Week 7. Materials and Texturing

When all the  models where finished to a standard i was happy with i had to move onto the making and applying materials to the models.

Before i started trying to texture the models i tried out the various techniques of applying and creating materials that 3ds max has to offer.

The most basic way of applying a material is to just drag it onto the desired object. This gives you no control on how the material is displayed on the object though. While this will work for basic materials that have no pattern or particular detail, if any kind of precision is required we would be better off looking to add a UVW map modifier.

The UVW map modifier allows you to chose how you would like the material to be displayed on the object, for example as a cylinder, sphere or box.

  Planar and Box Mapping using UVW map modifier  

This gives you more control on how you want the material displayed but it still limited. The objects still have to conform with one of the mapping options available, which are still pretty basic. My ships are far more complex and mainly consist of irregular shapes and will require unique maps for each part the model.

To get the most amount of control over the maps and how they are displayed we will use the UVW unwrap modifier. This allows you unwrap the desired polygons in different ways and create a flat or box map of the object. Having all the polygons laid out flat separately allows for a more accurate application of materials. If the selected object is complex it can however become difficult to establish which polygons are which. This can partly be resolved by stitching polygons back together, which 3ds max allows you to do. This helps to reestablish where each polygon is in relation to the entire object. Which is necessary if you are going to create a pattern of some kind or require a seamless material.

Stitching a box back together at the edges 

Flatten map option of Unwrap UVW modifier, with seams identified

If you desire you can also choose which edges will be the seams where the object will unwrap to and get a flat easily distinguishable map.

Along with the flatten map options you can also use box mapping. Box mapping is slightly different as keeps the object in fewer pieces. This option can work better for high poly objects like spheres, when you need to wrap a material or pattern round a smooth surface and have no seams.

Sphere Box map UVW template 

Flatten Map UVW template of same sphere

While not a huge difference w can clearly see that box map is in fewer pieces and makes texturing the template slightly easier.

When we have a UVW map and template we are satisfied with we can take the template into some image manipulation software such as Photoshop or Gimp and paint directly onto it. For future reference i will be using gimp for all my texturing.

3Ds Max has in itself vast resources for materials creation, for this project though i will be using the simplified version of the material editor. We can still produce some interesting  materials and effects though with this compact version.  

Combining different procedural maps we can create a good looking sky and clouds material which can be seen form the ground or above depending on your preference.

Creating a sky clouds material using procedural maps 

Rendered view of completed material