With all the new games I played, the photo retouching job I had, and my bad back, I didn't have much time left for Maya. Stephanie recently got the flu, so she's been resting a lot. Yesterday I decided to whip up to 'ol Maya project and work on completing the Basic Shaders lessong. Lo and behold! Here's how the backyard looks shaded.
I realize some of the saturation is off, but I haven't yet started to properly light the scene. With better lights, there's going to be minimal tweaking to the shaders for them to look better.
I loved working with the ball shader (the beach ball). It doesn't look complicated, but there's a ramp (gradient) that's feeding into another (Ramp2 -> Ramp1). It's the first shader-network of the scene. This enables us to create the effect of the vinyl cap on both ends of the ball with perpendicular stripes between them.
The stripes Ramp feed in the red color of Ramp1.
I should be starting the Advanced Shaders lesson. This is going to be a lot of fun. I always loved Networks (Native-Instruments Reaktor <3). Expect a lot more updates then usual for this lesson.
