can edit the name and then hit "Save". Note, the layer name needs to be unique. So, if your hat group is called "hat", then your layer cannot be named "hat". I simply named mine "hat_layer". (No spaces are allowed either). Select the hat, then right-click the layer, and then select "Add Selected Objects".
Now we can toggle on/off the visibility by clicking the "V" switch. Toggle it off for now.
Next, let's get the logo in. Go to File>Import and select the hat scene. Again, let's add this to a display layer for organization purposes.
Let's shade this logo. For the outer and inner objects of this logo, we are going to use a Dielectric Material, which is a Mental Ray material like we did before.
We've already got our IMB set up. So, if we set these shaders settings as so:
Then, create a standard Maya Blinn.
Leave everything alone, but turn the transparency way up.
Apply this to the center "four" object.
We end up with this:
As we see, the IMB interacts with the shaders quite a bit. This elmininates the need for complex spherical reflection maps and multiple light sources. It's really pretty easy.
That's it for this object!