Applying Textures to an Object on Maya

The following steps show how to add a texture to an object in Maya: 1. Move the mouse over the main window and press 6. This will show textures and everything, if any, on the main window. 2. Next we will create a new shader for the object. Select the object, hold the mouse right click, go down to Materials > Assign New Material > Lambert. This will change the menu on the right side of the main window to two tabs. Click on the lambert2 tab, if not already selected. 3. Next we will tell Maya to read color information from the texture file. Click on the checkers colored square next to the Color slide bar. This will open the Create Render Node dialog. 4. Select File from the options. This will close the dialog and will change the menu on the right of the window. 5. Press the folder button to the right of Image Name or enter the path to the image you would like to use as the texture. Pressing the folder button will open an open file dialog. Search for the desired texture file name. 6. Once the image file name has been entered, you should see a preview of the image on the Texture Sample box. 7. Now we will texture map the object. Select the object and then hold the space bar. This will bring up a large selection of menus. Select Edit Polygons, then select Texture and click on the square next to Planar Mapping. 8. Select Apply, which will project the texture onto the object, and see if the axis of the projection and the object line up. You want the image and the object to line up along the same axis. If they don’t line up, then change the axis on Mapping Direction and try Apply again. If you are unsure as to whether the projection and the object are lined up correctly, then continue to the next step and use the UV Texture Editor to double check. 9. About 98% of the time the texture and the object don’t match up perfectly. In order to fix this we can tweak the mapping. This can be done by moving the entire texture by pressing the middle yellow square and dragging the texture. We can also elongate or shorten the texture by selecting either the blue or red squares. 10. A useful tool is the UV Texture Editor. Along the left menu bar there are a variety of window layouts, such as single and four view perspectives. Click on the third layout button from the top, the one with the Persp/Outliner tool tip. The window layout with the two vertical split layout. 11. Click on the left tick and select UV Texture Editor. Now the window should be split into two. The left will show the texture, and the right will be the regular perspective projection window. 12. The planar mapping manipulator will still be open. You will be able to manipulate the texture on both windows. The following is a excerpt from Chris’ recommendation: “The big thing is not that it’s a total match, just that the grey parts are over grey, and that the actual detail stuff (usually landing symbols/names) are reasonable.” 13. Sometimes it is only individual points which don’t line up. In order to fix this hold the right mouse button over a vertex in the left window and select UV. Then on the left toolbar select the Move tool. Now you should be able to move

individual vertices. It is always better to select a group over any point since most of the time there multiple points in each location. 14. Finally select File > Export All … and enter the name for the object you would like to export. If you wish to export only a portion of the object, then highlight the portion that you want to export and select File > Export Selection …, then enter the file name.

Pointers: If the object is being textured so that it can be imported into Lagoon, then the texture must be a 128x128 bitmap file, no exceptions! Using more than one texture on an object would increase the overhead of adding the model into Lagoon a lot. It is recommended to only apply the top texture on the objects.