You can see some texture streaking down the front of the connector. This is a tutorial from the CGTUT.com website. I have been researching texturing and it seemed like a quick and easy tutorial. The author just has you do a planar map from the top view around the two holes and then paint some dirt into the area in photoshop.
However, he does not say anything about the fact that the texture wraps by default in the u and v space. So some of the texture painted in the hole areas is wrapping into that area. I tried unchecking wrap u and v in the 2D place node but then the front of the connector goes grey. I could shift it or erase some of the texture and hope that the white gap area ends up over that area, or I could apply textures to the polygons independently, but in the end I guess I am just gonna pretend it's a bit of grunge on the connector (lol). I guess I could planner map the entire top into the 0 to 1 uv space but then I would have a lot of wasted uv space.
But I learned a few useful things so it's not a total loss.
Here is a shot at a photo real usb connector. I experimented with a couple of different focal lengths and I added a couple of embellishments, like the USB logo which I am particularly proud of since it's the first time I created a illustrator vector object and imported it into maya.
I am having trouble with the metal connector. It is a mental ray mia_material_x material but I am not sure why it is not looking metallic.
I think the texture is actually fine but there is just nothing in the scene that is being reflected. I experimented with a couple of poly planes with some of the polys textured with high luminosity hoping they might be reflected but I could not get them aligned so that they were visible in the reflections.
Lighting and texturing is tedious and hard!
Here is a snapshot of the material settings:
