3ds Max® 2010 Bible

Chapter 17. Creating Compound Materials and Using Material Modifiers

IN THIS CHAPTER

Creating and using compound materials

Using material IDs to apply multiple materials

Working with material modifiers

Displacing surface with a bitmap

Now that you've learned to create materials using the Standard material type, you get a chance to see the variety of material types that you can create in Max. You can select all the various Max materials from the Material/Map Browser. Open this browser automatically by clicking the Material Type button beneath the sample slots.

Although many of these materials are called compound materials, they are really just collections of materials that work together as one. Just like a mesh object can include multiple elements, materials also can be made up of several materials. Using Material IDs, you can apply multiple materials to the subobject selections of a single mesh object. The chapter concludes with a quick look at the various modifiers that are applied to materials.

Using Compound Materials

Compound materials combine several different materials into one. You select a compound object type by clicking the Type button in the Material Editor and then selecting the material type from the Material/Map Browser. The Type button is the button to the right of the material name. It lists the current material on the button, such as Standard, which is the default material. Most of the entries in the Material/Map Browser are compound objects.

Whenever compound materials ...