Green Rascal Design

I think the mental ray materials are awesome, but sometimes it feels like it is too difficult to control them. Seems like there's just something about Standard Architectural glass that appeals to me. Here are five panes of glass, each with a different set of parameters in their materials. I have a clear glass in the middle. Behind that is a clear red glass. Behind them is a translucent purple glass with a wave map under Translucency. The front two panes are first, a translucent purple with a transparency of 10 and an Index of Refraction (how much the light bends when it passes through) of 2.5, and second, a translucent red with a transparency of 15 and an Index of Refraction of 1.5. (1.5 is standard, but it never hurts to find out what happens when you change it.) I also have an omni inside of a translucent, but partially transparent, piece of glass, and a metal floor with a checker transparency map.

Here is my rendering reminiscent of the 80s. Ahh, those were the days. Anyway, you can see all the stuff going on here. It's easy to manipulate how these panes of glass look with the standard parameters. And then you get to find out things like how the clear glass picks up on the colors of the translucent glass, and how changing the transparency of a translucent glass from 0 to 10 or 15 changes things. You can see how some of them cast and receive shadows better than others. Also some of them reflect their surroundings more clearly. And you can think about how the light from the fixture in the background shows through some better than others. I encourage you to set up some experiments for your materials if you're unsure how you want it to look. Experimenting like this is by far the best way to learn.

With that said, hopefully in class today we can all have a discussion about how we're doing with our materials and lighting. We haven't gone over much electrical lighting, but I think everyone is doing okay with that so far. Think about fixtures for your lights though!

Sometimes materials just work out of the box, and other times it seems impossible to get it looking right. Everybody is going to have a different set of problems, but I'll try to go over some settings that might help whatever you've got going on.

I'm starting from scratch first of all, so you have an advantage. You're at the point where you've been working on things and have some stuff saved. Hopefully you've got Mental Ray assigned as the renderer so you have access to all the awesome materials. I covered that previously. Render Setup is a great box you should read through carefully. I like to Force 2 Sided. You shouldn't have to change anything else in Render Setup at this point. Closing the box will save the changes.

Under Environment make sure to have Logarithmic Exposure Control on, and check the box next to Exterior Daylight. If your renderings are coming out all white, this is probably your problem. I went over Daylight previously, and unless you have absolutely no windows and are not doing any exterior renderings, you'll have to have Daylight set up along with Logarithmic Exposure Control on.

Now, remember that problem I was having with my bump the other day? Yeah that was frustrating. See here I have applied my fieldstone to the plane, and it looks huge. So here's that fix: With the plane selected, I go to the Modifier Tab, and check the box next to Real-World Map Size. If your material is too big or too small to see, try Real-World Map Size.

Here is the new rendering with nothing changed other than that one little check box. My next problem, as you can see, is that this stone looks awful flat. The easiest way to remedy this is to add a bump to the material. I don't know why they don't already have a bump on a material that clearly needs it, but I'll just go add it now.

In the Material Editor, I double click on my main material. That brings up a few options, and way at the bottom is Bump. I check the box next to enable, and then click on where it says None for the Image. The Material/Map Browser pops up, and I want to select the map that is already in my scene. (if the material is not already assigned to an object it won't be that easy, so go assign it to something if you can't find the right map.) Sometimes I won't want the exact same map for my bump, like in tile or stucco or something, but these stones are very distinct and I would like the bump to coincide with them. So I double click on the map that's already in my scene, and a little thing pops up asking whether I want an instance or a copy. I'll just use a copy here. Last time I tried instance it didn't work so well.

Here it is now. That was helpful. It doesn't look completely realistic, and if that's a problem I might try some other things later. I was thinking Displacement, but I'm having difficulty with it this morning, so we'll figure that out later.

Materials in 3ds Max can be quite complicated, but everybody wants to know all about them. I'll try to cover as much as I can given the time that I have this morning, and whatever is left I'll talk about in class

The new material editor is fairly strange, but at least makes material controls more visual. There is a smaller material editor which you can also use if the new thing is not to your liking. This Compact Material Editor, listed under Rendering, is the way we used to do it. You can also access it under Modes in the Slate Material Editor.

One person was asking how to make new materials if all the slots are taken up, and one way is here in the row under the materials there is a button called Make Material Copy. Select a close material and duplicate it using this button. If the program doesn't allow you to do it, then I suppose you just have too many materials... I could try and be funny, but you're too stressed right now. The other box I have open is the Material/Map browser (found under "Get Material" or "Standard"). In the Slate editor you have a ton more materials to browse, but you can always switch between the editors.

Here I have double clicked on Architectural in the Material Browser. This gives me options for what type of architectural material I want. Now I can change basic things like shininess and color, and I can choose the maps they have for Special Effects. If I switch to the Slate Editor, it looks similar.

At this point I'm realizing the school has a lot more materials loaded than I do with this brand new installation of the program. I have to change the renderer to get them because some renderers can only use so many maps. You probably don't have to do this, but to change renderers, go to Render Setup, and under the Common tab, scroll all the way down to Assign Renderer. The ... button next to Production will allow me to change to Mental Ray or whatever. After I do this, I'll have more materials options.

After I get into Mental Ray, I can assign more complex materials from the Autodesk Material Library. Here I have a stone material. But what if I don't like the particular stone they use. I can, conceivably, change the image used. For an image map, this is easy.

For a bump map, I was only able to do this because I have administrative permissions on my computer. In the lab you might not have this ability. Here is what I have right now, and I'm out of time so I'll have to finish up later.