Assigning material shaders

To prepare the geometry for rendering, you assign the mental ray mia_material_x shader to the pitcher, glass, and water meshes. Using the mia_material_x shader presets for the glass and water provide a quick and easy way to have proper refraction, reflectivity, and transparency values set on these materials. For more information about material shaders, see the mental ray mia_material/mia_material_x shader attributes section in the Rendering and Render Setup guide.

To assign a material to the pitcher and glass objects

1. In the Hypershade, under mental ray, click Materials.

   The right panel of the Hypershade now shows the list of mental ray shader nodes.

   
2. From the list, select mia_material_x.

   A mia_material_x material swatch appears in the Work Area tab of the Hypershade, and the material attributes appear in the Attribute Editor.

   
3. In the Attribute Editor, rename the material to mia_material_pitcher.
4. Click and hold the Presets button, select GlassThin, then Replace.
5. In the Refraction section, click the color swatch beside Color.

   The Color Chooser appears.

6. In the Color Chooser, select RGB 0 to 1.0 from the list in the bottom right corner of the window and type the following color values into the RGB fields:
   • R: 0.190
   • G: 0.574
   • B: 0.190
   
7. Move your mouse off the Color Chooser to close it.
8. In the Outliner, select the grp_Pitcher object.
9. To assign the material to the pitcher, in the Work Area tab of the Hypershade, -click mia_material_pitcher then select Assign Material To Selection from the marking menu.

   In the scene view, the pitcher turns black. You can only see the true color and texture of the material after the frame is rendered using mental ray for Maya renderer.

   
10. Assign materials to the glass and water meshes by repeating steps 2 to 10 using the following settings:

    For the glass (geo_glass) mesh:

    • Rename the material to mia_material_glass.
    • Select Presets > GlassThin > Replace.
    • In the Refraction section, set Color to R: 0.797, G: 0.875, and B: 0.915.

    For the water (Water_Mesh) mesh:

    • Rename the material to mia_material_water.
    • Select Presets > Water > Replace.
    • In the Diffuse section, set Color to R: 0.164, G: 0.512, B: 0.402.
    • In the Refraction section, set Transparency to 1.0.