How to have a matte/unlit shader in the viewport and in Arnold renderer in 3ds Max?

Litho

Hi,

I can't seem to find an option to have a matte/unlit shader in the viewport and in Arnold renderer with latest versions of 3ds Max 2023, 2024. I just want a single colour or colour texture to appear as is in the viewport and in Arnold.
But with some of the legacy shaders and renderer deprecated, I can't find a solution to this. I can create various options to have a matte shader in Arnold, but viewport just shows the object grey...
Does anyone know how to go about it? Thanks.

Eric Chadwick

You could perhaps use a Shell Material. This has two slots, one for Viewport and the other for Render. Help file says it's for baking, but you can use it however you like. https://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-424F8886-D39C-433D-A7DE-8ACDBAC0869E

poopipe

does setting the viewport to flat shaded not work ? 

Litho

Eric Chadwick said:

You could perhaps use a Shell Material. This has two slots, one for Viewport and the other for Render. Help file says it's for baking, but you can use it however you like. https://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-424F8886-D39C-433D-A7DE-8ACDBAC0869E

Great idea! Thank you, that works. And it's a useful trick for a lot of other occasions or problems!

Here's the result. The right beam's vertex colours are visible in the viewport, but undesirably lit in the renderer. The left beam's vertex colours are displayed as desired in the viewport and in the renderer, using a Shell Material with 2 different materials. 

poopipe said:

does setting the viewport to flat shaded not work ? 

No, that unfortunately doesn't work, because either:
A) the shader displays the shading incorrectly in the viewport. I plug Vertex Color into a Physical Material's Base Color, and the viewport will color the model yellow-green...
B ) A Matte shader will be just gray.