Datasheet

Project: Applying Textures  21
rotation of the placement box affects the way in which the
texture appears across the assigned surface. If the surface
is transformed relative to the box or deforms over time,
the texture will change. To avoid such a change, it may
be necessary to parent the 3d Placement node to the sur-
face. More drastically, you can convert 3D textures to 2D
textures through the Convert To File Texture tool. 3D tex-
tures include Brownian, Cloud, Crater, Granite, Leather,
Marble, Rock, Snow, Solid Fractal, Stucco, Volume Noise,
and Wood.
Project: Applying Textures
After basic material attributes are adjusted under the Key light, you can
begin adding textures. Both procedural textures and custom bitmap tex-
tures will lend the render greater complexity.
Because textures will add fine detail to the various surfaces, it’s neces-
sary to increase the render resolution to accurately gauge the result. Open the
Render Settings window and change the Presets menu, in the Image Size
section, to HD 720.
Procedurally Mapping Bumps
At the present stage of this project, the surfaces of the headphones appear
perfectly smooth. To defeat this perfection, you can map Bump Mapping
attributes with various procedural textures. For example, to add a leather-like
bump to the Head_ Pad geometry, follow these steps:
1. Open the Hypershade window and click the material assigned to the Head_Pad sur-
face. (The material is named Leather_Head_Pad in the included sample scene files.)
In the material’s Attribute Editor tab, click the Bump Mapping attribute’s checkered
Map button.
2. In the Create Render Node window, click the Leather texture icon. To simplify the
node list column, click the phrase 3D Textures under the word Maya in the rollout
column. After the Leather texture is selected, three nodes are added to the mate-
rial’s shading network: a Leather node, a Bump 3d node, and a 3d Placement node.
(To view the network, follow the instructions listed in the “Exploring Shading Net-
works” section earlier in this chapter.)
3. Render out a test. A leather-like bump appears across the Head_Pad surface (see
Figure 1.23). At this point, the leather pattern is small and too deep. To reduce the
bump depth, open the Attribute Editor tab for the Bump 3d node. Change the Bump
Depth attribute to 0.3. Render a test.
Figure 1.22
(Top) A 3d Placement utility node, auto-
matically named place3dTexture1, con-
nected to a Solid Fractal texture node.
(Bottom) The corresponding placement
box displayed in a view panel
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