TUTORIAL: The Hypershade

The Hypershade
Overview and Description

This tutorial isn't really a step-by-step instruction for doing anything specific, but simply an overview of how the Hypershade works, what the different Hypershade nodes are, and how they work together. There are literally hundreds of nodes that can be made use of in the Hypershade, so obviously, I can't go over each and every one. But I'll attempt to go over a bunch of them in order to give all of you an idea of the basic form, so that you can experiment and come up with your own solutions regarding things that aren't gone over in much detail.

So, let's open the Hypershade window. You'll find it under Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade. Let's take a look at the different Hypershade areas in the below image (by the way, this is how it looks in Maya 4. It has been changed a bit from the maya 3 and earlier versions):
PART ONE: OVERVIEW
1. This top area of the Hypershade is what I call the "Big List" window. (Not the official name!) This top window displays all of the different rendering nodes that are currently present in your scene. As you can see in this pic, I have 3 Material nodes present. These 3 nodes are always present when you begin a new file.
DO NO DELETE THESE THREE DEFAULT MATERIAL NODES!!! DO NOT MODIFY THESE THREE DEFUALT MATERIAL NODES!!!
Everybody get that part? Don't delete them and don't modify them (not at least, until you're familiar with what you're doing)! The Lambert1 node is the default material node that is applied to all primitives and objects when they are initially created in Maya. If you were to delete this, new objects in your scene would be without a material, and possibly, invisible in your scene. If you were to modify this, each additional object you create will also have those modifications.
The same goes for the other 2 default nodes. The particleCloud1 node is the default particle material for software-renderable particles, while the shaderGlow (new in Maya 4) helps in controling the different glow aspects of the materials in your scene. Don't worry if you don't think you'll be using particles or glows, still keep these nodes unmodified in your list.
Ok. If you look at the Big List window, you'll see a row of tabs along the top of it: Materials, Textures, Utilities, Lights, Cameras, and Projects. Clicking on each of these will list all of that particular item that you have in the scene. For instance, clicking the Utilities tab will show a list of all utility nodes in use.
2. This is the Work Area. The work area is where you will be managing and modifying your different shaders and textures for your scene. When you create new materials and textures, they will appear down here as well as being added to your lists.
The only other tab in the Work Area is the Shader Library, which has a large library of material and texture files that Maya provides for different objects like glass, brick, etc. The materials are a good source of textures, however I would recomend not using them as-is and at least modifying them somehow if you use them. Here's why: everyone has access to these textures, so you can bet everyone will be using them. Eventually, these textures will become very recognizable in the industry, just as artists now can recognize different procedural textures from previous versions of Maya.
3. Window Controls. These simply allow you to display one of the two windows at a time, or both as I have here.
4. Create Bar. This is the list of available nodes to create. The contents of this list are dependant on what selection is chosen in...
5. Create Control. Here you can select what type of nodes you wish to create: materials, textures, lights, and utilities.
6. This is the control menu for the Hypershade. From left to right: Show Create Bar on/off, Display selected material's graph, Display selected object's graph, Show downstream connections (shows nodes in hierarchy at and below selection), show up and downstream connections (shows nodes in entire hierarchy of selection, both above and below), sho upstream connections (shows nodes in hierarchy at and above selection).
7. File Menus. These are the menus that do pretty much the same thing that you can in the individual windows themselves, in menu form.
Whew... This was obviously just a general explanation, and only the first part of the Overview. Next is part 2 which goes over individual Materials and the method of creating and applying these materials to objects.
PART TWO: MATERIAL + TEXTURE = SHADER
All Shaders that you'll make will usually be composed of AT LEAST two components known as the Material and the Texture. In Maya, there are 9 different materials readily available, and while each has their use, I'm just going to go over the main ones that everyone needs to know about: Blinn, Anisotropic, Lambert, Phong, and Layered Shader. The others aren't really used as often in most circumstances, but I do recomend you reading up on them in the future, just so you can get familiar with them.
1. Blinn

The Blinn material is probably the most used material because of its very generic specular highlight (shine) which can be customized to be as shiny or as dull as you'd want. So, the Blinn can be used on practically anything to get the look of realistic "sheen" - anything from plastic, ceramic, steel, plaster... all these things have different specular values and each can be represented by manipulating the attributes in the Blinn. It should be pointed out that the Blinn (and a few of the other materials) is, by default, reflective. So make sure you turn off the reflective attribute if you don't want the surface to act like a mirror. :P
2. Anisotropic

This one isn't quite as widely used, but it does have its specific uses. As you can see from the pic, it has a very distinct specular highlight, a wavey pattern. As you can imagine, this would be very useful for uneven surfaces that are shiny such as a woman's long, silky hair; the surface of a Compact Disk; the surface of Saran Wrap; etc.
3. Lambert

The Lambert material is for when you have an object or surface that has no sheen or highlight at all, like dry dirt, cardboard, paper, certain fabrics, etc. It is also used as the default material in Maya, as described earlier.
4. Phong

The Phong material is similar to the Blinn, but is a much more "glossy" surface by default. This kind of material could be good on something that is wet or moist, like an eyeball or perhaps and ice cube.
5. Layered Shader
The Layered Shader, is, as you'd expect, simply a node that takes the other materials and layers them on top of each other. You then control their transparancy levels to get very interesting effects. For super-realistic skin, for example, you would need to somehow create the sub-surface scattering of light that occurs in real skin. This kind of thing can only be realised through the layering of materials. In Fig. 1, you can see how I have 2 blinns and a Lambert layered to create a very soft material result with just the use of colors.
Now the material determines what the object is "made of" but the texture determines what it looks like. Maya offers a variety of procedural textures like checkerboards, motled fractals, etc. but you'll more than likely end up using your own images created using a photo-manipulator like Photoshop or something.
Let's take a look at Fig 2. Here I have a simple Blinn "mapped" with the texture of a checkerboard. The other two nodes (blinnSG and place2dTexture) we won't worry about right now, except that the place2dTexture node (or "placement" node) allows you to manipulate the texture's position on the object. It's pretty straight forward, so I'll let you look over that on your own.
Now, the method of "mapping" a material is a very simple concept. If you dbl-click your material you'll see a fairly large list of "attributes" that material has. (Fig 3)
You'll notice that all these little attributes have a checkerboard button beside them. This is the "Map" button which lets you assign a texture node to any and/or all of these attributes. Why? Let me show you.
Right now, you'll see that the button beside the "Color" attribute is different then the rest. That's because the Color attribute has been "mapped" by the checkerboard texture. This is what makes the material look as if it is a checkerboard. What would happen if we "mapped" the Transparancy attribute with a checkerboard? In the Hypershade work view, simply middle click and drag the checkerboard all the way into the attribute editor onto the Transparancy attribute. You'll see the checkerboard map button change to match what the color attribute's button looks like, indicating that it has been "mapped." We also see this effect: Fig 4.
Whoah! The white areas of the checkerboard have made the blinn transparant, while the black areas of the checker have made the blinn opaque. Besides the color attribute, the rest of the attributes use black-white as the control for their function. With this in mind, you could create a black and white image to control EXACTLY where an object is transparant and where it is opaque- where an object glows and where it doesn't - where an object is bumpy and where it is flat. All by controlling the white/black of an image you map on to that attribute.
Let's try one more thing. Let's delete the connection to the blinn's transparancy (right click on the mapped attribute and choose "Break Connection").
Click the "mapped" button beside the color attribute and it will take you to the attributes of the Checkerboard texture (Fig 5)
You'll notice that the attributes of the checker ALSO have map buttons! Let's try mapping another texture onto the white areas of the checkerboard. Click the map button on Color 1 and it will open up the Create Render Node window. Choose a Crater texture. You should get the following effect: Fig 6.
The white areas of the checker have been replaced by the crater! Now look in the crater's attributes... MORE ATTRIBUTES! You could literally go on mapping and mapping to create some very complex and intricate looking textures! (Fig 7) It's all just a matter of practice to get the kind of look you want.
I hope this rather lengthy lesson has helped you nubies out there understand the Hypershade better. There's still tons more in there, such as the Utilities, which give you such intricate control it'd make your head spin! But that's.... another story. :)
Thanks and good luck!

Michael McKinley