ResPower Education Center: 3ds Max, Part II - An Introduction to Materials

Figure 1: My scene.

Figure 2: Naming your materials.

Figure 3: A Raytrace material.

Figure 4: A shiny, semi-transparent material.

Figure 5: The rendered scene.

Overview

The second installment for 3ds Max in the ResPower Education center covers basic materials. The article assumes the reader is at least comfortable with the material presented in the last article and will build on concepts presented there.

Objects For Your Materials

It is possible to create materials in 3ds Max without actually assigning them to any objects, and 3ds Max has facilities for creating libraries of materials for future use, but we want to see ours, so we will need some basic objects for materials.

We will be creating two materials: a slightly transparent, shiny one, and a reflective one, so you need at least two objects in your scene for these materials. My scene looks like figure 1. You can make any kind of scene you like, but I would suggest something simple since we are focusing on creating materials here, not modeling.

Once you have some objects, it's time to create materials. 3ds Max comes with a large collection of pre-made materials that will suit your needs in many situations, but it's good to know how to make your own because you will need to eventually. To begin creating materials, open the Materials dialog by hitting 'm'. Then wait... and wait... and possibly wait a little more... 3ds Max renders a preview for each of the materials visible in the Materials dialog, and this takes a bit of time. Once the dialog is active again, select the material in the upper left corner. Its preview box will be outlined in white and you will see little triangles in the four corners of the preview.

Organization

The material's default name is "01 - Default", not exactly the most descriptive name in the world. You may have dozens or hundreds of materials in a complex scene and they all need to be easily identifiable by name, so rename this material "reflective blue". To do this, simply click in the drop down text box just below the previews, delete the default name, and type a new one. The result should look like figure 2.

Since we want this to be a reflective material, we will make it a raytraced material. There is a button next to the material name that says "Standard" by default. Click the button and a dialog appears. From the list of available material types, select "Raytace" and hit Ok. The list of parameters for this material has changed from the default to a set specific for Raytrace materials. There are many, many parameters to set for materials, but for our simple material, all we care about is the settings in the "Raytrace Basic Properties" rollout. Mirror the settings in figure 3 to get a nice, reflective surface that is kind of a blue-greeny color and is slightly reflective.

Assigning Materials

You have now created a material, but how to get it into your scene? That part is easy. Simply click on the material you want to assign, then drag-and-drop that material on an object in your scene and ... voila! Your object has a material. There are other ways to assign materials to objects, but this is the most intuitive for simple scenes. Assign your reflective material to some object, then render to see the results. Neat, huh? You may have to move your objects around in order to see any actual reflections.

Now we will make our shiny, semi-transparent red material. Choose the second material preview (press 'm' if you need to open the Materials dialog back up) and name it something appropriate, like "shiny red". Now, just mirror the settings from figure 4, then drag-and-drop your material onto an object in your scene.

Now, hit F9 to render. My rendered scene is figure 5. I hope yours turns out well too.

Conclusion

This has been a very basic introduction to materials in 3ds Max. Using the information here, you can create any number of interesting materials for use in your scenes. Thanks for reading, and check back for new entries very soon.

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