Class 3 - Week 1 - Basic Texturing for Stewie

The first step, as with anything involving tweaking Stewie, is to
unlock his geometry and make it selectable, allowing us to color each
part individually. You can do this by selecting the "stewie_ac_C_layout"
control ring (the large one around his feet) and hitting the right
arrow key, switching you to the "stewie_ac_C_visibility" node. Now in
the Channel Box, look for an attribute called "Geo Display" near the
bottom and set it from "referenced" to "normal". This will make all of
Stewie's geometry selectable. Just remember to set the attribute back
to "referenced" when you're done. That way you don't accidentally
select his geo while you're animating.

Next, we need to create some new materials to place on Stewie. For this
we'll need to enlist the aid of the Hypershade which can be found under
"Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade".


For this tutorial, we'll be creating a simple Lambert material. To do
that, simply find the Lambert button on the right side of the "Create bar"
and click on it. The new material will appear under both the Materials tab
and the Work Area. Select the newly created material and open the
attribute editor, where you'll be able to change the color as well as
rename the material. (It's a good idea to use a naming convention when
giving new names to objects in Maya, keeping things nice and neat. For
example, when I create new materials, I give them names such as
"pants_M", or "hatRim_M")

Once you've created all the materials you need for Stewie, it's time to
apply them. Simply select the geometry you would like to apply the
material to, and in the hypershade, right-click and hold over the
desired material to bring up a menu that will give you the option to
"Apply Material to Selection".

And that about covers it. You'll now be able to color Stewie to your
hearts content. But what if you want Stewie to be wearing socks? Or a
t-shirt? Or just make it so he doesn't look like he's wearing a
turtleneck sweater all the time?


For that we'll need to get a bit fancier and add in some ramp! Before,
you get too excited, these aren't the types of ramps you jump cars off
of. The ramps that I'm talking about are a color gradient node which we
will be attaching to the color value of each material, giving us the
freedom to tweak even more! But enough talking! Let's get to it!

For this example, I'll be making a texture for Stewie's chest, to make
it look like he's wearing a t-shirt instead of a turtleneck.

  • Create a new lambert.
  • Find the Ramp and middle mouse drag it onto the new lambert in the Work Area.
    (Make sure you are using a "Ramp" and not a "Ramp Shader").
  • A message will come up asking how you want to connect the two
    nodes. Select Color.
  • Apply the new lambert onto Stewie's chest (stewie_lo_C_chest)
  • It will appear as a grey. To turn on textures, hit the 6 key.
  • Now select the Ramp node and open up the attribute editor.
  • Set the type to "U Ramp" and Interpolation to "None"
  • Remove the top color (it should be blue by default) by hitting the
    box with an x in it on the right side of the color bar.
  • Select the next color (which should be green) by selecting the
    circle on the left side and set it's color to match Stewie's skin
    color. To make it easier, you can select the Stewie's skin material,
    and in the attribute editor, click on the color swatch. This will add
    the color into the color picker's swatches, letting you select it when
    in the ramp.
  • Set the "Selected Position" to around 0.46
  • Now select the bottom color and set it's to what you
    would like his shirt to be.
With his chest colored, you can apply a basic Lambert material to his
torso to finish off the shirt on his body. For the arms, do the same
thing as for the chest, but when you select the upper arms to apply the
texture, due to the hierarchy of the rig, it will also add the material
to the lower arms. To fix it, just select the lower arms afterwards and
apply Stewie's default skin material back on to them.

With this method, you'll be able to add quite a bit more detail to your
texturing. The only drawback is that you will need to create a new
material and ramp node for each piece of geometry, which can be a bit
tedious.

If you have the time and the know-how, you can also add a image file as
a texture to give Stewie even more detail, or even go so far as to
model some actual clothes for him, but that's way outside the scope of
this tip.

I hope that was helpful to you. Please feel free to contact either
Cameron or me by Skype (which you can find at the bottom of the post),
PM or AMConnect if you have any comments, or if there are any subjects
you would like us to write about. We'll do our best to add it into the
roster!

7 comments:

  1. Agreed! Great work as usual guys :)

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  2. Thanks ,this was really helpful.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks guys, this is really helpful.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks so much guys!!! This really helped :D

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks so much guys!!! This really helped :D

    ReplyDelete
  6. You guys are just great. Very helpful material once again!

    ReplyDelete