Using light to blend materials/textures

DoomiVox

This is my first post on the polycount boards though I have admired many of polycounts artists from a distance for some time and I'm hoping to share some of my work soon as well.

I was wondering if anyone knows of a method in 3dsmax of using 3d lights to alternate the texture or material of an objects surface.

For a while, I've been using the ink and paint material and creating two seperate textures for the regular diffuse and shaded slot. However this presents a limitation in that there is a stark transition between between the two textures and what I'm looking for is a method where the areas of the object where the light begins to fall off would create a gradual fade between the two textures.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,
DoomiVox

Emil Mujanovic

Moved to Technical Talk.

DoomiVox

thank you very much for the assistance! 3dsmax is hardly intuitive and it doesn't help that many of the different material types are named after the people that invented them rather than what they do.

Mark Dygert

You can also crank up the number of steps in the Ink & Paint Shader to smooth out the transition.