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Texture Assignment in Maya

Texture Assignment in Maya

Table of Contents

Summary

This document details the workflow of texturing assignment in Maya with SYNK, highlighting essential steps to properly link textures to meshes. At the end of the process we generate a file that links our textures and materials to the correct shapes across different softwares.

Starting the task

Ftrack

In order to start working on the texture assignment of your asset, you will first need to:

  1. Make sure you’re logged in to Ftrack connect, which is a standalone app.

  1. Travel to the texturing or texture assignment task of the asset you want to work on.

  1. Launch the SYNK Maya action.

TextureAssignment_Ftrack_LaunchTask.mp4

A version of Maya which includes the SYNK Pipeline will now launch automatically.

Maya

Once Maya opens, you will be greeted by a window that will allow you to select which version of the file you want to work with.

Open the version you want to work with or create a new version and start assigning textures.

TextureAssignment_Scenes_CreateNewVersion.mp4


The most important tab is the Work tab:

Shader Setup

Texture Assignment is basically the same work as shading in Maya through the Hypershade.

Shader Setup

Any shader where the textures don’t use UDIMs you can use texture nodes that have the UV Tiling Mode set to “Off”.

  1. Windows > Rendering Editors > Hypershade

  2. Create > Arnold Shader Surface > aiStandardSurface

  3. Rename the nodes of the shader. Check Texture Assignment in Maya for more details.

  4. Assign the textures to the shader. They can be found here: ProjectName\6_vfx\601_library\AssetType\AssetName\AssetVariant\workspaces\tex\subpaint\publish

    1. BaseColor > Base Color

    2. MaskMap > (R) to Metalness. (Alpha) to Specular Roughness

    3. Normal > Normal Camera

    4. SSS > (R) to Subsurface

    5. Thickness > Subsurface Radius

    6. Transmission > Subsurface Color

    7. LayerMask > Any unused shader inputs

image-20250703-124947.png

Hair Cards Groom Shader Setup

Any shader where the textures don’t use UDIM naming conventions or for Groom shaders you can use texture nodes that have the UV Tiling Mode set to “Off”

  1. Windows > Rendering Editors > Hypershade

  2. Create > Arnold Shader Surface > aiStandardSurface

  3. Rename the nodes of the shader. Check Texture Assignment in Maya | Shader Naming Convention for more details.

  4. Assign the textures to the shader. They can be found here: ProjectName\6_vfx\601_library\AssetType\AssetName\AssetVariant\workspaces\tex\subpaint\publish

    1. BaseColor > Base Color

    2. Normal > Normal Camera

    3. Opacity > Opacity

    4. AO > Specular Color

image-20250703-120849.png
Example of multiple shaders for hair cards

UDIM Shader Setup

When using the mari UDIM workflow only one shader is required. If this isn’t selected then you’ll have to create a shader for each texture sets that you have.

image-20250219-102335.png
TextureAssignment_Hypershade_CreateNewShader.mp4
Create Shader
TextureAssignment_Hypershade_ImportTexturesUDIM.mp4
Texture import and connections

  1. Windows > Rendering Editors > Hypershade

  2. Create > Arnold Shader Surface > aiStandardSurface

  3. Rename the nodes of the shader. Check Texture Assignment in Maya for more details

  4. Assign the textures to the shader. They can be found here: ProjectName\6_vfx\601_library\AssetType\AssetName\AssetVariant\workspaces\tex\subpaint\publish

    1. BaseColor > Base Color

    2. MaskMap > (R) to Metalness. (Alpha) to Specular Roughness

    3. Normal > Normal Camera

    4. SSS > (R) to Subsurface

    5. Thickness > Subsurface Radius

    6. Transmission > Subsurface Color

      image-20250617-105108.png
      click to enlarge

  5. Assign the shader to meshes.

Shader Naming Convention

Basic Shader Naming

arnoldShader: SH_mats_(MaterialName)_tex_v(Version)_(ID)

shadingEngine: SE_mats_(MaterialName)_tex_v(Version)_(ID)

SH_mats_Cube_tex_v001_01
SE_mats_Cube_tex_v001_01