The following tutorial is explaining about how to create hard and soft materials in Maya. In Maya modeling, the object is first created in a rough shape then it is provided material according to its demand. The color, lighting and shading are second priority in Maya modeling. So first of all after the rough shape, it is assigned material. There are different maps setting built it already in Maya. These maps help you to create instant modeling for your scene. After this the color is chosen because it contains default color setting at the time of rough shape. The color should be dark because the light color does render the scene well, similarly lighting is important factor of 3D modeling, when you are going to assign lighting, make sure that light is assigned at proper place where it is covering all the object in the scene.
The camera setting is also important at the time of lighting, generally the lighting is assigned at the horizontal way because here it can create shadow of the objects also. The question about soft and hard material about model is remained unsolved. If we talk about human character model or robot as in our scene, there central part of body; Belly has elasticity and can stretch and squeeze itself, therefore here we use soft material. Otherwise when the Chest stretches, it becomes harder, therefore we shall use hard material for the upper part of our body.