Maya 2011: Creating Textures and Shaders with Eric Keller shows how to create textures and materials, and then apply them to models to render realistic surfaces. The course covers working with the mental ray shading nodes, including the mental images architectural node, subsurface scattering nodes, occlusion, and car paint shaders, as well as how to incorporate these nodes into shading networks using the Hypershade editor. It also explores using textures, Maya software nodes, normal maps, and displacement maps for adding detail to models. Exercise files accompany the course.

* Understanding shading concepts

* Simulating the Fresnel effect for realistic reflections

* Rendering transparent and translucent surfaces

* Comparing mental ray and Maya standard shaders

* Introducing the mia_material

* Developing shader networks

* Using subsurface scattering shaders

* Mapping polygon UV coordinates

* Incorporating texture nodes into networks

* Improving skin detail with ambient occlusion

* Painting bump maps

* Creating normal and displacement maps

* Troubleshooting maps