Maya and Arnold: Architectural Materials

Learn how to create realistic materials for 3D architectural visualizations using Maya, Arnold, and Substance.

Learn how to create realistic materials for 3D architectural visualizations using Maya, Arnold, and Substance. In this course, instructor George Maestri explains how to use these popular tools to create your own custom materials for interior and exterior architectural renderings, including glass and other transparent surfaces, stucco, metal, foliage such as grass and groundcover, and more. Learn how to prepare your geometry for texturing via UV mapping and then dive into the standard and physically based rendering (PBR) materials available out of the box in Arnold and the Substance source library. George then shows how to create custom materials in Arnold, Substance Designer, and Substance Alchemist. At the end of each chapter, George shows how to import your new materials into Maya so they are ready to use in visualizations. By the end of this course, you'll have the skills and knowledge to take advantage of the best features in each program for your own material creation process.

Introduction

• Create materials for 3D architectural visualization applications
• Working with the exercise files

1. Preparing Geometry for Materials

• Organizing the scene
• Projecting textures
• Mapping geometry for UV editing
• Adjusting UV layouts

2. Maya Shaders for Arnold

• Setting up Arnold for materials
• Selecting the proper shading algorithm
• Using PBR materials
• Additional surface types

3. Creating Arnold Materials

• Creating basic materials
• Transparent surfaces and glass
• Creating grass using displacement
• Self-illumination materials
• Clipping foliage with opacity

4.Substance Materials in Maya

• Installing the Substance plug-ins
• Using the Substance Source library
• Importing Substance materials to Maya
• Modifying Substance materials in Maya

5. Substance Alchemist

• Using Substance Alchemist
• Creating materials in Alchemist
• Layering materials in Alchemist
• Creating materials from bitmaps
• Exporting from Alchemist
• Importing substance bitmaps to Maya

6. Substance Designer

• The Substance Designer interface
• Creating Substance materials
• Creating stucco material color
• Controlling stucco relief and gloss
• Exposing Substance parameters
• Adding the material to Maya

Conclusion

• Next steps