Assigning a texture to the slag

Assigning a texture to the mesh gives it the orange glow of molten metal when the scene is rendered. The material that you assign is made from an orange blinn shader with a fractal texture.

When assigned to the mesh, the textures use the UVW coordinates generated by the Uvw Per Vertex attribute of the nParticle object.

In the Outliner, select the nParticle_slag object, then click the nParticle_slagShape tab in the Attribute Editor.
In the Output Mesh section, turn on Uvw Per Vertex.
With Uvw Per Vertex on, Maya generates UVW texture coordinates when you convert an nParticle object to a polygon mesh. The texture coordinates let you map a texture to the surface of your output mesh.

NoteBe aware that when you use Uvw Per Vertex, smoothing the output mesh using Mesh > Smooth alters the per-vertex mapping of the UVW coordinates used by the assigned texture.
Play the simulation until the mesh is in the scene, then stop.
In the scene view, right-click the mesh and select Assign Existing Material > blinn_slag.
The mesh turns black to indicate that the material is assigned to it. To see the results of the material, you render a single frame of the simulation.

Rendering a single frame

Rendering single frames of your simulation let you observe how attribute adjustments affect its behavior and appearance. For these renders, use the Maya Software render with default settings. With these settings, your frames will render quickly, allowing you to move on to the next section of the lesson. If you prefer, you can use mental ray for rendering.

Rewind and play the simulation to about frame 90, then click the Render the current frame icon.

You can adjust the material attributes such as Reflectivity and Glow Intensity, to get the desired look of the molten metal.

You can also improve the quality of the rendered frame by changing the render settings.
To change the render settings, click the icon to open the Render Settings window.
In the Maya Software tab, click the Anti-aliasing Quality tab and set the following:
- Set Quality to Production quality.
- In the Raytracing Quality section, turn on Raytracing.
Re-render to see the results.

You have now created a realistic simulation of molten slag flowing into a tub. This concludes the section on creating the slag flow. In the next lesson, you create a fluid to simulate smoke and flames coming off the molten slag.

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