11_materials_still_life_pt_1.zip
Unzip this file to extract the MAX scene file.
2.Open your local copy of the file 11_materials_still_life_pt_1.max. Your screen should look like this:
You see that the objects all have different colors. These are the Object Colors randomly assigned to objects at the time of their creation. If you render the scene, the objects will be rendered using these colors. However, there are no materials in the scene yet.
3. Open the Materials Editor by clicking the button in the Main Toolbar:
or by pressing the M key. In the upper left material slot, you should see a bright green sample sphere. Click on it to activate it. In the material name slot, you see that this material is called "bland."
4. Click and drag the "bland" material to the fruit bowl in the scene. In the shaded viewport, the bowl changes color to reflect that a material has been assigned to it. However, if you select the bowl and look at its Name and Color in the Create Panel or Modify Panel, you'll see that the original color swatch of the object has not changed. Also, if you look at a wireframe view, you'll see that the bowl is still red rather than the new green material. This is to allow you to distinguish different objects which may have the same material assigned to them.
In the Materials Editor, the "bland" slot now has hollow triangles in the corners to indicate that the material is HOT, that it exists in the current scene. (Solid triangles indicate a hot material for a currently selected object.)
5. In the Main Toolbar, click the Select by Name tool.
In the Select by Name dialog box, click the "apple" object to highlight it. Then hold down the Ctrl key and select "banana," "orange01," and "orange02." Then click the Select button to select these four objects in the scene. See the illustration below.
6. In the Materials Editor, make sure the "bland" material is still selected. Then click the button to Assign Material to Selection. Now the bowl and all four fruit objects are assigned the material "bland."
7. Drag the "bland" material to the next slot on the right. You have made a backup copy of the material. Now reselect the "bland" material which is still HOT; it has hollow triangles in the corners of the slot.
8. Go down to the Blinn Basic Parameters rollout in the Materials Editor. Click on the Diffuse color swatch; the Color Selector window opens up.
Now you can adjust the colors of the "bland" material, and your changes will be updated in the scene in real time. The objects don't need to be selected for this to work. In the example above, the bowl is not selected, but the fruit objects are. Any changes in the color selector window will be updated as soon as you release the mouse button.
Change the "bland" material to a bright red. When you are done, close the Color Selector window.
9. Now, select the copy of the "bland" material you created as a safety backup. It is still green. Click the Put Material to Scene button.
Now, the bowl and fruit objects turn green again. Because both red and green materials have the same name, all instances of the material "bland" are replaced. The objects in the scene don't know anything about the parameters in the Material Editor, only what material name is assigned to them. You can use this to try out different variations on similar materials.
When you are done, put the red "bland" material back to the scene by selecting the red sample sphere and clicking the Put Material to Scene button again.
10. Create additional materials for the bowl and fruit objects. Start with the banana. Click on a material slot which is unused. Make the Ambient component a dark brown or black, and the Diffuse component a yellow color. Give the new material a name such as "banana material."
Then assign the new material to the banana in one of two ways. Either deselect all objects and then drag the sample sphere to the banana, or select the banana and click the Assign Material to Selection button.
11. Continue this process, creating a brown material for the bowl, a red material for the apple, and an orange material for the oranges. Give each material a unique name which is easily identifiable. It's a good idea to make sure the objects and their materials don't have exactly the same name. For many reasons, it's best to actually put the word "material" (or an abbreviation) in the material name.
12. These fruits look rather dull. Go to the Specular Highlights section of Blinn Basic Parameters and increase the Specular Level and/or Glossiness for the apple and orange materials. Adjust the settings until the image in the viewport looks natural to you. Then render a still image to see what your changes REALLY did.
13. Now add some light to the scene. Add an Omni light at approximate coordinates -500, -1000, 700, and rename it Key Omni. The Key light is the primary illumination for the scene.
Then add another Omni light at approximate coordinates 2000, -500, 700, and rename it Fill Omni. Go to the Modify panel and change the Fill Omni light's Multiplier to 0.3. This makes the Fill light 3/10 the intensity of the Key light. We only want the Fill light to fill in the dark shadows, but not wash out the scene. See the illustrations below.
14. Experiment with the Specular and Ambient components of the materials to see what happens. You can get very interesting, realistic, or bizarre effects by using different colors in these slots. Here's an example of an unusual combination:
In order to see the effect of a bright Ambient material component, the Ambient light in the scene environment must also be bright. You can experiment with this by going to the Rendering menu and opening the Environment dialog. Here you can adjust the color of Ambient Light, which has no source or direction, and attempts to simulate the effect of light bouncing off of objects.
When you are done experimenting, restore the Ambient Light and the Ambient component of your materials to dark, almost black colors. This is the most naturalistic setting.
However, you might make the Specular component of the orange a yellow color; maybe this looks more interesting than the standard white highlight.
15. Now let's move on to the wine glasses. Create a material with a black Ambient component, a bright grey or pastel blue Diffuse Component, and a white Specular component. Rename the material something like "glass material 1" and assign it to the two wine glasses. Make the wine glasses partially transparent by reducing the Opacity to 50%. Turn on the checkered Background in the sample slot so you can see the effects of the transparency.
16. Render the scene. The glasses look ghostly, and dull. Increase their Specular Level to a very high value (like 90 or 100) and their Glossiness to 40 or 50, and re-render. Now there are hot spots on the glasses.
17. Still, something is missing here. Try experimenting with the Advanced Transparency controls in the Extended Parameters rollout. But first, reset the Opacity to 100% — that way you will see the effects of the Advanced Transparency parameters more readily.
In Advanced Transparency, set the Falloff value to 100%. Look at what happens in the sample slot: the edges of the sample sphere are opaque, but the center is transparent, like a soap bubble. Try switching the Falloff from In to Out and observe the difference. Falloff Out makes the center opaque, but the edges transparent, like a cloud.
For a wine glass, we want the Falloff to be In, so change it back to In. Then render the scene.
Also try experimenting with the Filter parameters. The default Filter type is a color. This means that light passing through the object is filtered by the color in the Filter swatch. Experiment with different colors for the filtered light, and render the scene to see the results.
I often use the same color for the Diffuse component in the Filter slot. Just drag the Diffuse color swatch to the Filter swatch and select "Copy" when prompted.
You can also try Subtractive and Additive Filtering. Subtractive makes the object darker, Additive makes it brighter.
18. Still, these glasses are not very realistic. Real glass bends light as it passes through; a phenomenon called refraction. Refraction can be automatically simulated in a 3D program. To do this, assign a special Refraction Map to the object.
Start by making a copy of this material, and name it something like "refract glass." With the new material selected, scroll the Material Editor down to the Maps rollout. Where it says Refraction, enable the map by clicking the checkbox, and then click the button which says None. The Material/Map Browser window opens. Scroll down to find Reflect/Refract in the list, and double-click to assign it to the Refraction Map of the current material.
The Material/Map Browser closes, and the Material Editor changes to the Reflect/Refract Parameters page. Change the Size to 200. Then click the Go to Parent button to take you out of the map parameters page and back up to the level of the material.
Assign the new "refract glass" material to the closer of the two glasses (glass 02). Render the scene to observe the difference between the two glasses. Notice how much longer it takes to render the scene with automatic refraction mapping.
Experiment with different values for the Refraction Map Amount, and see if you can get an even more realistic result. You can also revisit the Opacity, Falloff, Specular Level, and Glossiness parameters to further tweak the material.
19. Select an unused sample slot, and create a terra cotta clay material for the vase. Start by editing the appropriate color components, making the Ambient component a very dark brown, the Diffuse a lighter brown, and the Specular a light grey or white.
Then change the Shader type from Blinn (the default) to Oren-Nayar-Blinn. Immediately, the material looks duller. Specular highlights are gone. Rename the material "terra cotta" and assign it to the vase. Render the scene.
20. To make the vase look more like clay, add a Bump Map to the material. In the Maps rollout, activate the Bump channel by clicking the check box. Then click the button that says None to launch the Material/Map Browser again. Select Noise from the list of available maps, and click OK to close the Material/Map Browser.
Now the sample slot looks rougher. Render the scene to see the results on the actual geometry. Then you can go back to the Material Editor's Noise Parameters and experiment with those settings to get a custom look. Try reducing the Size. Then use the Go To Parent button to return to the material level, and change the Bump Map Amount. Increase the value to make the surface look rougher, decrease the value to make it look smoother. Play around with all of these parameters to get a look you like.
Save the scene, as you will need it for the next tutorial, 12: Sub-Object Materials (Still Life part 2).
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