|
|
| What we are going to deal with in this Tutorial / Lesson ? |
|
|
Dear friend, this Chapter is going to be a mixture of three different things - texturing, lighting & rendering. Then why did i put these different things in a single Chapter? It's just because they are closely related topics. Only the basics of the these topics will be covered here. Explaining all the details will only make you confused. Don't worry. You are not going to miss the advanced techniques anyway. |
|
|
They will be covered in the Intermediate & Advanced sections of these tutorials. Here we learn only the essentials in the most condensed form. So, lets begin |
|
Texturing in 3D Studio MAX ( 3ds max ) - Yeah let's do some paintwork |
|
Ever wondered, whether all these objects in 3D Studio MAX ( 3ds max ) are just plain red, plain blue and the like? Why can't they have some designs on top of them? Why can't they have a bit of glossiness and shine? Well, before you or I thought about this, the 3D Studio MAX ( 3DS MAX ) guys have already implemented it through the Material Editor. So what exactly is a material? It's simply a collection of properties that determines how an object appears - what color it has, is it transparent, does it have shine etc. We perform all the material works through the Material Editor in 3D Studio MAX ( 3ds max ). |
|
Impatient to see how it works? Ok. Here we goes. You create a new scene by clicking File > New. Click File > Reset to reset the scene to default settings. Now create a teapot at the center of the scene in the perspective view in 3D Studio MAX ( 3ds max ). |
|
|
Now we are going to assign a material to the teapot. You already know the main toolbar in 3D Studio MAX ( 3ds max ). right? You can locate the Material Editor at the right end of the main toolbar. If your screen resolution is not large enough, you will need to drag the main toolbar in 3D Studio MAX ( 3ds max ) with the mouse to see it's right end. The Material Editor icon looks like  . Click on it to bring up the Material Editor. The material editor should look like the figure given to the right. The six spheres you see are individual slots for assigning materials. You can scroll down to see more slots.
Now click on the top left sphere in the Material Editor to make it active. Click on the Get Material  icon located in the row below the spheres. This opens the Material Browser window in 3D Studio MAX ( 3ds max ).
|
|
|
|
| 3DS MAX Trial version users please note: |
3DS Max Trial version doesn't come with all the materials that we use in this chapter. Hence we are providing a small work-around so that you can still continue with the tutorial without much difficulty. Here goes what you need to do.
When ever you see a new material's name in the tutorial, which you can't find in your material library, select a new unused spherical slot in the material editor. Then open the Maps roll out, within the material editor. Now when you come across a new material like Reflection_Chromic, you will also see extra information like (Chromic.jpg > Reflection map:100 | Anisotropic, Specular: 90, Glossiness: 40, Anisotropy: 50).
First download the image file by clicking on the link and save it somewhere within your scene file's folder. Now within the maps rollout, click on the button marked 'None' next to the map specified (in our example Reflection map). It will open up a browser. Choose New as Browse From and double click on Bitmap from the items on the right side. From the file chooser that appears, select the downloaded image file. Enter the value specified (in our example 100 ) beside the map's Amount parameter. There may be multiple images with their map and amount value mentioned and will be seperated by commas. After the maps, there will be a pipe symbol '|'. What ever follows will be the material's general parameters. First one will tell which type of material it is (blinn, anisotropic etc). Make the changes in the corresponding fields in the material editor. I think that needs no explanation.
You can use the newly created material for the scene. Please note that I may not have suggested all the parameters of the material and hence the material that you create might appear slightly different from that given in the illustrations. It won't make much difference and so please dont worry. |
|
The Material Browser window is shown in the figure. In the Material Browser window, from the Browse From category located at the left side, choose Mtl Library (Look at the mouse pointer in the figure). Now the listing on the right side of the window changes. Now the list contains the Materials present in the Material Library of 3D Studio MAX ( 3DS MAX ) which you can use to texture your objects.
3D Studio MAX ( 3DS MAX ) provides different types of Materials. We have 3D Maps as well as 2D Maps. We will go into the details later. Now you scroll down the list and locate Reflection_Chromic (For 3d max trial version users: Chromic.jpg > Reflection map:100 | Anisotropic, Specular: 90, Glossiness: 40, Anisotropy: 50) and double click on it. Now the active slot gets assigned with the Reflection_Chromic material. Got it? Now you can close the Material Browser window that remains open in the background (Don't close the Material Editor). Now what? We imported the material we need from the Material Library to the Material Editor. But we haven't yet assigned it to our teapot.
Click on the teapot in the scene to make it selected in 3D Studio MAX ( 3ds max ). Now click on the Assign Material to Selection  button in the Material Editor which is located below the sphere slots. Notice that the teapot's color has changed to grey. We have assigned the material in the selected slot (Reflection_Chromic) to our teapot object. Lets get into more details of Material Editor in the next page of this tutorial
|
|
|
