3Ds Visualization Studio

Materials are used to apply color, identify appearance and also to paint objects. Like materials that apply in our real life, material in 3ds max can also be described as scaly, soft, smooth, opaque, or blue, . Beside it contains some of function that usefully for designer to do some adjustment such as color, texture, transparency, shininess, and so on.

Before we move in to details, let’s take a close look at the type of material properties that you will deal with. Understanding these properties will help to create more realistic and advance modeling. The Material Editor can be adding to create a new level of realistic modeling by using materials many different physical properties. Normally, these material properties are not visible or not show until you render the scene.

Colors

Color is probably most basic function in material property and the easiest to be control and adjust. The color object that defined in the Create and Modify panels, there isn’t single color swatch that controls an object color.

Even if the apples are assigned a material, color in the image might be very different due the fact of lighting system. When you begin working on applying materials to a scene in mental ray, you will note that there have increased the number of material types.

In the Material Editor there will be several different color swatches that control different aspects of the objects color such as ambient, diffuse, specular, self-illumination, filter, reflect and luminosity.

Let start with Ambient, it use to adjust the background lighting that make the differences in all the objects in the scene, including the color of the object that have shadows. This color can be locked together with Diffuse. In other word when Diffuse color changed, it also change together, however it function can be unlock by just click the button left to it.

Diffuse can be defined as the surface color of the. The normal color of an object is defined by its Diffuse color. It show the color that appeal in the surface of particular object.

Next is Specular functions whereby color of the surface is being highlighted where the light is focused on the surface of shiny materials. It is use to adjust the degree of the lighting that observe into the surface.

Then, we go to function of Self-Illumination that can be defined as the color that the object glows from within. This color in self- illumination can be takes over any shadows on the object.

After that, we have Filter that can transmit or can it color according to light shining through a transparent object. Normally, designer use it to determine the appearance of the surface it exposure to lighting.

Besides that, material editor also have function to adjust Reflect. Reflect is to adjust color that reflected by a raytrace material to other objects in the scene.

Lastly, Luminosity that is causing an object to glow within the color that defined. This function is similar to Self-illumination color but it can be independent of the Diffuse color.

All these functions play an important role in order to bring a sense of realism to the material and scene. In order to learn more advance technique, you need to keep try applying very different, bright materials to each of these color plot and see the results fro yourself. This will gives you some knowledge of the contribution of each color.

For realistic materials, your need to choices colors depend on the lighting in the scene such as indoor and outdoor scene. Indoor lighting is different from an outdoor lighting like the sun and you can simulate objects in direct sunlight adjusting their Specular color a yellow tint and their Ambient color a complementary, dark, black. However, for indoor scene, you can make the Specular color bright white color and use an Ambient color same as the Diffuse color but it much darker.

Opacity And Transparency

In the 3ds Max, opaque objects are objects that you cannot see through, such as stones and woods. However, transparent objects, is totally opposite from opaque because it is objects that you can see through, like glass and acyclic.

In 3ds Max’s materials, designer able to controls and adjusts these properties, including Opacity and different kinds of Transparency controls.

Just keep in mind that role of each function such as opacity is the amount that an object that didn’t allow light to pass through it. It is the opposite of transparency that measuring percentage of light that can pass through. In the transparency function, an object with 0 percent opacity is completely transparent with an object that contains opacity of 100 percent. Because this differences between opacity and transparency, it can be defined by the opacity value. There have several options that allow you to control transparency such as Falloff, Amount, and Type.

Reflection And Refraction

In the 3Ds Max, reflection and refraction is extremely important in order to create realistic scene. A reflection is what you see when you look in the mirror that contain Shiny objects to reflect their surroundings.  By adjusting reflection values, you can control how much it reflects its surroundings. Normally, it reflection function is apply at the mirror because it reflects everything.

In the Reflection Dimming, it controls how much of the original reflection details is lost due to the surroundings reflection.  Despite that, that is other functions that contribute opposite effect of it, refraction. It functions as bending of light as it goes through a transparent material and amount of refraction is adjusted from Index of Refraction bar. The Index of Refraction function as controller of amount that light bends as it goes through a transparent object. The object that have a higher Index of Refraction value have more light that bends when it goes through transparent object. For examples

• Index of Refraction value is 1.0 for objects that don’t bend light at all.
• Water has a value of 1.3,
• Glass a value of around 1.5,
• Solid diamond has a value around 2.0.

Shininess And Specular Highlights

Generally, Shiny objects, such as polished metal or clean windows have highlights it own reflection off surfaces. These highlights are called specular highlights and adjusted by the Specular settings such as Specular Level, Glossiness, and Soften values.

First of all Specular Level is use to control the intensity of the highlight and Glossiness controls the size of the highlight which mean that the higher Glossiness values result in a smaller highlight. Lastly Soften value is able to reduce the highlight by lowering its intensity and increasing its size.

However when come to rough material, it has opposite effect of a shiny material and almost didn’t contain any highlights. The Roughness property sets how fasten Diffuse color blends with the Ambient color. This usually applies on cloth and fabric materials because they have a high Roughness value.

Other properties

3ds Max also contain several miscellaneous properties that help you to define standard materials, including properties such as Diffuse Level and Metalness.

First of all the Diffuse Level is help you control the brightness of the Diffuse color. Decreasing this value darkens the material without affecting the specular highlights. Furthermore, the Metalness property controls the appearance of the metallic look. Some properties are available only for certain material types.

Lastly before you can proceed, you need to understand what make difference when come to a material and a map.  A material is a controlling permeates of the 3D object and maps are controlling 2D images that use to wrap around the object. In a particular scene, objects can contain maps, and it can be made up of several materials. In the Material Editor, materials appear shaded in the sample slots, and maps appear as 2D images. Usually, you know whether you are working with a material or a map by just simply look at the default name. Maps will show in the name drop down that listed as Map and a number (Map #1), however materials are named as number and Default (7- Default),