Hey all,
does anyone know any good tuts for maya materials? Specifically what all the settings are and ways to achieve looks for types of materials such as metal, glass, wood, clay, etc.?
Maya Materials
RHS92
#2
Well that depends on what you will be rendering with. If you’re planning to use MentalRay (which comes/came standard with Maya) there are a bunch of great free tutorials on YouTube and Vimeo, as well as paid ones on sites like Digital Tutors and etc. However, I’ve found the help-documentations (from the developers) are the most useful resources for figuring out things about 3D-software.
I found this webpage to be extremely useful when I was learning shading in MentalRay, even though it looks a bit technical at first. Also discovered this page recently, which could definitely come in handy sometimes.
So if you’ll be using MentalRay I suggest investigating the mia_material and the new mila_material. Just don’t start using Maya’s standard surface materials like Blinn and Phong if you’re going to be using MentalRay, it just makes no sense. Also, using the old Maya Software render doesn’t make much sense either these days in my opinion 
Sleepius
#3
Thank you! these are perfect. Yeah I was specifically hoping for info on the Mental Ray materials. I have been messing with the Mila material in 2016 and keep getting a lambert like result and am looking for more of a metal result for a knights helmet. Thank you for the info!!!