Materials in Max

Materials are composed of the following elements:

• Underlying pigment (diffuse, ambient colors)
• Shading algorithms (how light interacts with surface - Blinn, Phong, etc shaders)
• texture (e.g. roughness) determined by normals (bump or displacement maps)
• reflectance and transparency characteristics
• Anti-aliasing methods
• rendering methods - ray traced, scan line

Central to all of this is mapping. Maps are 2D arrays of information (e.g. images) that are "wrapped" onto the the 2D surface of a 3D object. Every point on the object's surface should correspond to a single point on the 2D map. This association is achieved using a mathematical function from object space to image space. This function is referred to as the mapping coordinates.

For simple objects, that mapping coordinates are easy to figure out. For example it is easy to see how to map a 2D image to a plane. All one really needs to specify is the orientation and scaling (tiling) of the image. Primitive objects (spheres, boxes, etc) have predefined mapping coordinates (but you must explicitly tell Max to generate these coordinates).

For complex objects, you need to specify the mapping coordinates by adding a UVW map modifier to your object. Placing a 2D image onto a 2D surface of a complex 3D object can be done in a number of ways. One way is through projections, planar, cylindrical, or spherical.

Max examples: click here

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