3D Max: Materials

In this tutorial I learnt how to make different 3D shapes and planes in 3D Max. I created a ball and a tyre on a grass floor with a brick wall behind it. I started off by creating a plane for the floor. Then on top of this I created a sphere shape and then a Cylinder. 

Next, I wanted to create a light to create shadows to make my shapes look 3D. I did this by going to Modifier/Create/Lights/Target Direct Light. I would then click and drag the head of the light to move it which is easier to do in the side or front view. I set the light beam to 300 to make the light brighter to create a more dramatic shadow and turned the shadow type to Ray Traced Shadows.

I then added a material to the Sphere with the material type 'standard' and the shader type 'Blinn'. In the colour selector I changed the colour of my ball to a light blue colour and I changed the materials specular level to 80 and the Glossiness to about 50 and then to add this material to the sphere I just drag the material over it.

I wanted to then add a material to the Cylinder so I added a new material and set the specular level and the glossiness to 10. I wanted to add a image onto the cyclinder to create a wheel so I opened up the map button and selected bitmap and then picked the wheel.jpg. To add this material to the cylinder I clicked on the assign material to selection button in the materials section. I added a plane to make the wall in which i added a brick material onto it and a grass material onto the floor. 

In my outcome, my ball went from glossy to a noise effect, I think I might have added a noise material to the ball and not realised until I rendered the image out. I find this software quite hard to follow and struggled a few times to understand it all but I managed to learn more on how materials work and planes.