Texturing and Shading 2

Color
The default material color.

Transparency

If the transparency value is 0(black),the surface is totally opaque; if the transparency value is 1(white),the surface is totally transparent. If you change transparency from the default black ,the background of the material's hypershade swatch becomes a checked pattern .This is not a visual aid and is not rendered.

Ambient Color

Uses Black by default. As the ambient color becomes lighter, it affect's the material's color by lightening it and blending the two colors.

Incandescence

The color and the brightness of light that a material appears to be emitting. The default color value is 0.

Bump Mapping

Makes the surface appear more rough or bumpy by altering surface normals according to the intensity of the pixels in the bump map texture. A bump map does not actually alter the surface.

Diffuse

Gives the material ability to reflect light in all directions. The diffuse value acts like a scaling factor applied to the color setting-the higher the diffuse value, the closer the actual surface is to the color setting.

Translucence

Gives the material the ability to transmit and diffuse light.  Light falling on a translucent surface is first absorbed beneath the surface and then diffused in all directions. The slider range is 0 to 1.
Surface Material Attributes

Specular color

The color of shiny highlights on the surface. A black specular color produces no surface highlights. The default color value is 0.5.

Reflectivity

Gives the surface the ability to reflect its surroundings or the reflected color. The default color value is 0.5.

Reflected color

Represents the color of light reflected from the material. This can be used to tint a reflection.

Surface Material

Fig 5-3 Surface Materials

Anisotropic

Represents surfaces with grooves, such as cd or feathers etc. Anisotropic material (such as Phong or Blinn)reflects specular light  identically in all directions.If you spin an isotropic sphere, its specular   highlight remains still.

Roughness

Determines the overall roughness of the surface. The range is 0.01 to 1.0.The default is 0.7.Smaller values correspond to smoother surfaces and the specular highlights are more concentrated.

Fresnel Index

A fresnel is a flat lens consisting of a number of concentric rings that reduces spherical abnormalities. The Fresnel index for water is 1.33.Value range from 1.0 to 20.0.

Anisotropic Reflectivity

If on, Maya automatically calculates Reflectivity as a fraction of roughness. Reflectivity is on by default.
Blinn Attributes
Color The base color of the surface.
Transparency Adjusts the surface opacity. You can use colors to create a tinted glass effect.
Ambient Color Adds to and blends with the color value.
Incandescence A simulation of emitted light. At low values, it tints and self-illuminates the material, and at high values, it overtakes the material's color and becomes self-illuminated.
Diffuse By default, it's set to 0.8, which dulls down the color value you've set.
Translucence A special effect in which light is absorbed and scattered as it passes through an object, useful for simulating materials such as frosted glass.
Translucence Focus Controls how light scatters from the surface.
Eccentricity The width of the highlight, simulating how polished or rough the surface appears.
Specular Roll Off The brightness/intensity of the highlight.
Specular Color The color of the highlight; usually set to white or a gray value.
Reflectivity The strength of reflections on the object. Reflections can be raytraced or use texture maps.
Reflected Color For Blinn, the color swatch and slider have no effect. However, when a texture map is applied, it appears to be reflected by the material.
Lambert
Represents matte surface(such as chalk,matte paint,unpolished surfaces) with no specular highlights. The initial shading group uses a lambert material.
Layered Shader Attributes
Represents a single surface material composed of several  different surface materials layered on top of one another.
Transparency
By default the material is semi-transparent.

Compositing Flag

Composites the layers using a layered shader or layered texture mode.

Hardware color

Helps you distinguish the objects assigned to a layered shader in the views.
Phong Attributes
Represents glassy or glossy surfaces with a hard specular highlight.

Cosine power

This feature is available to the phong material. Controls the size of shiny highlights on the surface. The default value is 20.
Phong E Attributes
A simpler version of the phong material. The specular highlights on the Phong E surfaces are softer than those on Phong Surfaces and Phong E surfaces render faster than Phong surfaces.

Roughness

Controls the specularity focus.

Highlight Size

Controls the amount of specular highlight.

Whiteness

Controls the specular highlight color. The default value is white. You can also map a texture to this value.