3ds Max More Material Slots

The material sample display window at the Material Editor is limited to show a maximum of 24 material slots, which does not mean the user is limited to work with only 24 materials. The many steps of this tutorial have been explained in a way suitable for those who have experience in using 3ds Max - even for those who may have had some time away from using Max and have decided to go back to it! Press the blank slot beside Opacity, so as to choose a map for the basic opacity material for the emitter. From the Material. The Compact Material Editor sample slots are full in 3ds Max (that is, you have a maximum of 24 unique materials displayed in the Editor).

The sample slots let you maintain and preview materials and maps. Each slot previews a single. You can change the material by using the Compact Material Editor controls, and you can apply the material to objects in the scene. The easiest way to do this is to drag the material from the sample slot to objects in viewports. See Dragging and Dropping Maps and Materials.

You can display a sample slot in a window of its own. This magnifies the sample slot, which can make it easier to preview the material. You can resize the magnified window to make it even larger. To magnify a sample slot, double-click it, or right-click and choose Magnify from the pop-up menu. See Sample Slot Right-Click Menu.

The Material Editor has 24 sample slots. You can view them all at once, six at a time (the default), or 15 at a time. When you view fewer than 24 slots at once, scroll bars let you move among them. See Material Editor Options and get.

A material in a slot is shown on a sample object. By default, the object is a sphere. Use the Sample Type flyout to change the sample object.

By default, a standalone map in a slot fills the whole slot. This is when the slot shows only a map; for example, when you drag the map onto the slot from elsewhere in the 3ds Max interface. When a map is assigned to a material, the slot shows it as part of the material, mapped to the sample object. See Get Material and Material Editor Options .

Sample slot showing a map

Hot and Cool Materials

A sample slot is 'hot' when the material in the slot is assigned to one or more surfaces in the scene. When you use the Compact Material Editor to adjust a hot sample slot, the material in the scene changes at the same time.

The corners of a sample slot indicate whether the material is a hot material:

• No triangle: The material is not used in the scene.
• Outlined white triangle: The material is hot. In other words, it's instanced in the scene. Changes you make to the material in the sample slot will change the material displayed in the scene.
• Solid white triangle: The material is not only hot, but is applied to the currently selected object.

Left: 'Hot' material applied to currently selected object.

Middle: 'Hot' material assigned to scene but not to currently selected object.

Right: 'Cool' material: active but not assigned to scene.

A material is 'cool' if it is not applied to any object in the scene.

3ds Max Material Editor More Slots

To make a hot sample slot cool, click Make Material Copy . This copies the material in the sample slot on top of itself so that it's no longer used in the scene.

You can have the same material (with the same name) in more than one sample slot, but only one slot containing that material can be hot. You can have more than one hot sample slot, as long as each has a different material.

If you drag to copy a material from a hot slot to another slot, the destination slot is cool, and the original slot remains hot.

Procedures

To use a sample slot:

• Click the sample slot to make it active.

  The active sample slot is displayed with a white border around it.

  The sample slot shows a sample object shaded with a material. (By default, the sample object is a sphere.) The sample object is lit by a light source above it and slightly toward the viewer. For the sphere, the highlight is in the upper-left quadrant. The diffuse color shows most clearly above and to the left of the highlight, shading toward the ambient color at the sphere's lower right.

To change the preview shape:

1. Make sure the sample slot of the material you want to view is active.
2. Use the Sample Type flyout to choose the shape you want to view. The flyout gives you three options: sphere (the default), cylinder, or box.

   The new shape is displayed in the sample slot, with the material mapped to it.

To render the current map level:

1. Move to the level of the map hierarchy that you want to render.
2. Right-click the sample slot and choose Render Map from the pop-up menu.

   3ds Max opens the Render Map Dialog.

3. Choose Single or the range of frames to render.
4. In the Dimensions group box, specify the pixel resolution to render to.
5. Click the Files button, and specify a path and file name for the file. Make sure Save To File is on unless you want to see the image only in a Rendered Frame Window .
6. Click Render.

   A Rendered Frame Window appears displaying the map. If Save To File is on, the image is also saved to disk.

Topics in this section

• Sample Slot Right-Click Menu

  When you right-click the active sample slot, a pop-up menu is displayed. For other sample slots, click or right-click once to select them, then right-click to use the pop-up menu.

• Render Map Dialog

  3ds Max opens the Render Map dialog when you use Render Map on the sample slot right-click menu to render the map displayed in a sample slot

Leather is one of the most used materials in the field of furniture design, especially for design of sofas or couches. It is quite easy to obtain a good leather material, although the leather material quality strongly depends on the illumination in your scene (Fig.01 - Fig.03).

Fig.

Fig.

Fig.

Before you start to create the leather in the material editor, you must first analyze exactly what type of leather you want to simulate in 3D Studio Max. Once you've made this decision, choose an image which has the pattern/texture of the real leather. In Fig.04 you can see examples of images/maps which allow us to create a perfect leather texture in the material editor. The first one is a simple image of scanned paper, which we used to create leather in Fig.01; the second one is made with Photoshop, which was used to create leather in Fig.02.
This image is used for image 2 This image is used for image 1

Fig.

Now let's look at the steps to create leather. First you want to add the correct specular highlights. You must analyse the real leather and simulate the same glossiness and specular level in the material editor. There are no standard values. These settings depend on the type of leather and also on the illumination. If your light is very bright, you will have a very strong specular highlight in the rendering. To avoid this you must set a lower amount in the specular level slot. In the diffuse slot choose the colour of your leather material.
Now go to Maps > Bump and click on the None button.
The Bump map now allows you to create the leather texture. At this point you have many different kinds of maps that you can choose from. In this tutorial we will use or the Bitmap or the Noise map. Both are very useful.
If you choose Noise map, you must pay attention to only one parameter: the size of the Noise map. Usually it's very, very small; often lower than the value 1. But again, this value depends on the kind of leather that you want to simulate.
In the Bump amount slot, you are able to set the strength of the texture. Normally it is never more than 50/-50. In Fig.03 you can see the result of the Noise map (Fig.05).

Fig. 05 (BITMAP or the NOISE in the Bump slot)

If you choose to assign a Bitmap (an image) to the Bump slot then you must be aware of the tiling value. It has more or less the same effect as the size parameter in the Noise map (you can also assign a UVW Map to the object from the modifier list and change the Gizmo size; it will have a similar effect as tiling).
Once you have completed the scene, to have more control over the specular highlights in the rendering you can use a special 'MR Area Omni' light. After you have placed the light in the correct location, right-click on the MR Area Omni and disable 'Affect Diffuse' (Fig.06).

Fig. 06 (additional lights for additional highlights)

After this step the MR Area Omni will only create specular highlights on the materials. We will use that MR Area Omni to create the highlights that are normally visible on leather. In this way we have much more control of the position, colour and brightness of the specular highlights.
Disable shadows in the MR Area Omni. This technique can be very helpful if you need more highlights than the existing light sources are already creating on the leather material. To avoid this light affecting all objects in the scene, you should use the exclude option in the modify panel. This excludes all other objects which should not receive any additional highlights (you must select the light to do this)

Photoshop

Now let's look at how to create the leather texture shown in Fig.01.
Go to Photoshop and create a new file. From the main tool bar, go to Filter > Texture > Stained Glass (Fig.07).

3ds Max Material Download

Fig.

This will give you a texture like the skin of a snake (Fig.08). You will have three parameters in the filter that you can change. Basically this is already a 'map' that you can use in 3ds Max as a Bump map. It will give you quite good results.

Fig.

To make it a bit more interesting you can return to Photoshop and duplicate the layer of the leather (Fig.09). Change the copied layer from Normal to Multiply. This will allow you to add different colours on the original layer without losing the black leather shapes that the filter has created. Choose an irregular brush and try to create a natural looking brown colour (Fig.10). Don't make it too clean, otherwise it will look very unnatural.

Fig.

3ds Max Material Library

Fig. 10

Now after this step go to your Multiplied layer and decrease the opacity. Don't leave the black shape of the top layer too visible. Save the image as a Bitmap.
Now you have two images. The first one, which is only black and white, and the second one, which is brown.
You must place the brown one into the Diffuse Colour slot in Maps, and the black and white one into the Bump slot (Fig.11). If the leather effect is too sharp you can blur both images in Photoshop by choosing Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. The same can be done in the Bitmap settings from the Blur slot.

Fig. 11

You can find the informations for more materials in other Florence Design Academy tutorials or lessons.
I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial.
Best Regards
Florence Design Academy
www.FlorenceDesignAcademy.com

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