In visual arts, a texture is any kind of surface detail, both visual and tactile. In Maya Creative, you create surface detail with textures connected to the material of objects as texture maps. Materials define the basic substance of an object, and textures add detail.
You can connect textures to almost any attribute of a material; the most common ones being color, transparency and shine (specularity). For more information on material attributes, see Common surface material attributes and Common surface material Specular Shading attributes. See Map a 2D or 3D texture for a visual demonstration on how to connect a texture map.
In addition, you can also add detail to the appearance of an object’s surface by adding Surface relief. Do this by connecting textures as bump maps or displacement maps. See Texture mapping for information on commonly used texture maps.
A set of 2D and 3D textures are provided in Maya. In addition, you can create a File texture and connect to it your own image file.
You can also bake illumination and color to a texture that you can later apply to objects in a scene. See Baking illumination and color.