Materials and Mapping Tutorials

Materials are like paint. With materials, you make apples red and oranges orange. You put the shine in chrome and the polish on glass. By applying maps, you can add images, patterns, and even surface texture to objects. Materials are what make your scenes look real.

Mapping is a method of projecting pictorial information (materials) onto surfaces. It is a lot like wrapping a present with wrapping paper, except the pattern is projected mathematically, with modifiers, rather than being taped to the surface.

This tutorial introduces the Material Editor, the master design studio for materials and maps. In the following tutorials, you will learn how to assign materials to objects, how to create basic materials, and how to apply textures.

Features Covered in This Section

Using the 3ds Max Design Material Editor to create, edit and apply materials.
How mapping coordinates work, and how to manipulate them using 3ds Max Design modifiers.
How to layer multiple texture maps onto a surface to create a composite image.
How to map textures onto curved surfaces.
How to apply multiple sub-maps similar objects to give each their own unique identity.

Introduction to Materials and Mapping

In this tutorial, you will use a model of a Mediterranean villa to learn more about materials and how they can improve the realism of a scene.
Composite Mapping

A composite map layers two or more texture maps onto one another, in order to produce a more detailed image.
Spline Mapping

This tutorial shows you how to map a material to a curved surface, such as a road or a garden hose.
Using the Multi/Sub-Map

You can apply multiple Multi/Sub-Maps to objects in a scene whenever you need to give similar objects in a group their own unique identity.

Topics in this section