Change quality/properties of surface

[howard.cohl]

I am really new to Maya/MEL as well, but I have had some successes.

I am rendering nested colored transparent isosurfaces and it is working well.

Now I would like to experiment with changing the properties of the surfaces.  For instance, I would like to try to make my surfaces look, either depending on what they actually look like, as being perhaps:

1. more glossy (like glossy lipstick, yuck lol) indicating how well a surface reflects light in a specular (mirror-like) direction;
2. more waxy (like wax paper), as if the surface is coated in a thin layer of wax;
3. shiny like a piece of glass with internal reflections like a lens;
4. even hairy (for the fun of it);
5. or perhaps some other property that you might suggest.

Can someone give me some clue as to how I might apply effects like this to the surfaces I am using so I can experiment with this? My goal is to really highlight the surfaces by emphasizing the way the surfaces look.

This is the way my surfaces look at the moment

My current code for the properties of the surface (for instance for a blue surface) are given as follows:

// fourth shell, Blue surface
select -cl;
select -r den4:Mesh;
shadingNode -asShader blinn -name "surface4";
sets -renderable true -noSurfaceShader true -empty -name "surface4SG";
connectAttr -f "surface4.outColor"  "surface4SG.surfaceShader";
sets -edit -forceElement "surface4SG" |den4:Mesh;
setAttr "surface4.color" -type double3 0.0 0.0 2.0;
setAttr "surface4.ambientColor" -type double3 0.173 0.173 0.173;
setAttr "surface4.transparency" -type double3 0.316 0.316 0.316;

[Kahylan]

Hi!

Your surface properties are decided and limited by the shader you assign to your surface...

Blinn is a legacy shader, which is good since you are using the maya software renderer, but it is also fairly limited.

I think the only example from the once you mentioned above that can be achieved using Blinn is nr. 1, which you can achieve by using

surface4.eccentricity and surface4.reflectivity

If you want to keep using maya software to render I'd suggest you check out the other shaders in the Hypershades "Create -> Materials" tab. You'll probably be faster In finding out the shaders/settings you like by just manually doing some testrenders.

I hope this helps!