This reference page is linked to from the following overview topics: Porting Simple Material and Texture Map Plug-ins to Nitrous, Porting Advanced Material and Texture Map Plug-ins to Nitrous.

Detailed Description

ISimpleMaterial provides any material or texture plugin the ability to display itself in the new Viewport Display system in 3ds Max 2012.

ISimpleMaterial supports fast efficient handling of a basic phong style shader. It supports all the usual surface elements like Diffuse, Specular with the added ability to support two input textures for diffuse and opacity. If a developer needs finer control over the visual appearance of the material then they should look to use the Advanced mode graphics API

A developer typically would not need to worry about many of the Set methods in the class as the viewport display system will translate the host material calling MtlBase::GetDiffuse() and then using ISimpleMaterial::SetDiffuse to update the display definition. Every material and texture map will have an ISimpleMaterial available as it is added as a property of the MtlBase. To access the property use the following code

        ISimpleMaterial *pISimpleMtl = (ISimpleMaterial *)GetProperty(PROPID_SIMPLE_MATERIAL);

The only aspect of the material setup that is not fully automatic is the allocation of textures. In general materials have a more complicated requirement for texture display. An example would be diffuse and opacity display with different mapping channels. Texture plugins on the other hand tend to be more simplistic. However, there are examples of a more complex setup as can be seen with the mix or composite maps. To support these more complex setups the developer must implement ITextureDisplay and implement SetupTextures. SetupTextures is called when ever a change in the material or texture is detected by the system. It is in this method the developer should assign the texture using SetTexture. This method also provides a chance to override the automatic translation of the material parameters, however, it is not a requirement. If ITextureDisplay is not implemented the translation code will use GetActiveTexHandle() to access the texture resource, this is how texture maps such as Checker work.

ISimpleMaterial also allows the material to define a draw style such as whether it is a solid or wireframe. During translation the materials requirements will be checked. For example the standard material can be forced into wireframe mode. The translating code would look like this

        // assuming geomNode is a pointer to INode, the node currently being translated
        Mtl * mtl = geomNode->GetMtl();
        ULONG mtlReq = mtl->Requirements(0);
        if (mtlReq & MTLREQ_WIRE) {
                pISimpleMtl->SetFillMode(FillWireframe);
        }

ISimpleMaterial is used to provide quick and approximate representations of materials in the viewport. More realistic material representations can be created by writing custom real-time shader using the advanced mode graphics API

Note:: All of the methods of this interface are implemented by the graphics driver layer, it is not designed to be derived by plug-ins.

#include <ISimpleMaterial.h>

Inheritance diagram for ISimpleMaterial:

[legend]

List of all members.

Public Types
enum	FillMode { FillPoint, FillWireframe, FillSolid }
	This is the fill mode used in both SetFillMode and GetFillMode. More...
enum	MapUsage { UsageDiffuse = 0, UsageOpacity, MaxUsage }
	This enum type tells the viewport rendering system the usage of each texture. More...
Public Member Functions
virtual ISimpleMaterial *	Clone ()=0
	Clones the instance of ISimpleMaterial.
virtual void	SetFillMode (ISimpleMaterial::FillMode mode)=0
	Specifies the fill mode of the material.
virtual ISimpleMaterial::FillMode	GetFillMode () const =0
	Returns the fill mode that the material is using.
virtual void	SetAmbientColor (const AColor &color)=0
	Specifies the ambient color as an RGBA value.
virtual const AColor &	GetAmbientColor () const =0
	Returns ambient color that the material is using.
virtual void	SetDiffuseColor (const AColor &color)=0
	Specifies diffuse color as an RGBA value.
virtual const AColor &	GetDiffuseColor () const =0
	Returns diffuse color that the material is using.
virtual void	SetSpecularColor (const AColor &color)=0
	Specifies the specular color as an RGBA value.
virtual const AColor &	GetSpecularColor () const =0
	Returns specular color that the material is using.
virtual void	SetEmissiveColor (const AColor &color)=0
	Specifies the Emissive color as an RGBA value.
virtual const AColor &	GetEmissiveColor () const =0
	Returns Emissive color that the material is using.
virtual void	SetSpecularPower (float power)=0
	Specifies the specular exponent of the material to be set.
virtual float	GetSpecularPower ()=0
	Returns specular power that the material is using.
virtual void	SetSpecularLevel (float level)=0
	Specifies the specular level.
virtual float	GetSpecularLevel () const =0
	Returns specular level that the material is using.
virtual void	SetSelfIllumColorOn (bool bOn)=0
	Specifies the self illumination mode.
virtual bool	GetSelfIllumColorOn () const =0
	Returns self illumination mode that the material is using.
virtual bool	SetTextureTransform (MapUsage usage, const Matrix3 &transform)=0
	Set texture transform matrix.
virtual Matrix3 &	GetTextureTransform (MapUsage usage)=0
	Get texture transform matrix.
virtual bool	SetTexture (TexHandle *pTexture, MapUsage usage)=0
	Set texture with texture handle.
virtual TexHandle *	GetTexture (MapUsage usage)=0
	Get texture handle.
virtual void	ClearTextures ()=0
	Clears all texture used by this material.

FillPoint	Point rendering style used for vertex ticks. Search for all occurrences
FillWireframe	Wireframe rendering style. Search for all occurrences
FillSolid	Solid rendering style. Search for all occurrences

UsageDiffuse	Diffuse channel. Search for all occurrences
UsageOpacity	Opacity channel. Search for all occurrences
MaxUsage	Search for all occurrences

virtual bool SetTextureTransform	(	MapUsage	usage,
		const Matrix3 &	transform
	)		`[pure virtual]`

virtual bool SetTexture	(	TexHandle *	pTexture,
		MapUsage	usage
	)		`[pure virtual]`

[in]	pTexture	A texture handle. If pTexture is NULL it will clear the texture. This can give finer control than using ClearTextures()
[in]	usage	The texture usage

ISimpleMaterial Class Reference

Detailed Description

Public Types

Public Member Functions

Member Enumeration Documentation

Member Function Documentation