A material defines an object's look—its color, tactile texture, transparency, luminescence, glow, and so on. Mapping is the term used to describe how the materials are wrapped or projected onto the geometry (for example, adding wood grain to a wooden object). After you create your objects, the Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2016 program assigns a simple color to them, as you've already seen. You define a material by setting values for its parameters or by applying textures or maps. These parameters define the way an object will look when rendered. Much of an object's appearance when rendered also depends on the lighting. In this chapter and in Chapter 13, “Introduction to Lighting: Interior Lighting,” you will discover that materials and lights work closely together.
In this chapter, you will learn to
The Material Editor is the central place where you create and edit all of your material. You can assign materials to any number of objects, as well as have multiple materials assigned to different parts of the same object.
There are two interfaces to the Material Editor: the Slate Material Editor (or Slate) and the Compact Material Editor.
The Slate Material Editor is the interface you will use in this book. It is far superior to the Compact Material Editor and is especially nice when you are first learning to map, because you can see the material structure, as shown in Figure 9.1.
You can access the Slate Material Editor by choosing Rendering Material Editor Slate Material Editor from the menu bar. You can also click the icon for it on the main toolbar (), or you can press the keyboard shortcut (the M key).
The Slate Material Editor's interface uses nodes and wiring to display the structure of materials. It has a simple and elegant layout with the Material/Map Browser on the left for choosing material and map types. The center area is the Active View area, where you build materials by connecting maps or controllers to material components. The area on the right is the Material Parameter Editor; within that area is a Navigator for moving within the Active View area.
Different materials have different uses. The Standard material is fine for most uses. However, when you require a more complex material, you can change the material type to one that will fit your needs. To change a material type in the Slate Material Editor, just choose from the list under Materials in the Material/Map Browser. You should see the rollout for Standard. If you are using the NVIDIA mental ray renderer, you will also see a rollout for mental ray. As you can see, the list is extensive; there are not enough pages in this book to cover the multitude of material types, so we will just touch on some of the best as an introduction. You will also see some examples using the Slate Material Editor.
Standard materials typically use a four-color model to simulate a surface of a single color reflecting many colors. The four colors are known as the material's color components. Ambient color appears where the surface is in shadow, diffuse color appears where light falls directly on the surface, specular color appears in highlights, and filter color appears as light shining through an object. Along with the color components, there are parameters that control highlights, transparency, and self-illumination. Some of these parameters are different depending on the shader you are using. With the Standard material, shown in Figure 9.2, you can imitate just about any surface type you can imagine.
3ds Max comes with several materials created specifically for use with the NVIDIA mental ray renderer. These materials are visible in the Material/Map Browser when NVIDIA mental ray is the active renderer. For the sake of time and space, we are going to cover only one here, Arch & Design.
The mental ray Arch & Design material improves the image quality of architectural renderings. It improves workflow and performance in general and performance for glossy surfaces (such as floors) in particular.
Special features of the Arch & Design material include advanced options for reflectivity and transparency, ambient occlusion settings, and the ability to round off sharp corners and edges as a rendering effect. These material types will be explored further in Chapter 15, “mental ray.”
The way light reflects from a surface defines that surface to your eye. With the 3ds Max program, you can control what kind of surface you work with by changing the shader type for a material. In either the Compact or Slate Material Editor, you will find the shader type in the material parameters in the Shader Basic Parameters rollout. This option will let you mimic different types of surfaces, such as dull wood, shiny paint, or metal. The following descriptions outline some of the shaders and the differences in how the shader types react to light, as shown in Figure 9.3.
Most of the surface types that you will see typically create rounded specular highlights that spread evenly across a surface. By contrast, anisotropic surfaces have properties that differ according to direction. This creates a specular highlight that is elliptical in shape and uneven across the surface, changing according to the direction you specify on the surface. The Anisotropic shader is good for surfaces such as foil wrappers or hair. There are extra controls for how the specular highlights will fall across the surface.
This is the default shader because it is a general-purpose, flexible shader. The Blinn shader creates a smooth surface with some shininess. If you set the specular color to black, however, this shader will not display a specular highlight and will lose its shininess, making it perfect for regular dull surfaces, such as paper or interior walls.
The Metal shader is not too different from the Blinn shader. Metal creates a lustrous metallic effect, with much the same controls as a Blinn shader but without the effect of any specular highlights.
When you are first starting, it's best to create most of your material looks with the Blinn shader until you're at a point where Blinn simply cannot do what you need.
Now let's dive into creating material for the couch you modeled in Chapter 4, “Modeling in 3ds Max: Architectural Model Part II,” to get it ready for lighting and rendering in later chapters.
Study the full-color image of the couch shown in Chapter 4 in Figure 4.1. That will give you an idea of how the couch is to be textured. The couch's material is basically all the same; once you create the material, you can add it to all the couch pieces.
To begin, set the project to the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder, and then open the C09_ex1_standard_start.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder downloaded from the book's web page at www.sybex.com/go/3dsmax2016essentials
. This file has the room with the lounge chair and couch set up. When you open this file, the couch is the only furniture visible; the other models have been hidden. Follow these steps:
Save your file and move onto the next exercise. To check your work, open the C09_ex1_standard_end.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder.
Continue with the file you are working on or open the C09_ex2_apply_start.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder. In the scene, select the couch. In Chapter 4, after the couch was merged into the room file, it was grouped. Although grouping objects can save time since you can apply materials to all pieces simultaneously, you don't want to do that in this case. So with the Couch selected, follow these steps:
Save your file and move on to the next exercise. To check your work, open the C09_ex2_apply_end.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder.
The couch material needs some refinement. It looks flat and too perfect, which in this instance isn't a good thing. A material with only color is not enough; what is needed is a map. Two map types are available, 2D and 3D:
2D maps are two-dimensional images that are mapped onto the surface of 3D objects; the simplest 2D maps are bitmaps (aka image files).
3D maps are patterns generated procedurally in three dimensions using the 3ds Max software.
Using a map to replace the diffuse color is a way to create a more realistic material because you are using actual images. You can use maps in other material components to create various effects, such as to make a material look bumpy ort to control its transparency. Continue with the file you are working on or open the C09_ex3_bitmap_start.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder.
sceneassetsimages
folder. Select the GrayGreenWovenFabric.tif
image file, and click Open.
The image is projected onto the surface of the couch model. How the image looks on the model depends on the mapping coordinates. Right now, the bitmap doesn't know how to lay on the surface, so it doesn't look right. Save your file and move on to the next exercise. To check your work, open the C09_ex3_bitmap_end.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder.
An image map is two-dimensional; it has length and width but no depth. 3ds Max geometry, however, extends in all three axes. Mapping coordinates define how and where image maps are projected onto an object's surfaces and whether the maps are repeated across those surfaces.
Mapping coordinates can be applied to objects in several ways. When primitive objects are created and the Generate Mapping Coords option is checked at the bottom of the Parameters rollout, the appropriate mapping coordinates are created automatically. Another method is by applying a UVW Map modifier, which is commonly used to apply and control mapping coordinates. You select the type of mapping projection, regardless of the shape of the object, and then set the amount of tiling in the modifier's parameters. The mapping coordinates applied through the UVW Map modifier override any other mapping coordinates applied to an object, and the Tiling values set for the modifier are multiplied by the Tiling value set in the assigned material.
You are going to use a modifier to replace those coordinates on the geometry. The UVW Map modifier allows you to change the bitmap by transforming the UVW Map modifier gizmo. Continue with the file you are working on or open the C09_ex4_mapping_start.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder.
sceneassetsimages
folder in the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder and select the GrayGreenWovenFabric.tif
file. Click Open. This will change the size of the UVW Map gizmo to the size and aspect of the image rather than the geometry.
The final results are shown in Figure 9.10.
Save your file and move on to the next exercise. To check your work, open the C09_ex4_mapping_end.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder.
The couch is not finished just yet; look closely at the couch feet. If you compare the current scene couch to the image of the real couch, you'll see that the feet should be a dark wood, not the default material on them now. Continue with the file you are working on, or open the C09_ex5_feet_start.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder. Then follow these steps:
sceneassetsimages
folder in the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder and select the DarkRedWood.jpg
image file and select Open.DarkWood_Grain.jpg
image file. Select the image, and then click Open in the dialog box. The material now looks correct on the couch foot.Save your file and move on to the next exercise. To check your work, open the C09_ex5_feet_end.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder.
You are almost finished with the couch. One important feature of the couch is the bumpiness on the surface of the fabric, as shown in Figure 9.12. This bumpiness changes all the specular and reflective properties on a surface.
Bump mapping uses the intensity values (the brightness values) of an image or procedural map to simulate bumpiness on the surface of the model without changing the actual topology of the model itself. You can create some surface texture with a bump map; however, you will not be able to create extreme depth in the model. For that, you may want to model the surface depth manually or use displacement mapping instead. Continue with the file you are working on or open the C09_ex6_bump_start.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder. To add a bump map to the couch, follow these steps:
sceneassetsimages
folder in the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder and select the GrayGreenWovenFabric_bmp.tif
image file.Save your file and move on to the next exercise. To check your work, open the C09_ex6_bump_end.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder.
In this section, you will be adding materials to the lounge chair. In some ways, mapping the lounge chair is very much like mapping the couch. Figure 9.14 shows the lounge chair that was modeled in Chapter 4.
The file has the lounge chair centered in the viewports, and the chair group is open so you can select the individual pieces. Start a new 3ds Max file or open the C09_ex7_chair_start.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder. Using similar techniques as in the previous section you will build a material for the lounge chair cushion. To begin creating follow these steps:
sceneassetsimages
folder in the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder, select the Leather.tif
file, and rename the material Leather.Leather_BMP.tif
.Leather.tif
bitmap, select the image, and then click OK. This will change the size of the UVW Map gizmo. The size of the map is now the proper height-to-width ratio, but it is too large.Save your file and move on to the next exercise. To check your work, open the C09_ex7_chair_end.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder.
Reflection occurs when light changes direction as a result of “bouncing off” a surface like a mirror. In the following steps, you will create reflections on the lounge chair frame; what you are going to create is a chrome material that has 100 percent reflections. Continue with the file you are working on or open the C09_ex8_reflect_start.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder.
The last material is the material that is on the base of the chair. This should be a very simple material to create: a matte black material. Follow the steps you've learned throughout this chapter. Use a Standard material and make the diffuse color black. Set the Specular Level to 20 and Glossiness to 15. Name the material Base and apply this material to all the objects from the base, as shown in Figure 9.18.
Save your file and move on to the next exercise. To check your work, open the C09_ex8_reflect_end.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder.
The window and doors are special 3D primitive objects. They are a collection of multiple objects attached together: a frame, mullions, and glass. You can edit those objects within the Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) object's parameters. You also have the ability to add materials to the individual pieces within the attached whole.
The Multi/Sub-Object material (MSOM), which is in the Compound Materials category, lets you assign different materials at the sub-object level of your geometry. In the case of the AEC window, it is already divided into separate sub-object levels, so you just have to apply the material and identify the different parts. Continue with the file you are working on or open the C09_ex9_MSOM_start.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder. Then follow these steps:
This places a clone of the Shiny White Plastic material into the three remaining material slots and completes the window material, as shown in a render in Figure 9.24. Save your file. To check your work, open the C09_ex9_MSOM_end.max
file from the scenes
folder of the C09_ArchMaterial
project folder.
The same technique used for the window can be used for the doors, but if you want the doors to be just a plain solid color or simple wood, you can apply a Standard material to the entire Door object. We'll return to this room in Chapter 13 when we look at lighting. Meanwhile, finish assigning materials to the rest of the scene.