Archive for March, 2010
For you Maya USERS in the house!
Ever create a material preset that looked awesome and you want to save it, but you want that cool little thumbnail so you can find what it looks like again? Well I found out how :-)
I learned a neat little trick today that is quick enough I could share with all of you. Here is a quick tutorial on how to create those thumbnail images associated with your materials that you create.
Step One: Open the scene where you want your material to be rendered on the object you want rendered that has some good lighting.
Step Two: Open your hypershade and navigate to the library where your newly created shaders are. (I strongly suggest having one because things like to break when you start moving your shaders to new homes).
(Create new tab, navigate to the directory). MM drag the .ma material file into your scene and apply it to your object.
Step Three: Render (I suggest a 400X400 image, but it doesn’t really matter)
Step Four: In the render window where your new image is now sitting, click on view>grab swatch to hypsershade/visor.
Step Five. You will now be asked to draw a marquee selection around the area that you want to have as a thumnail.
Step Six: Once this is selected make sure you have your hypershade open and you can see your .ma material file in your library(The one that is sitting in your library not the one that is in your scene) . Middle mouse your selection onto this icon. It will replace that default icon with your new beautiful render of your material!
That’s it!