base material 1. Hit M on the keyboard to bring up the material editor and swap the ‘Mode’ to Compact Material Editor (this is my personal preference and what I will use for my tutorials you may prefer slate - that’s fine, they both do the same thing.) 2. Create a new VRAY Material 3. You should always have a base VRAY material and assign to all objects first when you want to test lighting before materials. You can set the base material to be the material override. 4. When using the base material keep subdivs at 8 since there is no reflection or refraction added. This will keep the render time down. 5. You can change the colour using the diffuse button as shown. 6. RENDER
glass
chrome
chrome (diffuse yellow)
glass and chrome 1. These are the two most simple materials to create. 2. For glass leave the diffuse map as grey and change the reflection and refraction maps to pure white. This means that the material will being 100% reflective and light will pass through (refract) completely and the material is transparent. Leave the subdivs at 8 to keep render times quick. NOTE: In VRAY world pure black means there is no reflection/ refraction and pure white means the material is completely reflective/ refractive. 3. Chrome is basically super shiny metal. To achieve this like the glass leave the diffuse as grey and change the reflection colour to white. But leave the refraction map as pure black. This will mean the material will be extremely reflective but will not let light pass through the material. 4. By changing colour is the diffuse map of the chrome material you can change the colour of the metal. 5. RENDER
concrete tile 1. Most of the time we need to create a material based on a bitmap (image). You can google these or use bitmap websites such as http://www.cgtextures.com/ 2. When you google make sure you add ‘seamless’ to the search as you want images that will tile across the surface without obvious joins. 3. We are going to create the concrete tile material using photoshop and 3ds max first. 4. Hit M on the keyboard to bring up the material editor, create a new VRAY material, call it Concrete Tile and scroll down to the ‘Maps’ drop down bar. 5. To create most materials you only need to use FOUR maps; Diffuse, Reflect, Rglossiness (reflection glossiness) and Bump.
NOTE: Diffuse is the colour or image you see. Reflection is the strength of the materials reflective quality. (Where black is 0 and white is 100) Reflection Glossiness is where reflection occurs and controls variation of strength (where black is 0 and white is 100) Bump controls texture of the material where white remains raised and black indents. 6. Open Photoshop - this is where we will create the ‘maps’ to fill in those slots that currently read none. 7. Open up the Contrete Tile JPEG I’ve provided you - this will be our diffuse map hence its concrete_tile_Diff
8. To create the reflection map desaturate the image and lighten if you want the tile to reflect more or darken if you require less reflection. (Remember black =0 white = 100) 8.1 Save the image as concrete_tile_Ref
9. To create the reflection glossiness map we need to lighten the image slightly more. 9.1 Save the image as concrete_tile_GRef NOTE: Since this map tells 3ds max where to allow reflection to occur we need this lighter so that the reflection we wanted in the first place isn’t reduced.
10. To create the bump we need to enhance the contrast to try to get the image as close to black and white as possible.This will tell 3ds to either leave the material where white or indent it where black 10.1 Save the image as concrete_tile_Bump
NOTE: Get a good naming system going and save all your materials in one location that way you can use them again and again for folios to come :)
11. Lets get back into 3DS MAX, now we’re going to use these maps to create the image. Click the ‘None button next to the Diffuse map which will bring up the Material/ Map Browser. Scroll down to Maps and select ‘Bitmap’. Now search your files and find concrete_tile_Diff
12. Remember when we unchecked Use Real World Scale in Tutorial One? Well if you don’t uncheck it in the preferences you will have to manually uncheck it here every time you make a new material. Always glance over just to double check. This will mean you now have control over how your materials appear. 13. The only thing we need to change over the standard settings is the blur, change this to the lowest value (0.01) to ensure the image is as sharpe as possible. 14. Repeat this process for reflection and Rglossiness as shown below
15. Now repeat for bump but this time leave blur at 1.0. This will soften the image and therefore soften the sharpness of the indent achieved on the material. Probably unnoticable, but it’s good material practice.
16. Double click the tile to view a preview of the material to easily tweak without rendering
17. RENDER
wood 1. What we’re going to do now is essentially the same method as the concrete tile but this time not using photoshop and doing all the work in 3DS Max. 2. Both methods will achieve the same result and it is up to you how you prefer to work. My personal workflow is the same as the concrete tile but I present you with both so you can make the decision. 3. Create a new VRAY material and call it wood. Scroll down to the Maps drop down menu, select the Diffuse map and open up wood_Diff from the materials folder in the files provided for tute 2. 4. Like before make sure Use Real World Scale is unchecked and set the blur amount to the lowest possible. 5. Now Copy down the map into the Reflect map by dragging and select ‘Copy’ when prompted.
6. Open up this map in the Reflect slot and where it says Bitmap click and select ‘Colour Correction,’ when prompted select keep old map as sub map. NOTE: Basically what we’re doing is doing the same steps we did in PhotoShop to the images only here in 3Ds. The benefit of doing it in PhotoShop is being able to save all the images and use them later on any computer, any project without have to save out complete material libraries from 3Ds.
7. Double click the material preview button to bring up a large preview. Unclick show end result so we focus in on the map we’re working on. 8. De-saturate the image for the reflection map and adjust the brightness and contrast maps for the glossy reflection and bump maps as needed. NOTE: keep looking at how the map affects the overall material so toggle show end result off/ on as required.
9. You end up with the four maps as before however this time its only one JPEG bitmap and 3 colour corrections to the same JPEG 10. RENDER.
plastic 1. This material is created by using a VRAY blend material, where there is a base coat and 2 additonal coats of material added above. This sounds complex, but is actually pretty easy and can all be done without bitmaps. 2. We start by creating the base layer. Create a new VRAY material and we’ll call it ‘my plastic .1’ 3. The only two settings we are going to play with is the diffuse and the reflection. Change the diffuse to yellow.
4. Click on the grey button next to the reflect map and add a falloff map. Leave the settings as is but scroll down to the output drop down menu, check enable colour map and create the curve shown below by adding a bezier point and moving points into place. Uncheck Fresnel reflections as we are controlling them now.
add a falloff map here
NOTE: Remember that black in no reflection and white is full reflection? By adding the falloff curve you control how much the material reflects based on the angle of light hitting it, where 1 represents straight on, or direct light and 0 represents light coming in from the side. It’s physics. Reverse the curve and see how it changes. 5. Change the reflection glossiness to 0.6 to soften the reflection and see the result across.
0.5
0
1
direct light
6. Now we’re going to create two additional coats to layer the material. This bit is dead easy. 7. Copy the base coat into the next slot by dragging and call it coat 1. change the refl. glossiness to 0.8. Note that this sharpens the reflection a little, i.e the material is more reflective where light hits it.
8. Copy over again and change the reflection gloss to 0.99 which gives an overall shiny reflection. 9. We’ve now created all 3 coats - pretty quickly by not worrying about physics too much and just making it look right. You can worry about the physics of things if you like or play with the falloff curve and reflection glossiness settings until you get the desired affect. As long as you create 3 coats and know what settings to tweak you’ll be able to control the look.
2
10. Final part - we blend them. 11. Copy ‘my plastic 1’ into a new slot and change the material to a VRayBlendMtl. Keep material as sub material when prompted. 12. Instance in Coat 1 and Coat 2 into the shown slots - remember to INSTANCE not COPY so if you make any changes in the coats it will update this new material 13. Now go to any one of the coats and copy the falloff map from the reflection slot. Paste (COPY) into the blend amount next to coat 1 and coat 2. That way if we want to change the falloff map here it won’t change the maps anywhere else. NOTE: Always remember, instance links your new copy to the original and if you change one, the other changes. Copy does not do this.
14. In the coat 1 blend amount lets change the falloff curve to the one below. This will mean the first coat blends into the base coat throughout the material but more where light directly hits the material. 15. RENDER and see result across. See how the material behaves differently now based on how light hits it? Like real plastic... NOTE: Now that you know the process and that there are only TWO settings that really control the outcome, play with these settings to understand how the numbers change the result :)
water 1. This is another simple material I’ve set up for you within the file or create the settings below. All water is is a falloff curve in the reflection map and a complex texture added to the bump map. No diffuse colour needed. 2. This material won’t be explained in full rather I’ve given you the basic settings and what you should do it play with them to see how they change the water. This is the best way to understand it. 3. Start with a basic VRAY material and change the diffuse map to black.
4. Add a falloff map to the reflection panel and follow the settings as shown. You don’t need to adjust any settings here.
5. Add a VrayCompTex (Vray complex texture) to the bump map which add a layered bump to create both waves and ripples in the water. Start with the settings across the play with the settings in the pink boxes to see how waves/ ripples increase and decrease in size as you change the numbers. :)
