Autodesk Maya 2014 Essentials

Chapter 6

Surfacing Your Character

Thus far, your character has been a uniform gray, the default surface that the Autodesk® Maya® program assigns to all new geometry. Very few animated characters are that color, however. To change the color of your character, you’ll create shaders in a process known as surfacing.

• Creating a surface
• Laying out UVs
• Texture mapping

Creating a Surface

You can create two types of surfaces: those with a uniform color, and those that use texture maps to add variety and detail to your character. Texture maps are covered later in the chapter; before you can tackle them, you need to know how to create surface types.

Using the Hypershade Window

The Hypershade window is a very powerful and flexible tool for creating surfaces ...