Hypershade

Maya's Hypershade is one of the first and most important areas you should take the time to explore—it provides a quick and easy way to create, edit, and connect rendering nodes, such as textures, materials, lights, rendering utilities, and special effects.

To open Hypershade:

Select Window > Rendering Editors > Hypershade from Maya's main menu bar.

Hypershade displays each node as an icon, sometimes called a swatch, that represents the characteristics of the node. When you edit a node's attributes or assign textures or special effects, the swatch updates in Hypershade.

Using a Dependency graph A dependency graph shows the node connections, such as connections among shading group items that create an object's material appearance. Material, light, post processes such as glow, texture, and utility nodes are all elements underlying the visual looks you create in Maya.

Hypershade Create Bar

When you first open Hypershade, the Create Bar panel displays at the left. From this panel, you can click a node swatch to create nodes or MMB-drag and drop nodes into the Hypershade panel, much the same as you would from the Create Render Node window. (To open the Create Render Node window as a separate window, select Create > Create Render Node.)

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Hide or show this panel by clicking the checker icon at the top-left of Hypershade, or select Create Bar > Show Create Bar from the Options menu.

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The Options menu also provides items to customize the icon display. Select either Options > Create Bar > Display Icons and Text (the default) or Display Icons Only, which uses less screen real estate but provides the same functionality.

Hypershade tabs

Hypershade's tabs contain the nodes that make up the current scene. Click a tab to view specific nodes. See also Tabs menu for details.

Work Area tab

Displays the shading network for a selected node in a separate tab area. Select a node, then select one of the graphing icons on the tool bar, such as Show Upstream Connections. The selected nodes are graphed into the Work Area tab. If another Work Area tab is selected, the graph operation graphs the selected nodes into that tab. (The Work Area tab cannot be deleted.)

Tab display icons

You can view shading networks within tabs in a split panel display (the default) or in separate panels by selecting the icons at the top-right of Hypershade. These items are also accessible in the Tabs menu—Show Top and Bottom Tabs, Show Bottom Tabs Only, and Show Top Tabs Only.

Projects tab

The Projects tab displays the contents of the default projects directory (for example, ~joe/maya/projects or D:\joe\maya\projects).

If you keep projects elsewhere, use Tabs > Create New Tab to create a new disk tab pointing to the directory in which you keep your projects. See To create a Disk tab: and Current Tab.

Graph menu

These menu items let you interactively customize the Hypershade view by either simplifying any clutter or extending the view to include node connections.

Graph Materials on Selected Objects

Displays the shading group networks of selected objects.

Clear Graph

Clears the Hypershade of all nodes and shading networks.

Show Upstream

Displays only the upstream connections of selected nodes. See also Show Upstream Connections.

Show Downstream

Displays only the downstream connections of selected nodes. See also Show Downstream Connections.

Show Upstream and Downstream

Displays the up and downstream connections of the selected nodes. See also Show Up and Downstream Connections.

Rearrange Graph

Rearranges the nodes in the current layout to view all nodes and shading networks without overlaps.

Window menu

Use Hypershade's Window menu items as an alternative to selecting various editors from Maya's main menu bar. The advantage is you can view and edit the connections between nodes, or adjust node attributes in one simple step.

Attribute Editor

Displays the Attribute Editor of the selected node.

Attribute Spread Sheet

Displays the Attribute Spread Sheet and loads it with the selected nodes so you can edit attributes for all nodes at one time.

Connection Editor

Displays the Connection Editor (without pre-loading nodes in either column).

Connect Selected

Displays the Connection Editor with the selected node loaded in the Outputs column.

Options menu

Hypershade's options menu items tell Maya to re-render the node swatches if you decide to zoom in or out, or clear the view.

Keep Swatches at Current Resolution

Re-renders swatches in the Hypershade when you zoom. Helpful if a scene is complex and there are many swatches in a Hypershade layout.

Clear Before Graphing

If Clear Before Graphing is on, selecting a node already in the Work Area and performing a Graph Upstream and/or Downstream operation clears the Work Area before the new graph is drawn. If Clear Before Graphing is off, the same workflow adds the nodes in the new graph to the Work Area without removing previous nodes.

Hypershade buttons

Clear Graph

Clears the current Hypershade layout.

Rearrange Graph

Rearranges the nodes in the current layout to display all nodes and networks.

Graph Materials on Selected Objects

Displays the Hypershade layout of nodes and/or shading networks for the selected objects.

Showing connections

The icons at the top of Hypershade provide you with a way to view placement and shading group swatches. This can be useful in situations where these swatches do not display.

Any swatch you select contains up and downstream connections. You can select any node in Hypershade and display its connections.

To show connections:

Select the swatch for which you want to see the connections, then click one of the icons at the top-right of Hypershade. Glide the cursor over an icon to display its name.

Show Upstream Connections

Displays the upstream connections of the selected node. Upstream connections are those Maya automatically creates depending on the node type.

Show Downstream Connections

Displays the downstream connections of the selected node. Downstream connections show the Shading Group Node. Double-click the Shading Group swatch to open it's Attribute Editor. See Material Attributes for details.

Show Up and Downstream Connections

Displays both the up and downstream connections of the selected node.

Hypershade menus

File menu

Import Selected Scene Files

Reads elements from another file and loads them into the current file.

Import Selected Image Files

Select an item from the pull-out menu to choose how to import image files. Include Placement is on by default.

As Normal—For normal textures, Maya applies a texture map according to the geometry characteristics—textures are placed onto polygons based on UV information, or placed onto NURBS surfaces based on parametrized information.

As Projection—To create projection textures, Maya applies a texture map to the surface of a 3D object by projecting a 2D texture into 3D space—in other words, Maya projects the texture maps independently of the geometry characteristics.

Tip For textures created with As projection turned on, you need to explicitly connect the texture to the bump so the texture is visible in the bump map.

As Stencil—Lets you place an image file or texture on a surface and manipulate its placement and size to look like a label. You can use masking techniques to hide unwanted parts of the image.

Include Placement—When on, Maya automatically creates a texture placement node when you create a texture render node. The default setting is on.

Export Selected Network

Exports the selected item into a new file. The file browser opens to its best guess directory, but can browse to any directory, or cancel, before exporting.

Edit menu

Delete

Deletes the selected node(s). When you delete a node from Hypershade, Maya deletes it from the session.

Delete Unused Nodes

Deletes nodes not assigned to geometry or particles.

Delete All by Type

Deletes all nodes of the type you select, whether they are assigned or not.

Revert Selected Swatches

Reverts the selected swatches to their default shapes.

Select All by Type

Highlights all the node swatches you select from this menu.

Duplicate

Duplicates the selected node or shading network.To duplicate a node without its network, select the node and select Edit > Duplicate > Without Network. To duplicate a node and connect it to the same network (in effect, sharing the network), select Edit > Duplicate > With Connections to Network.

Convert to File Texture

Creates file texture(s) matching materials of selected objects. You must select a texture/material and surface to perform this operation. See Convert to File Texture for details.

View menu

Frame All

Frames all the nodes displayed in the current Hypershade layout.

Frame Selected

Frames only the selected nodes in the current Hypershade layout.

Create menu

Create New Node

Opens the Create Render Node window from which you can select rendering nodes. Icons representing the nodes are displayed under each tab. You can also select an item from the pull-out menu associated with the Material, Textures, Lights, and Utilities menu items.

Materials and Textures—Creates a new material or texture. See: Material Attributes, Surface Materials, Displacement Material, 2D & 3D Textures, Multitexturing, and Creating Backgrounds for details about these nodes.

Lights and Utilities —Creates a new light or utility. See: Lights and Shadows, General Utilities, Switch Utilities, Color Utilities, Image Planes, and Glow Utilities for details about these nodes.

Tabs menu

Each tab contains the nodes that make up the current scene. These options let you create new tabs and customize the default tabs.

Create New Tab

Opens a window in which you can set options for the new tab you want to create. See Creating new tabs for details. See also Create New Tab options.

Move Tab

Select a tab then select one of these options to move the tab up, down, left, or right.

Rename Tab

Opens a window in which you can assign a new name for a selected tab.

Remove Tab

Select a tab then select this option to remove it.

Revert to Default Tabs

Removes new tabs and reverts to the default organization.

Current Tab

When the Current Tab is a Disk Tab or the default Projects tab, the following options become available:

Show Directories Only—The tab displays only the directory lists.

Show Files Only—The tab displays only the file icons.

Show Both—The tab displays both the directory lists and the file icons in a split panel.

Refresh File Listing—The tab refreshes the list display.

Generate Swatch Files for Current Images—When you navigate to a directory containing images in a Disk Tab (such as the default Projects tab), Hypershade reads each image file from disk and displays a swatch that represents it. Reading every image file and creating a swatch takes time, particularly for directories containing large image files and/or many image files.

Once the swatches for the image files are created and displayed, you can use the Generate Swatch Files for Current Images menu item to save them. Now, every time you navigate to the same directory in Hypershade, the display updates much faster since Hypershade no longer has to read each image file—it can read the saved swatches instead.

The swatch files are saved in a .mayaSwatches sub-directory of the directory containing the images, and the names of the swatch files correspond to the names of the image files. For example, for an image file called earth.tif, the .mayaSwatches sub-directory contains a file called earth.tif.swatch.

Note Because the swatch files are saved in a sub-directory, you need write permissions to the directory to successfully Generate Swatch Files for Current Images.

Creating new tabs

You can create and name tabs to help you organize a scene's rendering elements.

To create a new tab in Hypershade:

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Select Tabs > Create New Tab.

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Enter a new tab name, set the options you need, then press Create.

See also To create a Scene tab: and To create a Disk tab:

Create New Tab options

An option window displays providing you with options to customize the tabs in Hypershade.

New Tab Name

Enter the name of the new tab. This name displays on the new tab in Hypershade. Enter names indicating the contents of the tab.

Initial Placement

Select either the Top or Bottom radio buttons to view the new tabs at either the top or bottom panels of Hypershade.

Tab Type

There are three different tab types:

Scene—Displays a collection of nodes in the current scene.

Work Area—Displays shading networks depending on the mode you choose: Show Upstream, Show Downstream, or Show Upstream and Downstream Connections.

Disk—Displays files and/or directories on disk. When you select this tab type, the Create New Tab window expands to display the Root Directory option.

To create a Scene tab:

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Enter a name for the new tab, then select where you want to place the tab.

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Select an item from the Show nodes which are list.

For example, if you want to create a tab that displays only the special effects nodes of the scene, name it appropriately, select Post Process from the list, then click Create. Hypershade displays the Post Process nodes in the scene.

Root Directory

Provides access to a specified directory or files. Either type the path name if you know it, or click the folder icon to browse through directories.

Only show files (Hide directory tree)—Hides or shows the directory tree. This is especially helpful if you find you routinely work with files located in one specific directory. You can switch between viewing directory folders or just the files within that directory.

To create a Disk tab:

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Enter a name for the new tab, then select where you want to place it.

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Select the Disk Tab Type.

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Type the path name, or click the folder icon to select the directory where the items are stored.

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Turn Only show files (Hide directory tree) on or off, then press Create.