Beginner Maya Tutorial - Dice Texture

In the free video tutorial for beginners in Autodesk Maya (we have a lot of new beginners starting with us this month) we tackle a super simple modelling and texturing exercise - how to create a die (single of dice), bevel it, and texture it, downloading a free texture map from the web. The tutorial is aimed at complete beginners who have never used Autodesk Maya before. In addition, you can follow the steps outlined below, including - for extra sophistication - how to add a bump map (not covered in the video above). You can find more videos on modelling and texturing in Maya at our Vimeo Channel here. 

Your die texture should look like this

Open Maya, Create a Project, Set To It

1. First, open Maya, and create a project. File/Project Window/New 
2. Name your project "dice". Then set Maya to the new project. File/Set Project/dice

Model the Dice and find a texture map

1. Create a simple cube with just one face on each side. Press 6 for texture mode. Create/Polygon Primitives/Cube. Name it "die1"
2. Now select the die and create a material. Right Mouse Button (RMB) Assign new material/lambert. In the Attribute Editor, name the Lambert diceMaterial. 
3. In Google images, search for "dice material". Find a JPEG (like the one on the right) and download it to your desktop. Then copy it to your Source Images folder in your Maya project. 
4. With the die material selected, in the Attribute Editor, Click on the square checkerboard next to colour. A new Window opens, the 4th item down is file - click here. You will see a little file folder - click on this, navigate to the Source Images folder, select the die texture map, and click apply.
5. You will see there is a problem with the texture, which we must now fix.
6. Select the die. Open the UV texture editor. Windows/UV texture editor. Move it to the rhs of your screen,
7. Select your die (object mode), RMB and select Face mode. Select the face you want to fix.
8. Back in the UV texture editor, click on the separate the selected UV button. You can now manipulate the UV independently. Use the move and scale tool to adjust the uv so the texture map sits correctly on the die. 
9. Select the next face, and do the same thing. 
10. Do all the faces on the die, manipulating each one until it looks pretty. 
11. Edit/delete all by type/history

Bump Mapping

1. We can also use DiceTextureMap to create a bump map. Go back into the diceMaterial tab in the Attribute Editor and find the channel called bump mapping, under Common Material Attributes.
2. Select the checker box, and select file when the Create Render Node window opens. Two new tabs will appear: bump2D1 and file3. Re-name the bump2D1 tab “dieBumpTab”. set Bump Depth to 0.4. 
3. In the file tab, click on the yellow folder and navigate to the diceTextureMap as before. 
4. Make a render. See how it looks. If you want to adjust the bump settings, go first the diceMaterial tab, then click on bump settings to find your bump tabs again. Adjust the bump depth in the Attribute editor in dieBumpTab to adjust the strength of the bump map. 

Bevel Your Dice

1. Select the die and go to edit mesh/bevel. 
2. In the Attribute Editor, find the polybevel tab and adjust the Fraction slider to reduce the size of the bevel. Now if you press render you should get a nice soft edge to the die.
3. Contrl D duplicate the die. Name them die1 and die2

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