1st off I'm using an ATI 9500, so I'm probably encountering problems not associated with with Maya, but the Video Card. Even so, all I want to do is apply a flat painted map to an object. The object is already UV Mapped. Everytime I get a Lambert Material, click on Color-File and select File in 2D Textures I end up with:…
You should be able to delete those nodes. When you create a lambert or any material you need to specify if you want the 3d texture as normal, projection, or stencil. You have As Projection clicked on. Switch that to normal and it should work fine. It's right here:
It's because you have it set to "projection" when creating the file node. Change it to "normal" and it uses your UVs. You can also turn off the "new texture placement" if you want, they allow you to adjust the tiling & rotation fo a texture with touching the UVs, but usually aren't needed.
Open Hypershade, go to the "Textures" tab, middle-click and drag the texture you want onto the model in the viewport. Then make sure Hardware Texturing is turned on in the viewport, and it should display. You need the place3dTexture1 node for any image file used as a texture, it's just the way Maya does things. I'm not…