Understanding materials (3ds Max, Vray)

Fridock

So this is a question i'm having for quite a while and i need someone else help to get it right.
So - i have a turbosmooth ready model, a gun for example, and i want to give it good looks when rendering (vray) it without making unwrapping, baking and so on.



In order to make my gun look like this, do i need to unwrap it? How do i add some little details, like engravings (as normal/bump), logos and so on without making uvs for the model and if that's even possible?
And if if i make materials using vray can i use them in default renderer?

PS i just started getting into 3ds max

softimage rules

.Wiki

FridockShir wrote: »

softimage rules

You can also try arnold, its now available for everyone . Its fast and can be used for animation because there is no fake GI like irradiance or final gather maps, it just produces "noise" when there are not enaugh subdivisions.

In general you dont need to completely unwrap the model, those decals can be placed with a view texture projections (like you do in softimage with planar projections and so on). Some general surface noise can be applied with cubic subprojections. Just assign the textures to this specific subprojection.

You just need to disable the tiling for textures.

Materials are handled nearly the same in every photorealistic renderer, google will give you some values to use for the diffuse, specular and roughness values.

Fridock

The only problem here i have no idea how to do that.
My idea of how to do that comes from keyshot:





Pretty simple - opening a normal map, turning off tiling, choosing the projection method and adjusting it's position with sliders or using 3d moving. But in 3d max is far more advanced and it just confusing me all the time.

Fridock

Seriosly how the hell do i do this freaking simple engraving?

It shouldn't be that hard, but it's a 3rd day already i'm sitting by 3ds max brute forcing every option with materials and getting crap results.

.Wiki

This can easily be done by using a black and white bumpmap. Just white background with black lines for the text.

ActionDawg

just use a uvw map modifier to planar map a non-tiling bumpmap to that area.

Fridock

So i tried this with box - and it worked quite nicely

(i created a box - converted it to poly - selected the up side - choosed UVW modifier - did a planar projection with - set the Map Channel to "2" - in material editor loaded the basic VrayMtl with black/white bump - choose the "Explicit Map Channel" mapping for the bump "test" texture with Map Channel set to "2")

But when i tried the same with my Desert Eagle model, i got this



Thanks for help man, but i'm still confused

.Wiki

How does your geometry look like? The model looks really lowpoly and it looks like there are some ngons in that area that produce weird shading because the area is not completly flat.

Fridock

This is how it looks like
unsmoothed

smoothed

.Wiki

In your first rendering where the pistol is pink your model looks like its not subdivided. Maybe this causes the rendering problems.

PixelsGenerated

Heya,

So let's try to answer some questions.

Q: can you make it look this good when rendering in Vray without unwrapping and baking?

A: Yes you can, for most of the details you will need to make it high poly ( as in create it as it should looks ) Meaning you will have to model most of the things with as much details as you can. For something like the front and back of the grip you could use a displace map or displace modifer to make it a little bit more easy. For the rest of the materials stuff go to http://www.vray-materials.de/ for some cool material maps.

Also look up 3D's Max Decal mapping ( create a composite materials and put multiple texture on top of each other with different UVW map modifers ( so no unwrapping needed ).

Q: Can I make materials using Vray and use them in the default renderer?

A: Most of the time not as Vray materials are differnt from the standerd materials and also the render does a whole differnt thing then the standerd renderer. But there are some material converters on the interwebz you can use to convert materials to: "normal" "Vray" "Mental Ray" and so forth.

Also you might want to let the guys over at the FAQ how u model dem shapes thread to help you out with your high poly model.

Good Luck!

Fridock

Ok after countless tries and experiments i managed to get the wanted results, although i am not sure if i can count it as acceptable.

So instead of using maps in .PNG and .JPG i made a .TGA file with alpha channel, and applied it to the second map channel for few polygons i did the UVW thing. After test render i got predictable result -

And after i enabled tiling in the bump map that ugly seam gone


I'm not sure if its the right result, but anyway thanks everyone for help, i probably gonna ask more questions soon as i gonna continue working on the materials.

Desktop screen

airage

I just use a plane with the text in the opacity/alpha slot. That way you can change the color, spec etc. directly in Max. Then turn off shadows/ao for the object.
For engraved text you can simply add a normal/bump.

.Wiki

FridockShir wrote: »

I'm not sure if its the right result, but anyway thanks everyone for help, i probably gonna ask more questions soon as i gonna continue working on the materials.
Desktop screen

It looks better then before. But when you subdivide a mesh you also subdivide and smooth the UVs. This causes stretching. So if you want a unstretched map you need to assign the UVmap on top of the stack after you subdivided the geometry.

The issue with the "outer" bump on the first image could be avoided if you choose a medium grey tone as a base for the bumpmap. It has the same result as the medium blue tone on normalmaps. So medium grey means = no height change.

Fridock

@airage
Thanks, i'll note that.
As for normal maps - why when i import a normal map in Max it becomes dark blue?


update

it also makes the mid-grey color darker too, breaking the wanted bump result. What is this sorcery?

Fridock

@.Wiki
Thanks, putting the UVmap on top of the stack seems like solves the glitched projection

acitone

OK, since this thread is called "Understanding Materials" I thought it'd be a cool idea to slip in my question without creating a new thread. In 3ds Max's Material Editor and also when you apply a new Unwrap UVW,why are you able to select different UVW "Channels"? What are they good for?

.Wiki

FridockShir wrote: »

it also makes the mid-grey color darker too, breaking the wanted bump result. What is this sorcery?

The sorcery is gamma correction, because you are working with gamma 2.2 enabled you need to set the import setting of the texture to gamma 1.0. Otherwise it would apply a gamma correction to the texture which would "move" the middle-greypoint of the map.
Working with a Normal or Bumpmap with Gamma 2.2 would only work if you create it in a linear colorspace. Mari can for example paint all textures (no normalmaps) in linear space.

huffer

@acitone Creating complex materials or using Composite to create decals, from the top of my head.

For instance you might need a second UVW Map on Channel 2 to map some text on an already mapped object.

Or another example, controlling reflections on a more complex material - if you need a tiled Checker Map on a Plane you would use a Planar UVW Map on one channel and tile it a couple of times, but what if you have a Noise Map that you want to use to define areas of higher reflectivity on the Plane (maybe it's a road with puddles)? You can't use the same channel since it will be tiled, the solution - a second UVW Map with no tiling for the reflection map.

And another thing, a second UV channel is used in games for baking the light maps.

acitone

@huffer, thanks that makes a lot of sense. It never even crossed my mind that you could map the same thing more than once using multiple UVW channels. I would have to start practising to fully understand it but it makes sense.