Basic Material - Tutorial for beginners  

In this tutorial, we will see how to create some different types of basic materials and apply to some very simple models and render in Autodesk Maya. This is not a modeling tutorial. So, I will not focus much how to make models on which we are going apply these materials. Also, I may not be very accurate for the measurement for the example models I will be using.

Create and arrange some polygonal primitives in Maya Viewport as shown below (one Cylinder, one Sphere and one Torus). For seeing the material effects on the objects, we should “Smooth Shade All” view-mode.

Using curve (CP and EP) tool and revolve command add another 2 models (for a flower pot and a glass-mug) as shown in the below image.

Now, add 2 walls and a floor using box/plane primitives in the scene and arrange the other objects as well as you can see in the following illustration.