In Maya the HyperShade is a isolated environment where all of the shading and texturing can be done for a project or scene.
The Hypershade can be accessed by clicking on the blue shader ball in the main menu:
It can also be accessed from the main menu (‘Windows’ > ‘Rendering Editors’ > ‘Hypershade’):
You can also open the Hypershade directly in the viewer panel (and replace one of the perspectives) by going to ‘Panels’ > ‘Panel’ > ‘Hypershade’:
